VOTE!

[Zenith]

New month, new voting drive. We are currently in 20th with only 8 votes. We can do better!

[Hauwke]

We arent evenin the top twenty! Get on it GDB-collective.

[Veselka]

Vote!

[Kialae]

Hi everyone,

Friendly reminder to do you a heckin vote, and also if you can to put out the good word on social media (twitter, reddit, facebook, hell, fetlife for all I care, go wild you kinksters). Remember this game is entirely not-for-profit and paid voluntarily without the use of advertisements at all, and we got to where we are today with two things: an exemplary reputation for a satisfying roleplaying experience, and word-of-mouth.

So please, go vote, and go tell anyone who might be listening about us. As someone who's worked in sales for years and years I can promise you, cold-canvassing is such an effective means to get the word out to people about things.

Voting links for posterity:
TMS: http://www.topmudsites.com/vote-sanvean.html
TMC: http://www.mudconnect.com/cgi-bin/vote_rank.cgi?mud=Armageddon

[valeria]

I forget to remind you guys to vote every day and this is how you repay me?  *shakes fists at sky* Nooooooo!

Go vote.

[Riev]

Has there been any noticeable bump from the heavy amount of voting we DID do previously?

I went pretty ham that month trying to get people in. Heck, I nominated us to be on /r/MUD for the monthly winner (which we'll never be, because of bad press).

I feel like, granted school has been in session now for a while, that we're down 5-6 players on average on my playtimes alone, and over 20 on our average weekly logins.

[nauta]

Has there been any noticeable bump from the heavy amount of voting we DID do previously?

I went pretty ham that month trying to get people in. Heck, I nominated us to be on /r/MUD for the monthly winner (which we'll never be, because of bad press).

I feel like, granted school has been in session now for a while, that we're down 5-6 players on average on my playtimes alone, and over 20 on our average weekly logins.

You can track some of this on http://www.armageddon.org/updates/ with the Unique Logins and New Accounts Created in the lower right hand corner.  You can also compare it to the same stretch of time in previous years by changing the year variable in the URL, e.g.,

http://www.armageddon.org/updates/index.php?week=32&year=2017

(Bear in mind, 'new accounts created' seems to represent just people who went so far as to create a new account, not necessarily people who logged in.)

I'm not sure what 'that month' refers to, though, so that's about as helpful as I can be.

[nauta]

I did a bit more digging, and there is a site called mudstats.com that uses the Mud Server Status Protocol to track login data (going back to 2009 for Armageddon, with some pretty big gaps).  Here's a picture:



Two things to note:

1. Our login numbers seem to be the same as Spring/Fall 2012 and Spring 2009.

2. If we want to learn from history, it might be worth reflecting on what occurred during Fall 2012/Spring 2013 to facilitate such a massive bump in logins.

I wasn't around in 2012, but I have a hunch that the upswing was owing to positive reviews on mudconnect, at least in part.  You can see that there are 6 reviews from 2012-2013.

Mudconnect reviews:

http://www.mudconnect.com/cgi-bin/prev/review.cgi?mud=130&use_idx=1

[Riev]

While I don't trust MSSP to always provide the best stats, what this is showing is that over a decade span, we're barely retaining players. We had a 2 year period where things looked decent, and now we're back to where we were ten years ago.

Is this a ... GOOD thing? Is this going to be a "MUD players are few and far between so we're doing fine" or is this a "even with new players coming in, we're barely stagnating"?

The data above only shows "average" players by season but this past year has seen a steep dropoff.

[Delirium]

Arm 2.0 did a good amount of damage to player numbers that was compounded by staff-player tension. I would not be surprised if we are recovering from those issues still, which is further compounded by those who are so bitter about a game on the internet that they devote quite a lot of time and effort toward "bad press".

MUDs will always be a niche genre and advertisement will always be important. I would never have known this game or even genre existed if it wasn't for word of mouth from friends who played. I believe this is being addressed by the player publicity group. As for the rest, time will tell.

[Riev]

Any press is good press.

Earned bad press is still earned.

I'd say I miss the "Good old days" but I feel like around here, they're cyclical. There are pushes, waves of intrigue and entertainment, followed by lulls as the ones who put their time and passion into the good times can't do it forever.

[CodeMaster]

While I don't trust MSSP to always provide the best stats, what this is showing is that over a decade span, we're barely retaining players. We had a 2 year period where things looked decent, and now we're back to where we were ten years ago.

Is this a ... GOOD thing? Is this going to be a "MUD players are few and far between so we're doing fine" or is this a "even with new players coming in, we're barely stagnating"?

The data above only shows "average" players by season but this past year has seen a steep dropoff.

Here's Aardwolf, which I think is a good baseline:

[Riev]

MUDs in general were huge in '13 and '14, it seems.

Makes me wonder where those 200 Aard players went!

[valeria]

I think we deserve to be better than #14 and #7, respectively.

[valeria]

Bump.

[valeria]

It looks like TMC disabled their voting?

[Bushranger]

TMC is still accepting votes. Did you need to log into your account again?

Also bump

[valeria]

Every time I hit the vote button, it prompts me to log in again.  When I try to vote through Armageedon's page on TMC, it doesn't indicate my vote has been counted, it just kicks me over to the forums.

[valeria]

Reminder: Do more voting.

[Riev]

Nah.

[TheWanderer]

I don't click on links 'cause viruses. Sorry.

[Zenith]

New month, new voting drive. We're not even in the top twenty on TMS.

[valeria]

Right now, we have 28 votes on TMS.  That's the equivalent of 3.5 of us voting twice a day.  I feel like there have to be more than three and a half people who care about drawing in new players enough to click a button.

[Grogerif]

I've tested this, it's not even registering my vote.  I wonder if I'm the only one?

[Hauwke]

I  vote every morning myself. Idk whats going on.