Advertisement Idea?

[Trick]

When I open my Mudlet, the client shows a group of MUDs to pick from such as Avalon, Midkemia, Achaea, Lusternia, and a whole bunch more with cool images and stuff. How would we go about getting Forsaken Lands pre-loaded into MUD clients like that?

[Magick]

I'd imagine that it would be similar to the way zMUD worked.  zMUD had a bidding system in place which put 10 of the highest bidders in with the client package.  These bids went as high as $5000 for the #1 slot (Medievia, 2006) to as low as $1100 for the #10 slot (Lusternia, 2005).  As Zugg is no longer making MUD clients, this is obviously outdated from their end, but the end result would be the same: you pay the client, and if they agree, they put in it.

[Trick]

Damn.. Didn't realize it was so expensive. 

[Ithric]

We don't get enough donations to spend that kind of money unfortunately.  Great idea if we can find something under $100 or get a less cheap pbase ?. 

Here's my thoughts on advertising:

It's 2016 and most new gamers are console/PC based.  Mud is a dieing breed unless someone personally introduces a new player.  I feel most of our "new" players will be from stealing MUD players from another community.  That being said we will not.stand for forum terrorism and/or OOC IG recruiting.

We need a way to touch base with the mud communities and draw them to us.  From a business perspective offering incentives are a huge selling point for a trial run.  That leaves two questions:

What can we offer for an incentive?

Where/how can we reach the target customer?

[vaelinn]

Incentives that I can think of that would possibly be enticing to the point of making a new user get hooked would be(Please feel free to ignore any that are too far fetched, just doing a brain dump):

1. One free level 50, or maybe a playground environment where they can try a level 50 (give them something to look forward to/ease the learning cost of dying and exp loss)

2. More frequent events in game (maybe add some level 51 rp imms?, This may not really be a thing, i might just be on during off hours) But I always found imm interaction to be a very rewarding experience as a mortal

3. Maybe code a "New player pack" full of interesting items that can be obtained by entereing a "referral code" during character creation or something, this would probably require some coding to ensure it is not abused but seems like an interesting idea. 

 

As for how to reach them, I would suggest making a google adWords account and doing some research to see what people who search for "MUD", "Multi User Dungeon", "Mud Connector" and some competitors also search for, you may find some very useful trends/data that can be better used to find where those users ultimately go, which would then highlight more precise ways to reach them. I believe you can glean a great deal of a users metadata from this as well which you could then use to put some facebook ads out directly targeting the demographics that the adWords data highlights.

 

I will ruminate on this some and come back to it if any other ideas pop up. And again take these with a grain of salt, just brainstorming out loud.

[Magick]

Those numbers for zMud were for a year, if you didn't catch that, for dedicated icons premade to connect.  TinTin++ has a post on TMS (Dec 2014) and their sourceforge page (Dec 2009) offering banner placement in client releases for $100 for a year with the banners themselves staying active for three.  It all depends on the client involved and the type of advertisement offered.

Hitting within the MUD sphere of influence is one thing.  As Ithric stated, it would be mostly directed at those already looking to play a MUD.  Most would be currently involved in a MUD while there will be the more rare "browsing" user.  To reach a broader audience (and more hit-or-miss) would be to advertise out of our bubble.  Places like consoles or steam or flash hosting sites.  Which brings me to an example:

I had posted at one point a suggestion on prayer for making a flash based client that connected to FL from sites such as Armor Games and Kongregate.  Of course, setting something up like that would have to be done by someone that knows how to code stuff like that (I don't) and brings with it its own problems (like OOC-ness on sites like Kongregate with their chatrooms.)

Best thing to do as far as advertising is concerned is browsing around.  As shown, prices vary greatly with the type offered.  Of course, nothing beats word of mouth.  It's free and by far the most effective form of advertising.  A great example would be Dwarf Fortress.  Of course, becoming that successful on WoM alone is uncommon.

An incentive program isn't bad.  But that too, brings its own problems even if it is minimal.

[Manual Labour]

Too bad the necro rework doesnt have a path to bring this game back to life

[egreir]

32 minutes ago, Manual Labour said:

Too bad the necro rework doesnt have a path to bring this game back to life

Not sure whether to hate you for being negative, or to laugh because that was pretty funny lol

[Zoichan]

I like the free level 50 idea, as long as it's in a confined area, or made to be no pk. If you give a newbie a free 50, and throw them in the mix, they'd never come back.

Maybe put a 7 day timer on it.

[Ithric]

No PK for sure, maybe like a temporary lvl 50 adventurer class