Shattered Kingdoms

When people in cities don't became gate targets, inns will be much more crowded than it is now.

This and all of the suggestions about word of mouth are just asking people to do what has always been done. SK has been on TMS/TMC for years, and people have been telling people about SK for years. Yet we are where we are now. It's good to keep using these tools because they do get us new players, but it's clear they're not going to help us grow. At this point they just mitigate our losses. I think we need to use additional measures to see a trend in increasing player counts.

You still needs means to target your audience and advertise, otherwise those players who would play on this mud won't know about it.

You must also think about what sort of budget you have to do this.

These efforts do prove to have some results, I've not heard/seen others that do necessarily. Unless the game is willing to invest in some serious web ads (money) I'm not sure there is an alternative viable solution.

I learned of the game through one of those sites FYI

I had wanted to write a long-winded post about this but I haven't found any time over the last few days, so I'm going to write a half-assed version and I hope you will forgive me if I have to elucidate and/or correct some stuff later.

Here are some facts about advertising SK:
- We've long been hampered in advertising by not having any compelling banner ads to run. I've posted in this group several times over the years asking for them, but while everyone has opinions, there have been very few graphic artists here who are both willing and able to deliver.
- Despite this, we still have been doing advertising for years, just not using graphic banners.
- We ran google search ads from approximately 2008-2012. It didn't seem to be very effective, but it was also relatively cheap.
- In 2012, I spent 50x more on advertising than previous years (out of my personal pocket) by getting us Icon Slot #2 for a period of one year on ZMUD/CMUD. The jury is still out, but we haven't seen people flooding in from that either.
- One new possibility would be to try advertising on Facebook. It seems to have better tools to advertise to the people we want.

Speaking of FB and other social media. Word of mouth is how many of the stuff moves around in it, and to have word of mouth having direct use of the sites is imperative.

I don't know if Diku can do it or using several other things can do it.

Assuming these conditions are met:
Forumid is used
Forum acct being tied to a social media outlet (FB, Blogger, etc)
Best would also include ability to login to forum via FB creds...

Can a command be used ingame, to send something to a tied social media id?



Second, with Fmud, might make things easier to make a FB app.

The best game of the world would have 0 players with no advertising.
Always remember this before jumping into false assumptions like:



No Styles, you are wrong. As most here are wrong when they think it is the game's fault that there are not many players.
When MUDs with half the population of SK have been performing better than SK, for all these years, in these voting sites, this is what you get.

Voting sites is not the best deal out there but they currently are the easiest path. Advertising is very expensive nowadays and it surely cannot be paid by a free MUD.

My point is that we are already using those avenues. And we should still use those avenues. But, if you think a higher rank on TMS is going to get us a significant influx of new players, I think you're incorrect. Being ranked #1 consistently might prove beneficial, but I don't know if we can pull that off. The point I made earlier is that those sites, TMS and TMC, just don't get huge traffic. We cannot rely solely on them and word of mouth; that's what we've been doing. All I have suggested is that we keep doing that and look for new avenues for marketing.

There has already been an increased influx of new members due to the improved ranking, it is obvious in forums, game and logs site.

Sometimes, the simple thing to do, is the best. If all active players of SK would vote daily, we would have 2nd position, ALWAYS. 3rd-5th position would mean 100 online players sooner or later. Then we can talk about game improvements.

Unfortunately, some people think that if they do not vote, they will press Dulrik into something, I dunno? They still keep on playing. This so much remind me the way viruses act.

Facebook seems to me to be a more likely target audience than mudconnect, zmud, etc. The issue with mudconnect/zmud is that at this point everyone using mudconnect has tried everything anyways and is just putting off going back to their usual stomping grounds, and everyone using zmud is getting it to play their usual, and bypasses/deletes the iconned ones. I'm not saying it won't get 1 or 2, it just won't get serious new folks.

A few high ranked reddit threads, or v well targetted facebook adverts, is probably a much better source for potential new players.

One thing I would like to see changed to improve player count is on the who list keeping the actual player count online. Dont make unseen people visible on the who list just keep the number its actual value. This is especially important around less played times. Ive been with a group of 5 people and cast mass invis. To anyone with out detect invis it looks like 5 people logged out. When your looking at a 30-40 active players at one time 5 people is a significant number loss to who is in game. Even just night time for chars with out infravision it can look like there are significantly less people online. Keeping the who number higher helps people feel there are people to interact with, even if they do all hide behind cable walls or wilderness rooms.

Yes there is slight abuse that can happen with it, however lets face it if your scared of invis hidden etc your running around with it up almost all the time anyway. The meta game oh someone is invis will probably make you use more of these consumables than not. The only real abuse I can think is using it to work out if a cabal power is in effect, however it doesnt help you fight against it only know its in use. Remember dont discuss the cabal power etc.