[MUD-Dev] Attracting players

[David Bennett]

On 9/16/99, at 2:14 PM, John Hopson wrote: 

>	As the undergrads flock back to school and the resulting wave of new
>players has entered my mud in september, I've been asking them where they
>heard about my mud (Aarinfel).  About 75% have said it was on
mudconnector,
>through doing a search for a particular set of traits they wanted to find.
>I've rated my mud as "Roleplay Enforced", since it's impossible to gain
>levels without roleplaying, and that seems to be the primary search term
>that brings in new people.  Of course, once they search the Aa in the name
>means it comes up at the top of the list.

Basicly what you are saying is you need a hook to attract people.  Which is
also precisly what the muds Raph mentioned have too (a hook based on the
world they are based on).

I agree with this, you need something that stands out, that attracts people
when they do a search.  Lots of people ended up on Discworld from Terry
Pratchett related sites too (I go around and mail the people running them
now and then).  So good connectivity from related sites helps a lot too.

>	People really look for things like the all original world and the
Enforced
>roleplay.  There's a lot more here, a lot more ways that the mud will show
>up in a search.  A couple months ago, Mudconnector changed how it listed
>the Roleplay option.  It went from having 2 or 3 choices (No roleplay,
>roleplay encouraged) to having 4 choices and reset our listing from
>"Roleplay required" to "Roleplay allowed".  This caused about a 50% drop
in
>our connections until I noticed the change and corrected it.  (Btw,
Andrew,
>if you're on here, it might be a good thing to notify muds when relevant
>listing options change)
>
>	This really seems to be the deciding factor, choosing one or two of the
>rating options and being rated as high as possible on them.  Anyone else
>experiencing anything similar?
>
>	Andrew and Ilya, any chance of providing us with some statistics on
>searches?  How often particular terms and search options are used, stuff
>like that?

Andrew doesn't read this mailing list...

Yours in a bunch,
David.

PS If you would like to write an article on how to attract players?
PPS New Issue of Imaginary Realities is out:
http://imaginaryrealities.imaginary.com



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