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Comments
So... what-all did you try?
I was thinking of... more aggressive stuff. For starters, you don't want to make a 'new' topmudsites; you've said that wouldn't be cost-effective. I was wondering if IRE has bid on the existing site.
Another thing is, what happens if you market Achaea differently? For example, what if teachers find Achaea when they're looking for resources that might help their students learn English (and possibly other subjects, most of which get lumped together as 'social studies' in American public schools)?
I'm sure you thought of those two, but... they're not on your list, nor are things like them; you only named in-game, on-site, 'in-the-box' stuff.
Twin Cities* area conventions quite often bring in people from not just Minnesota, but Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan**, Canada, and the occasional guy or three from North or South Dakota. With that new fiberoptic company broadcasting to the world that parts of Minneapolis have 1GB/bps bandwidth available (and more cable is being laid!), plus all of that going on, I'm pretty sure the Achaean demographic is literally in my neighborhood. (As for figuratively? Leave my figure alone!)
*This refers to Minneapolis and St. Paul. They are decidedly not identical twins.
**The upper peninsula of Michigan is home to crazy people who call themselves Yoopers. These are the ones more likely to show up in Minneapolis for events. Should you ever find yourself in their area, ask about the local wildlife. Listen to them about how they deal with said wildlife; it might potentially prevent confusion later in your visit, should you encounter any. As this includes critters such as deer and bears, this could actually be important.
Well, when I said there's no feasible way to 'solve' it what I was talking about was the fundamentally difficult things about Achaea for newbies vs. bringing in new players.
I almost did buy Topmudsites many years ago but backed out. The current owner (who owns Aardwolf) isn't selling.
There are many, many things we've done to promote Achaea, but getting people generally to the site isn't really the issue. Getting highly targeted players is. That's why Topmudsites is valuable - it's one of the only collection of MUDers out there.
The one idea I've heard in here that is probably worth giving a try to is papering Cons with flyers.
We did actually do something like that before, a decade ago, with some people plastering this poster in colleges, but it didn't do anything. I can't remember how widespread the effort really was either. Probably not that widespread. Cons might be a better target though.
Also I meant "can't" not can up there. Oops.
What about gaming blogs and stuff? Admittedly those are more for graphical games, but I discovered Achaea through a livejournal acquaintence's blog. Blogs tend to get more attention than just ads.
Also, what about allowing it so that house leaders (or HoN) can see if a newbie is 'true' or 'alt'. Knowing this information may help the aides really target the newbies that really need the help and attention.
We couldn't/wouldn't let players see who is an alt I'm afraid. I agree it'd be helpful, but it would simply lead to anyone who is a detectable alt to be demonized unfairly.
I did marketing for IRE/Achaea for over 4 years (between 2011 - 2015, as an independent contractor). Things we/they tried during that time, with little success:
Like Matt said, getting website visits isn't the problem. Getting highly-targeted (people who actually want to play MUDs) traffic is.
As someone who doesn't just care about a paycheck, but also cares about adding value to my clients and doing a successful job (especially for Achaea, because I too am a player), it was so f***ing disheartening month after month to see how many visits I brought to Achaea, versus how many of those visits dropped out within a minute or so of gameplay.
The only un-tested idea I still have at this point would be for Achaea to try and market to fandoms of popular "nerd" culture. There are dozens of website dedicated to things like LoTR, Game of Thrones, etc. Entire forums/communities for fantasy novel enthusiasts. Many of those communities, however, have strict "no advertising" policies, which makes "guerrilla style" forum marketing damn near impossible, and plunking down cash on graphical advertisements, even at like a penny-per-click, would just be gambling.
She asked me, "Is five hours too long to learn how to read?," insulted me when I used the "X_x" emote, (I had quit Maple Story, where this emote is common,) she Perform Forced me and kicked me out of the estate and booted me out of Templars. I told her she was being mean, she laughed in my face, saying "we all are, especially me," snubbed me, and I was without any guidance in the middle of Shallam, not understanding the game in the slightest, and the only reason I didn't quit was because I was so shocked I didn't yet think to close the browser. Kitri from Cyrene picked me up, she did a performance in an inn with Bimnono, and it was what Achaea is for a lot of people, very interesting and very fun, and that was the reason I ended up in Cyrene and not Shallam. Everybody I talked to later knew this person for doing this sort of thing constantly, Goryllin from Cyrene knew it was her without me mentioning the name, Trey from Mhaldor knew it was her, and when I told Draekar he terminated the conversation on the spot and went to rip her a new asshole. This was years later; at the point where it happened, I didn't know the concept of reporting, and I didn't even know this behavior in Achaea was inappropriate.
Now that I am a CR6 in Cyrene and in a post-Shallam world she's in my city, I assure you the tune she sings to me (and to others) is quite different. She sounds like a sweet little darling. She's in the city government, dealing with newbies. I've been told by the government "she's changed," which I think is akin to giving a child-molesting priest a bigger parish on his word of honor that he'll never rape a little boy up the ass again. I don't really spend a lot of my time thinking about this person, but while we're on the topic I thought I'd mention it.
I'd say it's not PK bullies that are the biggest problem for this game, it's people like her. With PK abuse, you WILL eventually know. But no newbie who's been on the game 5 hours is going to know to go to the House leadership, nor frankly will such a person care enough about the game to find out how to do so. If Kitri hadn't picked me up, I would have been permanently done with Achaea in my first six hours on it. Honestly, had I left, could you blame me? If IRE truly wants every player to stay, identify these people and teach them a lesson. I stayed; I can only wonder how many people this person and people like her treated like this who didn't.
