01-19-2016, 03:20 AM
I think the answer is... well, anywhere really. Getting 1 new person to play the shard is a win and really makes more of a difference than you'd think.
Other shards have had large influxes of people in the past from unlikely places, I know UOForever had a lot of people join after someone posted about it on a body building forum a long while back. If you are part of any online communities, you might be surprised how many new players could be gained by posting about the shard in their off-topic section.
Reddit does bring in a number of players. The /r/ultimaonline sub is probably the easiest place to post about the shard, and it does result in players joining, it's just not a good idea to spam on reddit. I have posted in various other subreddits including /r/mmorpg and /r/pcgaming (there's probably a lot of others to tap into). When the shard came up we had a pretty huge response from /r/pcgaming resulting in 1000s of page views on our site. Ultimately a percentage of page views turn into players, so the biggest thing is getting people to visit our page in the first place.
Linking to http://uolostlands.com#video will also open a promotional video in a modal, on top of being a direct link to the site.
I have tried paid advertising including Facebook ads, but the Facebook advertisement was entirely a waste of money, I don't believe we got a single player from it. There may be other avenues I haven't thought of.
I totally agree. I'm aware most people wouldn't be interested in doing this, or think it wouldn't have much effect. But in my experience it certainly does. The effect is often delayed as people bookmark the shard to play when they have more free time.
Somewhat off topic to advertising:
People will come and go on UOLL, it's a matter of fact. The average person that starts up on a shard is going to last a couple of months or less. So not only do new people need to find us in order to gain players, but new players need to find us just to maintain the current client count. It's clients in vs clients out vs the amount of time it takes the average player to get bored.
What UOLL really has going for it now, that it didn't a year ago (on top of a great website, better Google ranks and many more activities for players to partake in), is we have nearly 3000 accounts made. That's a greater brand awareness, and many of those players will eventually pop their heads back in to play again.
Other shards have had large influxes of people in the past from unlikely places, I know UOForever had a lot of people join after someone posted about it on a body building forum a long while back. If you are part of any online communities, you might be surprised how many new players could be gained by posting about the shard in their off-topic section.
Reddit does bring in a number of players. The /r/ultimaonline sub is probably the easiest place to post about the shard, and it does result in players joining, it's just not a good idea to spam on reddit. I have posted in various other subreddits including /r/mmorpg and /r/pcgaming (there's probably a lot of others to tap into). When the shard came up we had a pretty huge response from /r/pcgaming resulting in 1000s of page views on our site. Ultimately a percentage of page views turn into players, so the biggest thing is getting people to visit our page in the first place.
Linking to http://uolostlands.com#video will also open a promotional video in a modal, on top of being a direct link to the site.
I have tried paid advertising including Facebook ads, but the Facebook advertisement was entirely a waste of money, I don't believe we got a single player from it. There may be other avenues I haven't thought of.
Quote:If we had 25 members spending 30-45 minutes a week doing various advertising for the server I think it would be interesting to see the results.
I totally agree. I'm aware most people wouldn't be interested in doing this, or think it wouldn't have much effect. But in my experience it certainly does. The effect is often delayed as people bookmark the shard to play when they have more free time.
Somewhat off topic to advertising:
People will come and go on UOLL, it's a matter of fact. The average person that starts up on a shard is going to last a couple of months or less. So not only do new people need to find us in order to gain players, but new players need to find us just to maintain the current client count. It's clients in vs clients out vs the amount of time it takes the average player to get bored.
What UOLL really has going for it now, that it didn't a year ago (on top of a great website, better Google ranks and many more activities for players to partake in), is we have nearly 3000 accounts made. That's a greater brand awareness, and many of those players will eventually pop their heads back in to play again.
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