[DurNominator]

Originally Posted by the_logos Interesting point. The main reason we ask for personally identifying info is to help people get back their characters when they forget the password (and sometimes even the character name itself if they are coming back after a long hiatus) and just in general to know our customers a little better. It's nice to be able to see a character and think, "Oh yeah, Pete Jones....cool guy." Of course, people can just lie and put in false info (making it very hard for them to get their character back if they lose the password unfortunately), but most people who fill out the registration appear to fill in legitimate details. Still, your point is worth considering. I'm going to be pointing one of the guys at this and asking him to try a test where we compare conversion % out of registration with current system vs. one that asks for less info. Thanks for the idea! --matt

Is it possible for you to track the numbers on a certain part of newbie tutorial completed? This would be an interesting data for the purpose of understanding why 96% of people who create a character in your game don't like it enough register to keep playing. If the newbie tutorial is divided in missions or parts, you could keep a track on how many people complete what stage of your tutorial. This way you could locate the stages where the dropdown percentages are the largest and see how you could improve that part of the tutorial. If a lot of people complete the tutorial and still won't register, then the registration process itself is one possible reason. By reliably tracking the the subphases, you can guess the reason to be the previously completed part of the tutorial or the part during which the did eventually quit. The numbers for the substages will help you to locate the potential problem phases and with those, the reasons for the players turning away from the game and their magnitudes could be more reliably determined. Some interesting questions:

-How many people were put off before the tutorial introduces your business model? For these, the likelihood of it being the text-based gaming or some other mechanics of the game they didn't like being the reason for leaving.
-How many people were put off after they learned of your business model? Some of these people could be players who aren't too happy about your business model, but part of this uncertain crowd would probably stay if you wouldn't ask the registration questions, which at that stage might feel like a commitment. This uncertain crowd is not sure whether or not it wants to make this commitment. This is one reason why registration could be such a turnoff. I think that some of this uncertain crowd might stay if you don't ask them questions that make them feel like they have to commit into it right now. Some of these uncertain players might eventually turn into paying customers if they stay (and even if they don't become paying customers, they are still useful to you as the free players make the game more attractive to new players and paying players can feel that they are special), so it would be financially sound not to push them too hard for information early on as this might scare them away. You'd need the substatistics to gauge the magnitude of this effect, though.

As a free to play game, you don't really need any personal information about the player to let him play. If you need some information about him for the payments or the delivery of the purchased product (such as IRE credits), you can ask for such information alongside with the sale when it's relevant.

[Baram]

I personally don't see any big issue with them asking for that information. All they ask for is name, email and birthdate(required due to US laws and protection of minors, anyone under... I think 13 can't play). The other questions are things like, "where did you hear about us?" and what part of the world you come from(USA/Australia/Asia/etc) which is usefull for a business to get an idea of where most of their customers/players come from.

Not like it's hard to write down false information, and remember what it was you used incase you need to get a password back or something.

[the_logos]

Originally Posted by Aeran I remember I didn't even get past the EULA that was shown on Achaea . I don't know if you still have the user agree to it at login(do you store statistics how many disagree?)?

Very few disagree with it. Our EULA is very standard in online games. You're agreeing to the same thing (phrased differently) when you play WoW, Runescape, etc.

I dont remember why I didnt agree with it but I think it's because of the user content rule where it states that the user automatically licenses content to the developer by participating in the service. It makes the game like a big bottle where everyone adds content to the bottle but gets nothing back. What made me disagree especially was that there doesn't seem to be any rock solid explanation what counts as User Content. Might it include private communication in the MUD? I am curious if others have had similar problems with that rule that have forced them to disagree.

Yes, it includes, of necessity, everything you do in the game. If publishers didn't get a license to all content created (including right down to chat transcripts) in-game, then players could demand that the publishers remove logs of their play from their servers, for instance

--matt

[the_logos]

Originally Posted by DurNominator Is it possible for you to track the numbers on a certain part of newbie tutorial completed?

Yep, we do that. The biggest drop, by far, happens at the first stage of the tutorial, as that's when people hit a full text environment. That's the rub really and fundamentally there's not much that can be economically done to 'fix' that situation. When we advertise to graphical MMO players it's inevitable that tons of them are going to drop as soon as they hit text.

--matt

[lovechiefs]

I think one way MUDs have to attract players is to have clients with maps. Why should someone remember where to go back to? why should someone switch between the game screen and a browser map?

Matt, for your games for example. It is difficult to orient in there.
I have posted many times on your forums asking for you and your guys to recode the Nexus and include an automap.

Each MUD should have an automated mapper.
And please don't tell me that CMUD and ZMUD have one.They do,but do you think that players want to waste time downloading new softwares to just being able to play a MUD?
MUDs need to provide features way above of what is expected or thought expected

[the_logos]

Originally Posted by lovechiefs I think one way MUDs have to attract players is to have clients with maps. Why should someone remember where to go back to? why should someone switch between the game screen and a browser map? Matt, for your games for example. It is difficult to orient in there. I have posted many times on your forums asking for you and your guys to recode the Nexus and include an automap. Each MUD should have an automated mapper. And please don't tell me that CMUD and ZMUD have one.They do,but do you think that players want to waste time downloading new softwares to just being able to play a MUD? MUDs need to provide features way above of what is expected or thought expected

Yep, there's no arguing with this. It is flat-out better to have a client for your players rather than making them download 3rd party software, and it is flat-out better for that client to have mapping than not. In any kind of development environment though, whether it's a lone hobbyist or a team of professionals, you have limited human resources and you have to make choices about how to deploy them most effectively. It's sucky that Nexus doesn't have mapping software built-in yet but we have a lot on our plate and haven't gotten to it yet.

