Theres something in Secondlife for everyone. For some though the newbie shock just is too much. My advise to anyone trying second life is to talk to people, and get help. There are tons of freindly people willing to help, for that mater shoot me a tell my name in SL is the same as here Arra Jinx.
Also there is only one server...for the entire world...so in most any game it wouldn't be that much of a streach to have 52k accounts logged on. If you are creative minded, this is a great place to build n create. But be honest...majority are there for the sexual creativity.
Old post, I know, but still relevent and I'd like to make some points.
It is blatantly false that there is only one server for the whole world. Each sim is run on one pc core within a virtual server, each physical server runs quad core processors so there are 4 sims per physical server, with the exception of the openspace sims which run 4 per core.. 16 per server. I don't know the exact number of sims online atm, but the last hard number I saw was over 13k. It's pretty easy to see that there are thousands of servers that make up the land cluster, and this is not including other utility server clusters such as the asset server and backup server.
In short, for all intents and purposes you are being handed off from one server to another any time you cross a sim border. This is why there are sometimes (lol) problems with border crossing or teleportation.
Other games such as WoW use many different server setups as well. It's not just 1 server per realm. Each realm is a cluster of clusters, and some clusters are a part of/interact with multiple realms, such as the battlegroup battlegrounds instance servers and again there are utility server clusters such as the login server.
I do understand what you meant though. You are talking about having one contiguous space with no loading screens. I think we've not really figured out all the scaling issues that come with that.. in the context of using it in a game. Yes, SL does it. SL is not a game in a very real and technical sense. SL limits the amount of people who can be in one place at once via sim controls and also any event is usually known about and appealing to a very small portion of the population. Default is, I believe, 40 avatars per sim. Depending on how they are "dressed" (yeah I'm looking at you in the 500 prim 2 pc hair that I "felt" as a lag wave as soon as you landed) you can have decent performance (no prim attachments, no AO) or you can absolutely tank the server (blingtards). If you know what you're doing, and can control your visitors well enough I have seen 120 people at once on a private sim during an event. This is very much the exception, and crashes were expected, contingency plans in place. Now consider this in a real game environment if you had 50k+ people in game concurrent and an event was going on. Many more people would be involved as they are all playing the "same" game and interested in doing anything new. I can give a direct example. Entropia Universe uses contiguous space in just this way. No shards, everyone shares.... the lag. The evil, aweful, terrible lag that happens any time there is an event and everybody tries to crowd into the same spot. The game darn near grinds to a halt, or crashes altogether. It's just a bad idea until a solution is found... and this is why games with a substantial number of people (with the potential for many to be in one area) are sharded. The network scaling just isn't there yet.
I've been in SL since the time when you would only see 5k online concurrently. I do remember the day when 1 million accounts was hit (yeah, it was a big deal.. they put 1 million up on the sun for everybody to see). I've seen many milestones so I've been around the block more than once with SL. I know a bit about the tech. I've created, taught, bought and sold. Just so you understand that I have a deep understanding of all there is to do in SL. With all this said, I have never felt the need to partake in any of the sex play that goes on there. This is not to say I don't recognize that the people who created the things neccessary for people to do this have chosen a popular market heh. More to point out that it is possible to have a "full second life" without that playing any part whatsoever.
Comments
I might go jump back into Second Life
been 2 years since I last played 
Sick of playing Entropia Universe? Want to quit, but don't want your hard earned money to vanish? Give your items to ME :-)
Theres something in Secondlife for everyone. For some though the newbie shock just is too much. My advise to anyone trying second life is to talk to people, and get help. There are tons of freindly people willing to help, for that mater shoot me a tell my name in SL is the same as here Arra Jinx.
Arra Jinx
Old post, I know, but still relevent and I'd like to make some points.
It is blatantly false that there is only one server for the whole world. Each sim is run on one pc core within a virtual server, each physical server runs quad core processors so there are 4 sims per physical server, with the exception of the openspace sims which run 4 per core.. 16 per server. I don't know the exact number of sims online atm, but the last hard number I saw was over 13k. It's pretty easy to see that there are thousands of servers that make up the land cluster, and this is not including other utility server clusters such as the asset server and backup server.
In short, for all intents and purposes you are being handed off from one server to another any time you cross a sim border. This is why there are sometimes (lol) problems with border crossing or teleportation.
Other games such as WoW use many different server setups as well. It's not just 1 server per realm. Each realm is a cluster of clusters, and some clusters are a part of/interact with multiple realms, such as the battlegroup battlegrounds instance servers and again there are utility server clusters such as the login server.
I do understand what you meant though. You are talking about having one contiguous space with no loading screens. I think we've not really figured out all the scaling issues that come with that.. in the context of using it in a game. Yes, SL does it. SL is not a game in a very real and technical sense. SL limits the amount of people who can be in one place at once via sim controls and also any event is usually known about and appealing to a very small portion of the population. Default is, I believe, 40 avatars per sim. Depending on how they are "dressed" (yeah I'm looking at you in the 500 prim 2 pc hair that I "felt" as a lag wave as soon as you landed) you can have decent performance (no prim attachments, no AO) or you can absolutely tank the server (blingtards). If you know what you're doing, and can control your visitors well enough I have seen 120 people at once on a private sim during an event. This is very much the exception, and crashes were expected, contingency plans in place. Now consider this in a real game environment if you had 50k+ people in game concurrent and an event was going on. Many more people would be involved as they are all playing the "same" game and interested in doing anything new. I can give a direct example. Entropia Universe uses contiguous space in just this way. No shards, everyone shares.... the lag. The evil, aweful, terrible lag that happens any time there is an event and everybody tries to crowd into the same spot. The game darn near grinds to a halt, or crashes altogether. It's just a bad idea until a solution is found... and this is why games with a substantial number of people (with the potential for many to be in one area) are sharded. The network scaling just isn't there yet.
I've been in SL since the time when you would only see 5k online concurrently. I do remember the day when 1 million accounts was hit (yeah, it was a big deal.. they put 1 million up on the sun for everybody to see). I've seen many milestones so I've been around the block more than once with SL. I know a bit about the tech. I've created, taught, bought and sold. Just so you understand that I have a deep understanding of all there is to do in SL. With all this said, I have never felt the need to partake in any of the sex play that goes on there. This is not to say I don't recognize that the people who created the things neccessary for people to do this have chosen a popular market heh. More to point out that it is possible to have a "full second life" without that playing any part whatsoever.