Ways of gaining players these days?

[Extrodus]

So as the title states, Im going over the ways people advertise to get players and what seems most effective.
Ive recently launched blazera.net, and the players have been scarce with a max online of 8 at the same time.

Everyone that plays it states, this is a great server but where are the players? I ask myself the same thing when I preform daily updates; interact with the players and advertise everywhere I can.

So my method is to advertise on all the forums that possibly comes up when googling "open tibia forums" and has an advertising forum as well adding the server to all the lists. I have coins purchased waiting to use for a highlight, but I prefer to use it when there is 15+ players already to atleast get some visibility.

What methods do you guys use to get 15+ online, its been known alot of servers mc people in trainers just to get higher numbers and have more people join but thats also how you get banned from server lists lol

 

[Infernum]

i think first impressions are key to getting people to notice your server
people like colors, images, cool effects, etc

people will be more likely to check out a server with a thread that has lots of color that lists features/systems and provides images and/or videos of them
rather than a thread that is 100% text that only lists things off (maybe provides 1 badly cropped picture)

 

[tokenzz]

pay xinn 90€/day for a countdown on otservlist

 

[Donald Duck]

For starters, maybe do something players haven't seen in a while, or see everyday. You're hosting RL map. Thats well.. Everywhere..

 

[Extrodus]

@Donald Duck - I hear ya, but the real map I host is highly customized with a ton of features. It's always been my idea to take the real map and modify the systems to give it a diablo feel with more item/character customization so thats what Im doing. In our previous era we ran 150+ players, but that was over a year ago. Im just trying to get those players back.

Im probably going to end up going for the countdown and see how that goes in a month or two once im happy with things. Like Xeraphus said, Im going to make some flashy ads first.

 

[Michael Orsino]

I wouldn't support doing this unless players provided their information knowing it would be used for this purpose, but...

Extract the email address & highest level player name of each account and put it in 'name,email' CSV format.
Ta-da, you now have a mailing list. (You absolutely "should not" do this unless you have their permission)
There are a few free e-mail sending services out there that still look totally professional. I'd recommend mail chimp.

Pretty sure @R.yan uses this method.


EDIT: You will want to eliminate the fake email addresses prior to compiling your list. There are probably some free services that do this too.

 

[Donald Duck]

@Donald Duck - I hear ya, but the real map I host is highly customized with a ton of features. It's always been my idea to take the real map and modify the systems to give it a diablo feel with more item/character customization so thats what Im doing. In our previous era we ran 150+ players, but that was over a year ago. Im just trying to get those players back.

Im probably going to end up going for the countdown and see how that goes in a month or two once im happy with things. Like Xeraphus said, Im going to make some flashy ads first.

Highly customized?? There are plenty of those out there. I'm sure that you're a smart guy. Use your knowledge on doing something new & fun. People are tired of real maps. Don't waste your money on countdown, unless you get over 200+ ? that money will be such waste. Though this is just my opinion, and you have no reason at all to listen to me.

 

[Arashel]

Everyone that plays it states, this is a great server but where are the players?

It is almost the end of 2016. Since the ~7.6 version CipSoft went with strategy of eliminating thinking, increasing grinding, adding other other more-mechanical-less-thinking mechanisms to the gameplay and keeping that god-damn-awful 32x32 sprite style. Nowadays Tibia is technologically backward, ugly and simplistic/retarded game. Full of either bots or not-so-smart young players who can only enjoy simplistic, almost mechanical, repetitive gameplay without getting asleep.

The only thing You can do is to appeal to that not-so-smart part of community with yet another 100-999x server with RL map, teleports to all spawns/quests/areas within five SQMs from the temple, pay-to-win model and none mechanisms which would require thinking from at least the first person who tries to use it.

Also you have to be lucky. Or at least pray from problems on server like Archlight or Hexera which would make them offline for quite some time.

Beside that You can always find better hobby than hosting OT server.

For starters, maybe do something players haven't seen in a while, or see everyday. You're hosting RL map. Thats well.. Everywhere..

Sadly, You’re wrong. There were quite few servers with devs who tried to be original and do not copy that “100-999x server with RL map, teleports to all spawns/quests/areas within five SQMs from the temple, pay-to-win” model. And where are they? Nowhere. I’m not seeing them or otservlist’s list. All of them failed meet the low expectation of current “community”.

Most Tibians are just “leftovers” from much bigger gaming community. Most of the people who weren’t big fans of repetition leave it. The idea of getting gamers with original, or at least less utilized, gameplay/mapping ideas is the quickest way of crushing and burning.

 

[Donald Duck]

Sadly, You’re wrong. There were quite few servers with devs who tried to be original and do not copy that “100-999x server with RL map, teleports to all spawns/quests/areas within five SQMs from the temple, pay-to-win” model. And where are they? Nowhere. I’m not seeing them or otservlist’s list. All of them failed meet the low expectation of current “community”.

Most Tibians are just “leftovers” from much bigger gaming community. Most of the people who weren’t big fans of repetition leave it. The idea of getting gamers with original, or at least less utilized, gameplay/mapping ideas is the quickest way of crushing and burning.

