Shattered Kingdoms

It's a rough estimation based on the number of players who have advertised their recruitment through the TMS and mudconnector lists. There are few enough new players coming and going that those who are willing to give the game an honest effort usually make an appearance on the forums, and many of them say where they heard about the game from. Is it a solid number? No, it's just an educated guess. You may also note that I suggested the "years" timeframe for the function of that idea too. I didn't say it was ineffective. I said it was inefficient.

I think it's a vital feature. It was great in its day, but now it feels so dated, and this forum software is unequivocally inferior to other options. I know if I go to a website and it looks archaic, I am less inclined to stick around to see what's going on there. I want stuff that looks like it is getting some routine care and maintenance. I know SK does get that, but to someone who has just stumbled across it, his first impression could easily be that it doesn't, just based on the look and feel of the site, and the choice of forum software.

I'll look at the rest of your post more closely when I have more time.

I think TMS and TMC don't get nearly the amount of traffic that Amazon, Nook, and the iTunes stores do. Even the subset of fantasy literature probably gets 10,000 times the traffic of TMS and TMC. Alexa lists TMS as the 276,300th ranked site and TMC as the 273,018th ranked site online. Relying on these is not going to help much. It's better than nothing, but clearly does not generate anywhere near the exposure that a presence in other media or on other sites could. Of note is that the SK site itself is ranked 680,151st. Except in Greece, where it is somehow 6,184th. LOL. Is our target audience Greeks?

These low rankings for TMS and TMC are part of the reason I want to look into entirely new areas for marketing.

As an additional btw...

We could and we do.

You're right. Amazon, Nook, iTunes all get more traffic to their fantasy/sci-fi subsets. Probably more in a week than those websites get in a month. Not everyone that reads those genres will be willing to game in the first place, let alone a game like SK. You're still dealing with a subset of a subset.

I don't even know why we're arguing about this since we both say it's a move in the right direction. You aren't going to get me to say it's the best possible idea ever and will work more effectively and efficiently than anything else could ever possibly do, however, so really... Ease down. I already agreed that your idea was good.

There are a number of ways that the site could be optimized, and the marketing strategy that would be best to employ isn't rocket science, either.

Jennbo has offered to help with SEO, and she's also good with Social Media Marketing. I have at least one very prominent contact with a website whose goal is to review online games (and there are several that compete with his). I am also connected with many writers and some rather savvy website owners who have thrust their sites to the front page.

The problem with a GOOD marketing strategy is that it isn't free. I don't know what the SK coffer looks like, but I bet we could get a little bit of traffic for little investment.

Bare minimum, we need to:

- Invite gaming bloggers to play, and get our name out through the natural channels.
- Build relevant backlinks on gaming sites where other nerds can be found (purchased ad space).
- Create some manner of SK blog that is updated at least once weekly. Maybe a brief rundown on major plots or a historic tale of Pyrathia.


We do need to prepare as a community for an influx of players if we go forward with anything, though. The "community" feel to this game should be optimized, too!

That's a complete non-starter. It violates one of the founding principles of the game and would further segregate the PK and RP oriented players.

This is a good target for me to add some analytics code and optimize based on the results.

I largely agree. Making them advanced would be easy enough to do. I would be curious to see some polling results on this first though.

I don't think it's necessary to make them "advanced," but a quick warning along the lines of "There are strict guidelines surrounding the RP of this class. Are you sure you want to continue?" should be more than enough.