Turnout was actually quite good which resulted in the sim being full when I tried to get there first. People in the beginning were more gathering around the red carpet but were then moving on to the other dome where Slim Warrior was performing before the actual event. Thus it might look a bit empty (but I missed myself the opportunity to make shots of the crowd at the beginning).

Having that limit of residents able to be at once in a sim is of course a challenge for such events. One workaround might be to use the corner of 4 sims to "loadbalance" this a bit but it will add some extra costs of course.

Thanks for the insider info, Tao! It's a pity the screenshots didn't show more attendees. As far as I know, a sim is full when it has reached 30 or 40 residents -- any idea how many were at the X-Men event?

you're welcome ;-) well, in the greyed out box in the region/estate tab it shows 50. But I don't know if that's the actual limit. One might ask Fizik about it.

BTW, I also wanted to note that I actually only noted it 30 minutes after it was running by that post on NWN as I rarely look in advance into the events listing if ever as I never find the stuff in there I am searching for. (moreover I am lazy and I actually would like to be notified like with RSS.) Would have been nice if somebody had blogged about it somewhat earlier (but anyway, the sim was full nevertheless ,-).

A full sim is only 40 avatars (despite the last few patches where they said they'd up this to 100). So anything that happens with 40 people can't really be called "viral" and I totally agree with what Tony is saying about the purpose of this Big Business pageantry: generating media buzz outside in the real world to their RL customers, not doing anything inside the world. As I've pointed out on my blog on this subject today (http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2006/05/destroying_the_.html)
quoting Reuben Steiger, it doesn't even matter how many people there are in SL, it's a platform for businesses to do one more thing to add to their marketing techniques.

I think they didn't want to advertise it too heavily because then they'd be overwhelmed with people attempting to come to the sim. Like other grand openings, like the New Media Center, etc. they could already generate enough buzz from their pre-selected network of those already involved in the project.

You didn't note the other salient feature of this story: that 20th Century Fox had Rivers Run Red hire inworld architects like Barnesworth Anubis to do the build.

Re: "Second Life blogger and Rivers Run Red consultant James Au reported". Is "reported" the word to use when Hamlet goes and essentially pitches his latest P.R. gig within his blog? Of course, it's his blog, he can do what he wants. I find this interesting, the way both Mark Wallace covers the Electric Sheep as he is sponsored by them, and Hamlet covers Rivers Run Red being employed by them as a consultant.