--matt

[lovechiefs]

One way to deal with it is to make an announcement that you are working on mapping for Nexus and have an estimated date. Then update regularly the progress.
In addition,you can make it as an extra feature available for a one time fee or something

[the_logos]

Originally Posted by lovechiefs One way to deal with it is to make an announcement that you are working on mapping for Nexus and have an estimated date. Then update regularly the progress. In addition,you can make it as an extra feature available for a one time fee or something

Announcing we're working on something when we're not is not a good idea. As I said, our resources are being put on other things currently. When we have the resources to add mapping to Nexus it'll get added. (and we'd never charge for it either)

--matt

[lovechiefs]

Originally Posted by the_logos Announcing we're working on something when we're not is not a good idea. As I said, our resources are being put on other things currently. When we have the resources to add mapping to Nexus it'll get added. (and we'd never charge for it either) --matt

Understood.
My point is that you and IRE are the leaders in the MUD community(from what I can tell) and IRE announcing/working on something like that will create a good repercussion throughout the community. Me thinks

[nass]

My experience is that the conversion rate is very low when trying to reach out beyond the traditional community sites. Matt, your stats indicate about 19% at the first barrier, fyi the same calculation at the Wheel of Time MUD gets about a 30% conversion. Where were those banners run though? Your conversion ratio will always depend on the community you're advertising to.

Anyhow 30% is all well and good, but you're spot on, the huge dropoff happens in the first minute of actually playing - when they discover it's text, when the text whizzes by impossibly fast etc. I completely blame ourselves, we could be so much better at anticipating what problems new users are likely to have and doing something about it. Imo, a GUI-like interface which splits the various outputs into several boxes would be the answer, something along these lines or better which Flash and I wanted to develop 5 years ago at wotmud but never had a chance to.

I also understand from some thread I saw elsewhere that you're also in the midst of developing a MUD based on a specific book theme/author. You'll find that helps because there's a base of people who are already interested in that world. There are certain things you should do now to maximise your return from that in a year's time though.

... my request to all you commercial guys would be this. If you could give some GUI based on the standard MUD applet that any MUD could hook up with some minimal config back to the mudding community without strings attached that'd be great. You're all developing these in some shape or form, and whilst it gives you a competitive edge, if the community as a whole doesn't do something to help itself it'll be in deep doodoos sooner or later.

Matt, you're talking a lot of sense in this thread about what works and what doesn't, and although we'll always have our differences because you're commercial, everyone who runs a MUD should be paying attention to this thread. Especially the fact that the data is based on stats rather than gut feeling. What we have are the benefits of analytics and data tracking; I'm also an analytics and data tracking weenie. I'd recommend anyone that doesn't to get interested in this subject and use it to work out how to prioritise your resources (which in the case of us free guys, is time and effort).

[the_logos]

Originally Posted by nass My experience is that the conversion rate is very low when trying to reach out beyond the traditional community sites. Matt, your stats indicate about 19% at the first barrier, fyi the same calculation at the Wheel of Time MUD gets about a 30% conversion. Where were those banners run though? Your conversion ratio will always depend on the community you're advertising to.

They were run on a selection of sites oriented around other online games, like MUHQ.com. We get greatly differing results based on where we run ads, as you say.

... my request to all you commercial guys would be this. If you could give some GUI based on the standard MUD applet that any MUD could hook up with some minimal config back to the mudding community without strings attached that'd be great. You're all developing these in some shape or form, and whilst it gives you a competitive edge, if the community as a whole doesn't do something to help itself it'll be in deep doodoos sooner or later.

What do you mean by the standard MUD applet? We don't use anything that I'd call 'standard' really.

--matt

[lotusofro]

One main thing gets people to stick around:

Empathy for their PC.

How you go about that is the key. I have many ideas that I'm just now starting to impliment on our mud. Whether or not it will work is the question. I seem to think it will.

[lovechiefs]

One thing I think people are forgetting is interaction with other players.
As you all know by now,I have been trying to get into IRE muds and specifically Achaea for some time,but because of RP requirements,I was never able to.
I switched to BatMud,but somehow I got bored of it or something.
Anyway,I am still playing BatMud,but this week,I decided to give Achaea another try and I have to say that this time around,I like what I am doing. Much of this change is due to me being a Monk,instead of a Ranger or Paladin.
At least in Achaea, the Monk provides much more interest(at least to me). In addition, there is the interaction with other players. In the Monk clan, people are helping at all times. They guide newbies during their first steps and further.
Contrary to the Monks, what I have found is that the paladins and the rangers(which I have experienced) only give the reading material and let you deal with everything alone. And that is something that doesn't help newbies.
A solution to this problem is to have more official helpers per users number

[Violette]

In response to the OP, I recently posted my thoughts at WGfriends, and...

To sum it up, I wouldn't have ever discovered the world of muds if it wasn't through a famous, populated, graphic-client-enriched mud, which is Achaea.

The nicely designed, colorful client helped to balance the influx of text without overwhelming me. But it still took me a few months to dedicate myself to the game. I kept coming back, getting repulsed, and coming back again with greater determination.
Even though I no longer play Achaea, for me it was a gateway, a gentle teacher, and an enlightening messenger.

Perhaps you could use this information to bring in more players from the netherworld?

[Newworlds]

Originally Posted by Violette ...it still took me a few months to dedicate myself to the game. I kept coming back, getting repulsed, and coming back again with greater determination.

I think this is the case with many players that come from the outside who didn't know about the wonderful world of MUDs. It was similar to me when I first started, but on a cheesewiz client and not an ounce of graphics. Loved it though.