Well thats just my opinion. And ofcourse you're entitled to your opinion as am i.

 

[Arashel]

Well thats just my opinion. And ofcourse you're entitled to your opinion as am i.

Yeah, but your opinion is wrong.
Empirical evidence < otservlist's list (online descending filter), shows that most community plays on RL/global maps and those server are very often high-exp, there is mention of some kind of VIP features like cities in descriptions of those servers, etc.
Which means that your argument about originality makes no sense and players doesn't favour it over "999x/RLmap/P2W" model. as an real advice for someone who tries to achive real success on OT market.
We are both entitled to opinions, but it doesn't mean that your opinion is equal to mine or correct just as mine.

 

[Donald Duck]

Yeah, but your opinion is wrong.
Empirical evidence < otservlist's list (online descending filter), shows that most community plays on RL/global maps and those server are very often high-exp, there is mention of some kind of VIP features like cities in descriptions of those servers, etc.
Which means that your argument about originality makes no sense and players doesn't favour it over "999x/RLmap/P2W" model. as an real advice for someone who tries to achive real success on OT market.
We are both entitled to opinions, but it doesn't mean that your opinion is equal to mine or correct just as mine.

Ok?

 

[Arashel]

OK <3

 

[GOD Wille]

Yeah, but your opinion is wrong.
Empirical evidence < otservlist's list (online descending filter), shows that most community plays on RL/global maps and those server are very often high-exp, there is mention of some kind of VIP features like cities in descriptions of those servers, etc.
Which means that your argument about originality makes no sense and players doesn't favour it over "999x/RLmap/P2W" model. as an real advice for someone who tries to achive real success on OT market.
We are both entitled to opinions, but it doesn't mean that your opinion is equal to mine or correct just as mine.

still a minority of the players does, and that minority may grow because of your uniqueness if you make it fun enough

 

[Arashel]

still a minority of the players does, and that minority may grow because of your uniqueness if you make it fun enough

I'm not the biggest fan of astrology, clairvoyance or other stuff like that. I prefer statistics and maybe I didn't make any research but I'm lamost sure that trends for that minority would only show decrease in numbers.
Tibia is ugly, audioless, almost animationless simple MMO game which doesn't attract people who play games for the narrative.

 

[J.Dre]

Hi @Extrodus,

Been a while since we last spoke, but I'd be more than happy to give you some advice. Hit me up on Discord sometime.

Regards,
J.Dre

 

[Lastlight]

I wouldn't support doing this unless players provided their information knowing it would be used for this purpose, but...

Extract the email address & highest level player name of each account and put it in 'name,email' CSV format.
Ta-da, you now have a mailing list. (You absolutely "should not" do this unless you have their permission)
There are a few free e-mail sending services out there that still look totally professional. I'd recommend mail chimp.

Pretty sure @R.yan uses this method.


EDIT: You will want to eliminate the fake email addresses prior to compiling your list. There are probably some free services that do this too.

can you give an example of a mailing list with fake emails i am interested on doing one was hopoing to learn more about ot servers currently looking around since i am a creator not a coder

 

[Michael Orsino]

mail lists are very simple and can generally contain as much or as little information as you have available to you.

A mail list in its simplest form is literally just a collection of email addresses (usually line separated).
E.g. emails.txt

Spoiler

[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
etc
etc

If you have more information available to you and you want to use that information in the emails you send, you will probably want to look at using a CSV format.
E.g. mailinglist.csv

Spoiler

First Name, Last Name, Email
John, Doe, [email protected]
Jane, Doe, [email protected]
etc
etc

Once you have a mail list, you can then import that list into a service like mail chimp and manage it further from there.

 

[Lastlight]

mail lists are very simple and can generally contain as much or as little information as you have available to you.

A mail list in its simplest form is literally just a collection of email addresses (usually line separated).
E.g. emails.txt

Spoiler

[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
etc
etc

If you have more information available to you and you want to use that information in the emails you send, you will probably want to look at using a CSV format.
E.g. mailinglist.csv

Spoiler

First Name, Last Name, Email
John, Doe, [email protected]
Jane, Doe, [email protected]
etc
etc

Once you have a mail list, you can then import that list into a service like mail chimp and manage it further from there.

Great thanks

 

[f0x0]

Is mostly about reputation and uniqness also stability lag and other factors come in play

 

[Sinth]

Launch of 'Argardh' this month will show a lot about how much OTLand presence and a good presentation(and unique project etc) is worth, IMO.. I honestly think I could have 10-200 players , and I have no idea of which.. maybe not even 10. If OTServlist ads is an absolute must a huge part of my faith in OT-community will die

and yeah, the damned snowballing-effect is pretty much a must-have. I'm amazed how OT community can even be as alive as it is actually.. OTLand is great, absolutely great, but OTservlist is a monopoly and most players I think don't even read OTLand but have like 1 friend(out of 5-10 Tibia-playing friends) that do and get the news/word from that guy.

How can we improve this? I'm a super-fan of working for this community to "activate" more players as community-members that read OTLand aswell as turning readers into writers.. perhaps we should create a "group"(facebook-group? a OTLand-disccusion-Post??) that works to turn players into forum-members and passive members into active-members?