Spiderweb, increase/decrease of new players with those free months ?

[browserice]

Just curious about one thing.

Since we had a few free months and therefore, we should have expected to gain new players, how was the curve of new players coming in since then until now ?

Has it quiet down ?

If so, then we have a problem.

Doh, noticed I did not write the poll question in the right form !!!!
Can someone change it : have you seen an increase of new players ?[\b]

[abizmal]

I don't think it is JUST the additional free periods that cause people to lose confidence and not put time into the game.

For me, I think that Spiderweb simply do not know how to run a company. It they are to succeed, there is more to it than getting the software running. I base this on not "what they say" but "what they do".

*SILENCE*
I cannot imagine any MMOG company that does not have a healthy dialog with its community. Sorry, but I do not class "announcements" as dialog.

There are repeated questions asked in these forums that get no answer.

Companies should never ignore their customers, where I come from "Customers are King".

*NOT PROFITABLE*
This is the bit that is scary because at the end of the day; No Money = No Ryzom. For any company the No1 priority is to generate revenue. The billing should have been in place from day 1. The paperwork excuse is bull***t or they simply do not know what they are doing.

*NO MARKETING*
Well, volunteer marketing may work, it may not. I have not seen any ryzom banners on mmorpg.com and no news articles for a long time. No Spiderweb interviews, no statements from the developers, no screenshots of comming attractions .....
First impressions are important. The main website is looks cheap and amateurish.

*NO DEVELOPMENT*
Loads of exploits in the game, no action plan or time-line to fix.
Lots of brilliant ideas for development on these forums are met by silence from Spiderweb.
Trial accounts still cannot interact with these forums.
No open plan to merge the changes of the OpenNEL code in to the game code......

*Thinks of somthing positive ...

The CSRs are doing a great job.
Servers are fairly reliable (for me in the UK anyway)

Abiz

[rosarot]

@abizmal
excellent summary,

vote for sticky on SW forehead!

[ajsuk]

@Abiz
/sign =)

[zarozina]

well put - where is the marketing?

[5c0rp]

there was an increase to start with however it seems to me that player numbers are lower now than they ever have been, looking at my friends list it seems that way at least

[iphdrunk]

In my opinion, (basically Scorps' one) there was indeed a nice influx of players the weeks after the announcement that Spiderweb was getting the assets and that the servers were back up. The server did seem "more alive" than right before the shutdown. First, old/existing players logging in, even if it was just "nostalgia" and "to say hi" (how many friends did you see logging "once or twice", I saw a few...which are no longer around again). Then, new players, which decided to "try out" ryzom, maybe out of curiosity, maybe trying it out waiting for TWOTLK / WoW expansion, or maybe just because "it was free".

This is somehow reflected here: http://www.google.com/trends?q=Ryzom , see the small spike around 2008, which seems to correspond to Spiderweb announcement.

However, due to the aforementioned reasons (by abizmal), the influx has, imho, notably reduced. Moreover, it is possible that other potential new players will not try Ryzom now that it is clear that will not remain free to play.

Nowadays, I get the feeling that Uni/Faction chat is slightly emptier. More consolidated players are logging off, waiting for something to happen (ok, servers are up, and next?). In short, I tend to think Ryzom has lost the momentum gained, and that it needs another "announcement" to get it back.

Yours
Ani

[karmelit]

I can only speak for myself in this case, but...
I see no reason to come back even with one announcement; the silence has been kept to long. Thus, the only thing that would make me consider returning would be a full presentation of the owners and their plans for the future of Ryzom. If on the other hand the silence continues, together with lack of any development, I will be happy spending both time AND money elsewhere.

[iphdrunk]

the only thing that would make me consider returning would be a full presentation of the owners and their plans for the future of Ryzom.

Something along these lines was what we asked a couple of announcements ago... we got some feedback, although less than expected. It was hinted that such a roadmap may exist, and that there will be some kind of update at launch... I do hope that it will not just be a "switch to pay mode", since that may be the last straw. Although one may ask that, if there is a patch that was supposedly being released at the same time than billing was up, and now that billing has been postponed, why not release the patch now, we may even help testing it

[ajsuk]

It's probably the patch that is postponed and they're just BSing about the billing paperwork.

And yes, I think most people are in agreement, the momentum has died because they've left it too late. Perhaps another mass email will work, but if they do that before they sort their s**t they are going to annoy more people than they recall.