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Old 05-05-2006, 05:11 PM   #1
Spoke
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In repeated opportunities Matt and a couple of others have mentioned that it would be great if the huge MUDs or even Graphic games were allowed in the listings. It would of course mean that non of the regular #1 contenders would occupy that place again, but it would mean much more exposure to thousands of players who would have never seen about MUDs otherwise.

Even then, I have noticed how the #1 MUD gets considerably more click's out than when they are #2 (in both cases talking about the same MUD). I know this because I try to pay attention when my favorite game is #1 and check the in/out ratio, and I do it as well when the game is #2 and seems like the ratio changes a lot (from around .6 to around .4).

My question is, if you have a way to receive feedback from your players as to where did they hear from you, and you have tracked the player influx when your MUD is in a higher rank compared to when it is not, how correlated are the two?

Specifically talking about Achaea vs Aardwolf now, it seems that whichever one is first gets a high number of clicks-out and the other considerably less, but if next week their places switch, the number of clicks out swap as well, hinting that it is not a player-base screw-up by clicking the MUDs name to go back to their website. Have any of you noticed a definite difference between #1 and #2 weeks, the_logos and Aardwolf?
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Old 05-05-2006, 05:22 PM   #2
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Without a doubt being #1 will get you more clicks. If you go to a new site with a ranking list, why not choose #1 first? I think a lot of new visitors probably click #1 for the sake of it being #1. I would think it's a trickle-down effect too. If you don't like #1, try #2, and so forth. I think it's a combination of that effect and your players clicking out again that makes that number decrease the way it does.

When Medievia was on the list here we absolutely got more visitors from "MudPortal" in our tracking when we were at in the top 5 as opposed to the bottom 5 of the top 10. On the days we were #1 and 2, it was also more noticable. We are now #3 at Mudconnector and it is still keeping our "Mudportal" numbers up.

Also- I don't think it's a matter of 'letting' the bigger MUDs on here, is it? I would think they would be welcome to all if they wanted to be here.
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Old 05-05-2006, 05:26 PM   #3
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Spoke wrote:
Well, there are really only two MUDs substantially larger, as far as I know, than Achaea or Aardwolf (others around the same-ish playerbase size): Gemstone and Dragonrealms. They're both on TMS, but they make no effort to promote voting. Graphical MUDs are also allowed as far as I know. They just don't list themselves here.

That is correct. There is a bonus for being #1, essentially.

It's higher for being #1. Generally, the higher you're rated, the more traffic you're going to get. I don't know what the proportion is of people who click on 'out' who just voted are, but there is definitely a substantial group of people who didn't come from voting who make up that 'out' group.

--matt
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Old 05-05-2006, 05:29 PM   #4
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Old 05-05-2006, 07:46 PM   #5
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Does this mean that any traffic is good traffic? (for those on the top of the list)

Take for example when a new big MUD comes into play, say they make it to the 3rd spot but are close enough to Aardwolf and Achaea, would not a MUD like that just take traffic from the first two (or the lower five if you wish). I perceive it like there is a somewhat stable pool of players (number of visitors, regulars, google mistypes, etc) who come to TMS and click on a MUDs link.

What they bring when they register here is traffic, this means people from their MUD get to see the other MUDs that are around, but regardless of that, the pool of players who would check their game would be larger.

Now if you bring a huge player to the field, it seems like they just would not benefit at all.

Anyway, I think my mind is going in circles. At points it seems that the list would benefit most the newcomer, but then again, I think Aardwolf has increased in at least 50-100 players average since registered here (I cannot say for sure but it is my impression), so, if a that makes it regularly to #1 is so much benefited, would not it make you at least a bit unwilling to try and put a MEGA MUD in there lest it steal some of your players?
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Old 05-06-2006, 08:30 AM   #6
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Aardwolf has a built in voting function and we ran a poll a couple of months ago on how people found their way to Aardwolf. Sites such as TMS are definitely important, but word of mouth is still by far our #1 contributor to new players. Although the number of people that took part in the poll was disappointingly low, I think the ratios are still representative.

It's hard to get the message across about the value of text MUDs in a world dominated by the likes of WoW, but a friend telling you how they're so hooked on something and how they enjoy playing is hard to beat. Note that we've never really promoted ourselves on gaming sites, magazines, etc .. would be interesting to see how these numbers stack up vs Iron Realms, Medievia and similar.

Question          : How did you find Aardwolf?
Category          : Mud
Started by        : Lasher
Flags             : Mudinfo
Started           : Thu 02/02/06 19:29
Vote ends on      : Thu 02/09/06 19:23
Min/Max level     : 1 - 30000
Min/Max hours     : 0 - 50000
Total Votes       : 475
Winner            : A friend in real life (192)

-------------------------[ Voting Options ]-------------------------
 1 - A friend in real life                      (192)
 2 - A friend on another mud                     (55)
 3 - The topmudsites voting site                 (66)
 4 - Zmud icon, when Aard had one                (18)
 5 - Search engine listing                       (26)
 6 - Mudconnector                                (70)
 7 - Other RPG/MUD related web site               (8)
 8 - Someone's Blog / Fan site                    (2)
 9 - Other .. please post on general             (23)
10 - This is Aard?! ####, thought it was WoW     (15)
--------------------------------------------------------------------


Btw, couldn't figure out how to post this piece in a non-proportional font so it would line up, is there a way?
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Old 05-06-2006, 12:38 PM   #7
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Not at all. Use the most extreme example: WoW. I'd love to have WoW listed here and the Blizzard people encourging their players to vote. That's 6 million players, probably 30x-60x larger than all text MUDs combined. Being anywhere on the front page when WoW players started voting (assuming the TMS servers didn't just crash, which they would) would be -awesome-. Who cares if some of our players go play the new #1 instead? There are a LOT more WoW players to come play the MUDs ranked lower.

The same reason I'd love to have WoW dominating the list is why Blizzard would never list on a site like TMS. It has far more to lose than it has to gain in that situation.

Incidentally, regarding the rankings, it's also worth considering that TMS is one of the top results on Google for 'MUD' and 'MUDs.'

--matt
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Old 05-06-2006, 12:40 PM   #8
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About the same in terms of proportion of word-of-mouth to other methods. Word of mouth typically adds up to about the same as the next five referral methods.

--matt
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Old 05-06-2006, 08:53 PM   #9
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Only slightly off-topic; I have noticed when advertising for a MUD, or simply watching the rankings... sometimes a MUD that has just been recently released or submitted to TMS will have more votes than some in the Top Ten list even if they are ranked 15-20thish.

This likely means that the people who browse this site frequently(like myself) use those links to check out various websites for MUDs. When a new MUD enters the list, it's ratio is significantly higher. I opened an open alpha testing phase for Utopia: Type Final and started an account here. We would hang between 15-25 on the rankings list, but we had more people clicking out to our website than votes in. I've seen this with "New Worlds" and a couple of other MUDs also.

I believe that a very large portion of the people who "click out" probably do so frequently because they browse this site a lot - when a new game pops up, they say "haven't seen that one before in the top 20" and check it out.
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Old 05-08-2006, 03:04 PM   #10
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These stats are fairly interesting, especially since that Zmud icon costs $1000+.
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