Hey everyone,

Been playing CF off and on since about 1995 and am always listening to the threads about wishing we had more numbers.

My real-life work is freelance advertising online. Currently mostly in the legal industry, generate about 10,000+ leads per month for law firms, etc.

I was thinking that maybe what CF needs is some ad campaigns setup for it on Google/Yahoo/MSN etc. I would donate my time and do it for free on the side if some of us wanted to get together and pool the funds for a co-op campaign.

My thoughts are to keep it as CHEAP as possible. Minimum cpc bids at around 5-10 cents per visitor. 10 cents on the search, 5 cents on the content advertising. We could even go with cheaper on some of the 3rd tier search engines.

*This would mean for $10.00...the cost of 2 pbf's...we would be pullin in 100 to 200 visitors who not only are searching for Muds, free online roleplaying games, etc...but ONLY paying for those that visit the actual CarrionFields website. We maybe could even get CF to officially support the effort and drop an advertising tracking code on the connect page or such...so we could track out exactly how much for each keyword it costs to generate a visitor that goes all the way to connecting. (Focusing on what works, drop what doesn't etc, getting the most for the donated advertising)

In addition, we could try to bid on competitors. Example, those searching for the top muds would pull ads up that would say: Carrion Fields - A better mudding alternative. Hardcore Roleplaying since 1994, etc.

We could even branch out and try this with competing online games media, eg. WoW, EQ, and put in negative keywords for gold and such, so are ads don't pull and compete with those seeking WoW gold etc.

Anyway, just an idea. Again, I'd be willing to contribute the work at no costs. I believe we could even setup guest accounts for those contributing so they could monitor all the results without having permissions to change the advertising and mess something up via the backoffice advertising panel settings.

Let me know what you think...but even $100.00 pooled would be 1,000 to 2,000 unique visitors searching for mudding or the genre and would go a long way to promoting the game at the most cost effective means possible.

This also doesn't change the mud voting, postings, referrals, etc...but I believe by far would make the most noticable impact that we could possibly achieve.

I think a good way to find where we should put our efforts in order to have new players with us would be to do a quick survey with the actual players and find how they got to CF and see if some tendencie show up...

From what I see, there's three steps we need to know better about:
1) how did they start playing Muds.
2) how did they start playing CF.
3) why did they stick to CF.

So personnaly,

1) I started to play Mud because I used to love playing Dongeons and Dragons but wanted to have the opportunity to play whenever I wanted via the Internet. So when I began my search, I googled 'playing Dungeons and Dragons online'. I don't know much about how publicity and responses show up on search engine but if something like ' CF is a RPG like D&D online' shows up when somebody do a search, we, IMHO, definitly have something. The main idea here is to get the old (i'm over 30 years old) D&D market pool (and believe me, we've been a lot to love this game when it came out!) who do not have the time, or the desire, to gather with friend and play the game like before. For many reasons, the Internet is the best alternative for us. This market pool is all designated for Mud: we like to read and are not used to game with images. I dont know about the generation below 30s but I think there's probably a lot of people who searched 'playing Dungeons and Dragons online' on the Net...

2) How did I start playing CF?
After I got disappointed with the mud I use to play (poor RP and no PK regulation system), a Mud-player friend told me about CF. This is the good old 'mouth-to-ear' system and there's not much I can say about where to put our efforts here. Maybe only one or two things:
a) Again, my first reaction when CF went down for more than 2 days was too google 'playing mud' to find another one. I went to 'Top Mud' website (so encouraging players to vote is defintly important) and I had a look at Wikipedia article on Mud.
b) I think the most important thing on a mud website is the link 'Play now'. I know some think the CF website needs improvements but personnaly I don't. When I land on a Mud website I usually look for the 'Play now' button. Second thing I look for is Classes and Races. I personnaly think CF website it quite OK for now even if it can be improved... but I don't think it's the main priority.


3) Why do I stick to CF?

Because it's a good game! Ok... but what else?

I can see two important things here:
- The learning curve of starting playing Muds and/or a new Mud
- The PK ferocity on CF.

A) The learning curve:

After trying a couple of muds, I really think the Academy of CF is quite good. It put people 'in action' fast enough and is comparable to the best rated Mud on Top Mud website. Actually, The Thing that made a huge difference for me was to start using the Dioxide maps. I think eventually giving access to these maps (let say trough a quest around lvl 8-9) is something to consider for two reasons.

One, everybody like to find something valuable and especially if it's helpfull for PK survival. This might not be a good enough reason on the IMMs opinion but let's consider the second reason...

Since the last CF breakdown, I tried a couple of new muds (most from Top Mud website) and I finally gave up and decided to wait for CF to come back up. Why?... because knowing how important it is to know your way around when pk'ing', i didn't want to invest again the necessary enormous amount of time to learn a new map. Knowing where you go add to the pleasure of the game. I shall also say that, in the last days, before trying new muds, I first went back to the ####ty one I used to play just because I knew my way around. That's why I think giving access trough quest to Dio's maps is probably a major strategy to keep players coming back to CF.

B) The ferocity of the PK on CF

Definitly what makes CF appart, I think it should be a major theme in publicity on mud-user websites. But we should never forget that beside CF being down (I know you guys do your best to put it up and I really thank you for all your efforts to do so. I just hope it will be back soon) it is definitly a big reason why people leaves CF.

I see two solutions here:
1) When a newcomer click on 'PLAY NOW!', he should get a message like 'If you're about to create your first character on CF you should read the following message'. The message being the final version of the post:
'START OF A NEWBIE GUIDE. FEEDBACK PLEASE - daurwyn(VIP) 01/08/2010'
on Dioxide Main Board. I'm playing CF since more or less 6 month and after trying a dozen of characters, I finally choose to play an Assassin because it gives me a break from being killed constantly. Since I do so, I really have more fun playing CF. Because newbies usually get Pkilled for a long time before they win their first fight, and believe me it can be really frustrating, I would also add a new message to the one we get when reaching lvl 11 saying something like 'You should really read the Newbie PK FAQ if you want to survive!!!'
The content of Bobby's NEWBIE PK FAQ on the FAQ of DIKU-Wiki is just perfect for this: it gives the basics of surviving and (thanks Bobby this one is just so important to realize) it tells that surviving a PK attempt is in itself a victory.

that's gonna be it for now... hope this will help.

How did I start to play MUDs?
CF is my first and only mud. I just can't get into any of the other muds, though many of them seem rather similar.

How did I start playing Carrion Fields?
I started back in 2000-2001 when I was in college. I was introduced to it by someone who lived in the dorms with me. I was in the computer lab, he showed it to me and it sort of stuck. I tend to read fantasy/sci-fi, and I was an avid writer of similar genre's at the time, so..yeah. It stuck. But to be honest, if he wasn't sitting in the chair next to me, teaching me how to play the game, chances are, I wouldn't have stuck around. Glad I did, though.

Why do I stick with Carrion Fields?
It's the quality of the game and of the people who run it that keeps me here. Most of the other MUDs out there may have more numbers, but you definately lose something when there are too many people around. The game world here is rich, though I still miss running to Icewind Dale to look at Drizzt, heh. The Imms do a damn good job of making people happy to the best of their ability. And also, I'm just too old/lazy to want to learn my way around another MUD. I've been playing 10 years now...and I still suck. LOL. But it's fun anyway, most of the time.

I did some ad campaign a year ago at my own costs. Dont remember how much I spent and how many visitors where, something about 70$ for cheap bids. No visible affect.

Without access to site stats and without work on site I think its just a waste of money and time. Thats why I stopped it.