Lately, I got very frustrated by the fact that, even tho our game is online for 2.5 months, our number of online people (at the same time) is usually between 1-6. Which is extremly small. So far, you can''t do much in our game, only explore, talk, and some other things, but, still, there are other games (like www.furcadia.com ) that look MUCH worse than ours, but get like 1.5-2K people online at a time! Yes, they''ve been online for 6.5 years, but, still... So far, I sent an e-mail to the major MMORPG sites, and we have a link from most of them. The web site is also listen on DMOZ, and the major search engines, and we even got it on a cover CD of a Linux magazine. But, so far, we got only like 3K registered people, which is not much at all. Not to mention that 95% of them log in, look around a little, then leave, and maybe never come back again. That is really frustrating, you know? We can not afford to pay anything for any advertising yet, because we work full time at this game, so we have virtually no income. My question is, does anyone know an effective way of bringing people in a MMORPG, without investing money in it? BTW, the game''s address is: www.eternal-lands.com Height Map Editor | Eternal Lands | Fast User Directory

I don''t know about you, but would you keep playing a game in which you could only do a few things. Sounds like it''d get boring rather quickly. Maybe make more things to do, and make it more entertaining. Looks aren''t everything, game play is what keeps players coming back.

Yeah, well, there is a thing, called IRC, where you can do even less things than in my mmorpg, and still there are far mor poeple there.
Also, like I said, in Furcadia there are 1.5-2K people online most of the time, and it''s not like you can do more things there.

And, of course, we do work at it, and weadd new features almost every week.

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Advertise advertise advertise

Most people have never heard of your game. The only place I have seen notice of this is at GameDev.

Good luck!

Ibuku
weaponstudios.com
Now featuring Dope Farmer!

I advertised wherever I could.
The game is on: happypenguin.org , sourceforge.net gamescreenshots.com, mpogd.com, betawatcher.com, gameogre.com, game2k.net, dmoz.org, and other less important sites as well...

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Does you game let you create in-game objects that interact with the world, send those objects to your online friends, and let them improve upon them? Does it have a sophisticated scripting system?

I think that''s probably what keeps people on furcadia.

Raduprv, we have a similar problem in our MMORPG. We've been online for about 1 year now and get around 15-30 conncurrent users at a time. We are at about a similar point as well, you can chat, explore and a few other things.

However, we added very basic systems as well such as a very basic guild system and guild chatting. So even though the guild system is not complete it is still something for the players to do.

One of the things that drives people is the need to compete for things. So we basically set up a massive treasure hunt in our game where you look for several different types of gems. We publish these stats on our site so people can see how good ( or bad ) they are doing. You can then use these gems with a merchant ( webbased, php at the moment ) to buy weapons. It's a very simple idea but it keeps people comming back.

So by giving people options to make themselves more unique and giving them something to compete against is a good way to get more repeat users. Since our last release a few months ago we've got around 20,000 accounts registered ( some of those are duplicates to check out the other races ).

Our next release should be nearer to a real game with limited combat/spell/progression systems which we hope will make even more people stay on longer.


-plug-
screenshots




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Andrew
PlaneShift - A MMORPG in development.



[edited by - acraig on May 2, 2003 8:37:51 PM]

In Furcadia you can''t create any objects, or share them with friends, much less improve them.
As for it''s sophisticated script system, Furcadia doesn''t have such a thing, it has a simple script system, whice is used by some people, and unused by others.

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quote: Original post by acraig
Raduprv, we have a similar problem in our MMORPG. We''ve been online for about 1 year now and get around 15-30 conncurrent users at a time. We are at about a similar point as well, you can chat, explore and a few other things.

However, we added very basic systems as well such as a very basic guild system and guild chatting. So even though the guild system is not complete it is still something for the players to do.

One of the things that drives people is the need to compete for things. So we basically set up a massive treasure hunt in our game where you look for several different types of gems. We publish these stats on our site so people can see how good ( or bad ) they are doing. You can then use these gems with a merchant ( webbased, php at the moment ) to buy weapons. It''s a very simple idea but it keeps people comming back.

So by giving people options to make themselves more unique and giving them something to compete against is a good way to get more repeat users. Since our last release a few months ago we''ve got around 20,000 accounts registered ( some of those are duplicates to check out the other races ).

Our next release should be nearer to a real game with limited combat/spell/progression systems which we hope will make even more people stay on longer.


-plug-
screenshots




-------
Andrew
PlaneShift - A MMORPG in development.



[edited by - acraig on May 2, 2003 8:37:51 PM]

Thanks for tip. In fact, there were other people that suggested to do something like you guys did
In a month or so, I plan to implement a system where you can at least gather some resources, and trade them with others, to at least keep the people a little busy.
But I suspect that this will not be enough yet, since there are a few other MMORPGs that offer much more things to do, and some of them are even [partially] free...



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Planeshift looks INCREDIABLE!

Why is that not commerical??