I know both Kasty and Thror have had a shot at this over the years. It's my turn.

Disclaimer: Let's keep this thing related to the points I've posted as best we can and not turn it into a "I've been saying for years we need to do X or Y*."

As it currently stands there are a few areas which we are deficient in. MUDs, as many of you have seen are an increasingly niche market. Many of CF's direct competitors are now defunct. Many more are in a state of severe decline. This is not, in my opinion, a CF-exclusive phenomenon, but an trend which is industry wide**

Having said I will give my thoughts here:

1. An advertising plan.

Our market, of course, is capped to "English speaking internet users who (might) enjoy free/text-based games." We need to look at websites and applications where we could advertise. Free advertising is fine and I have done a little on TopMudSites, TheMudConnector etc. Umiron has also advertised us on Reddit some.

Umiron and Scarab have also has purchased an annual advertising subscription on a common MUD resource.

Feedback: Free advertising is time-consuming, and labor intensive. Paying for advertising subscriptions are preferable. It drives traffic to us automatically and frees up community resources to do other things.

- Existing MUD players are ideal. They take to the game faster, but are prone to leave over time. Players from defunct CF codebase variants or CF progenitors are best.

- New MUD players are fine but have a steeper learning curve. They do, however, show a high degree of loyalty to their MUD of choice after learning the ropes.

If you guys want to get involved on this front, you can trawl the internet for places, or resources where we could advertise. Post them here or bounce an email to my listed email here. I will collate some statistics on what comes back if a lot of people chip in (a sample of the broader MUD player base.) I can also pursue subscriptions to place advertisements on behalf of the staff. The one caveat is that we want to be associated with legitimate advertising, so no posts for our MUD under D&D torrents, or illegal copies of ZMud or something (as I once found).

The end goal here should be to put together a concrete plan of action for marketing, or advertising. Targeted ads are best for ROI. Broad ads also might work if they bring in a lot of traffic.

2.Learning Resources.

We need to consolidate new player learning resources (pre-30) in one place. I have started adding links to the Wiki recently. We will need some contributors on this front. If you would like to contribute, let me know.

Stuff that needs work:
- Low level maps including roads, cities, lowbie areas.
- A revamped New Player Guide (which I am adding to piece by piece.)
- An FAQ for common new player questions which can be used to strip lots of meandering clutter from the Guide itself.

3.Community Presence for new players.

This has been a tough one, and I have largely shouldered this stuff alone on the Imm side. It is hard to put many resources in game due to abuse, but also due to resource limitations (stuff like "safe zones", "exploration only classes" and lowbie only cabals.)

We've had a spate of newer players lately, and I've been tracking them as best I can and making the game fun for them. Some players have also been helping them out.

I'd entertain suggestions on this front. We've been largely relying on graft and philanthropic acts from the community.

That's it. I invite someone to repost, or link on Dios.

*It's not that we don't believe those opinions are not valid, or it doesn't make sense. It's a matter of resources (and note: "open sourcing CF code" is also included in the above.) You guys have a dedicated and experienced team here and some of the IMPs have tens of thousands of hours digging through the million or so lines of C code. Open sourcing would not be beneficial given the state of the current market.

**I won't bother crunching numbers or typing out evidence but see links below for anecdotal evidence:
www.mudstats.com
http://time.com/3086189/world-warcraft-subscribers/


(If someone wants to dig deeper, feel free but I have better places to focus my energy.)

What about trying to get some advertisement on DnD/pathfinder sites? I personally find that those people might have a strong inclination to play. I know all of my tabletop friends have played CF at one point or another in the past.

Niche of MUD nowadays is mainly about people who don't have time, attitude or ability to play graphic extensive games. This could include ppl who simply have no time because they have too much business/family/etc.

Remember how the peak of MUDs popularity was when universities/schools had open internet access and tons of students played. The reason they did so because they could not play anything other than MUDs. It might be the same nowadays, except that all the students have PCs at their home now, but some grown-up people who have PCs have no desire to play graphical games, because they're "childish"/require time/money investment or for whatever other reason.

I for one play MUDs because it doesn't require me to run anything on my computer, and I'm totally free to browse other windows and work simultaneously.

P.S. I understand that was not really a "CF marketing plan", but just a topic to think on when targeting your audience.

MUDs still have an edge over graphical games in some ways. Social interaction is a big one.

If I go on WoW and I interact with other people, I pick from a bunch of predefined actions. The same is true of any graphical game. With stuff like say, emotes and so on, literally the exact thing I type is input into the MUD*. People can interpret that imagery in their brains however they like. The same with areas and exploration. My idea of somewhere like Organia, and yours (if we explored it together) are highly personalized. That's the beauty of text over graphics. The issue is that market trends seem to have moved against MUDs, which is to be expected. We are talking about a steam engine when companies are considering 100% electric engines, or hydrogen fuel cells.

Market tastes have deviated from text-heavy into graphical in general. So despite what we might reel off as benefits of MUDs, we need to focus on the reality of modern market tastes.

Either we identify niches where MUD playing would be accepted or (more difficult, I know) we need to convince the conventional market that MUDs still have their charm. In that sense we would need to distinguish ourselves from a graphic game, and sell/convince people that there is merit in it.

*Part of the reason why:
-Herald is important, even though a lot of Vets don't enjoy it.
-Immteraction is a good thing for the game (regardless of Imm Xp).

I still want to contribute to it, as always. Though the item search makes my ready-to-go contribution a bit obsolete :P

I promise I won't make every link connect to the Halflings Lands help file.

The best place to do targetet adds are on FB. You can pretty much target any with an interest in D&D, male guys in the age of x-y, who also speak english and so on... :)

Was raised at a recent meeting. There is still a lot of room for improvement elsewhere, so we want to get all our chickens in a row before we go into advertising in a big way.

(We also need to be able to manage a sustainable rate of growth if traffic comes in, which it will, if we advertise.)

Shoot an email to Raltevio@carrionfields.com