They might come, like @Silvarien's example above, from Maple Story, where RP and language rules don't really apply and automatically scowl and look down on people that don't understand how things work here because they forget that popular games like WoW do not have regulations regarding communication, maybe aside from language filters.
This is a really interesting discussion. For what it's worth, I don't think that the formal mentoring thing is, actually, that worthwhile - although I completely understand why you would think of it first, because it's something you can actually affect whereas the social/old players helping new players aspect of things is not really an admin issue as such. Even back in, what I think of as the golden age of newbie training, the formal mentoring was usually just a way of people hoovering up free credits. Often, when I tried an alt, I'd get "mentored" pretty quick, but my "mentor" would then do nothing, and other people would actually do the work of mentoring.
Without getting into the old guilds/houses/autoclass/player power abuse vs reward debate (which is fascinating, but tends to derail things pretty quick), one thing that I think is seriously worth considering is a system that rewards the work of mentoring rather than the title. Every house has a secretary in charge of training with aides - and those people are absolutely key to newbie retention. Way back in the mists of time, when I first started that was, far and away above everything else, what made me stay. The fact that a stranger, not knowing me, was willing to spend an hour with me and introduce me to the game, my guild, my city, my class and show me some gentle roleplay which also introduced me to the wider political/theological parts of Achaea blew my mind. I thought that if people were willing to put this kind of care and attention into a game which was obviously fairly free-form, and player-driven then parts of it, at least, would be completely amazing. Which they were.
My experience is that that doesn't really happen any more. Or, at least, happens much much less than it used to. I think it would pay huge dividends to try and set up a system that gave rewards for that kind of behavior. Maybe it's the Novice Secretary's job to log (based on reports from their aides) the quantity of hours spent formally newbie training. The admin have access to that log, and rewards trigger off it (a small credit reward maybe, or something else groovy - you guys have plenty of things in your toolbox to incentivize experienced players). Yes, the system is open to abuse (as all systems are), but I'd imagine the threat of shrubbing for false reporting would act as a substantial deterrent. (Especially if it's made clear that only one-on-one training of actual newbies counts - no group hunting, no hanging around with an experienced character who is new to the House etc).
The rewards could be small but meaningful so it wouldn't massively skew things, but I think that kind of thing could make a massive difference. It's a bit more paperwork for one of the House secretaries (though, to be honest, not much - and the secretaries themselves could get a small periodic reward for doing the job).
A few of the better people who handled newcomers in the Naga also got burned out really quickly by the high attrition rate. Even if you handle someone perfectly, so many people just leave because they forget about the game, decide the lack of graphics isn't for them, find the House requirements too dull or even just can't afford/justify buying the skillset they want to have fun with.
It'd be great if the skills had a lot more non-combat stuff to them. @Sarapis , would you happen to have information on which classes have the highest retention rate for new players? I feel like I'm willing to wager there's a link between the number of usable low-level skills and players sticking around. I remember being really frustrated as a serpent because newcomers not to PK (rightly so) but a ton of abilities were only usable on other players. This was mitigated by the fact that (I could be wrong, it has been a while) serpent has a huge number of skills available in Subterfuge with a relatively small lesson investment. Abilities similar to whatever on earth it is Priests do to summon food are the kinda mad flavour that (I think with no empirical evidence) that keep people interested, while hopefully not cutting into the bottom line. Rattle, the ability to have a falcon (not even use it effectively) are all the sorta skill newbies are inordinately proud of.
Unless, y'know, you think people would stop buying credits because they're satisfied with all the RP tools. Which is plausible.
Milestones may include finishing novicehood (HR3) and post novicehood programmes in the house (HR5), buying credits, played X hours total, embraced class.
It doesn't even have to be one person. maybe a new player may choose to tag someone new after each milestone achievement which creates incentive for many people to get involved with new players rather than leaving it up to 'that one guy who always talks to newbs'. ETA: Because I for one don't believe that caring for newbs and post novice newblings should exclusively be the job of novice aides or mentors.
You could call it a kudos system or whatever you want. Romeo and Juliet can give those regular announces just to stress that you can give kudos to people you feel have helped you, and not to feel pressured by assholes into giving kudos.
Of course there'll be people making alts and then giving the rewards to friends oocly. But I think that's a very small issue. It can be partially addressed by making it so that only new characters on brand new emails are capable of distributing such rewards. This won't stop everyone, but it will stymie those who make alts with the same registered email (cause Iron Elite or whatever). And in any case, the nature of the reward requires said alt to actually achieve something, not just be made as a throwaway and lulzpk.
I don't like how the mentoring system currently works. Looking after a newb should be a group effort. I think picking one person to be a mentor places to much emphasis on 'this is the one person you go to for help" while in reality they might have just been lucky enough for you to type a syntax with.
i would institute a kudos system, with ranks. General kudos give small amount of points in the rankings, but a newb passing a house rank will allow the to grant bigger kudos to people. So many points will lift you to the next rank, and flag you for reward. Admin can then go glance of where the kudos' have come from and grant the appropriate reward.
(Think artisanal rankings)
it could literally become a race on who can be the nicest.