Serious necro, but just today I learned that for the past few years Linden Lab has been (somewhat) secretly developing a VR successor to SL called
Project Sansar. They launched the invite-only closed beta in September (for a select few SL content creators) and it's scheduled to come out early next year.
This article from last year more or less confirms it's an evolution of SL's business model:
Apparently but unsurprisingly, Second Life's community has been bubbling with anger and anxiety over this. Sansar will not be backwards compatible with SL and while LL has stated they intend to keep SL running, they haven't said for how long. This is fueling suspicion that they'll push SL players to move to Sansar and phase out SL to avoid having to operate two essentially identical games. Naturally, this isn't sitting well with the many no-lifers who've poured years and thousands of dollars into their characters, sims and pretend social lives and now face the distant possibility of having it all wiped out and having to start over from scratch on a platform they potentially won't like.
This could go a lot of different ways, but if they overfocus on VR it'll definitely flop. LL conceived of this a few years ago when VR was all the rage, but by now people have realised that VR is another overpriced gimmick that's hasn't gone anywhere and that the hype surrounding it was entirely manufactured. On top of this, Sansar's most realistic shot at success is importing the Second Life community and SL is a demographic for which having to buy VR gear is an enormous barrier to entry. Like I said, SL's hardcore users operate on the sunk cost fallacy and won't readily give up what they have to start over, much less make a big investment upfront to play an unproven successor.
Also, the lack of barriers to entry is the reason Second Life got huge to begin with. Linden would have to be terrifyingly stupid to not realise today's technology lets them create a platform far more accessible and powerful than SL with
far less effort.
But who knows? Unlikely as it is, maybe Sansar will do things right and we'll see a spiritual rekindling of the hilarious glory days of Second Life. The next few years will tell.