September Voting!

[Reiloth]

we at 17
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[RogueGunslinger]

If we just had about ten more people consistently voting we would skyrocket up the ranks of TMS and probably finish the month around top 7.

Just saying, ten people is not many.


9 now.

[Desertman]

I'm always confused about how we maintain first place on TMC, the site where you have to login to vote, and we aren't breaking the top ten on TMS, which has an arguably less tamper-proof system, even though we are competing against the same games.



Seems legit to me....

[Marauder Moe]

It is a mystery.  I know that Midkemia, #2 on TMS, has a comparable playerbase size to us (probably a bit smaller even).

[Barzalene]

One vote lead. Not comfortable.

[CodeMaster]

It could be proxy voting, but we also benefit from a lack of global OOC player communications, where I'm sure you have players reminding each other with links and timer scripts on a regular basis.

Integrity yo.

[Malken]

I'm always confused about how we maintain first place on TMC, the site where you have to login to vote, and we aren't breaking the top ten on TMS, which has an arguably less tamper-proof system, even though we are competing against the same games.
Seems legit to me....

That's because nobody cares about TMC. Getting new players from TMC these days is just like getting new players because of the Big Bang Theory or because "yer mom shouted the address out while i was bangin her"

[Desertman]

I'm always confused about how we maintain first place on TMC, the site where you have to login to vote, and we aren't breaking the top ten on TMS, which has an arguably less tamper-proof system, even though we are competing against the same games.
Seems legit to me....

That's because nobody cares about TMC. Getting new players from TMC these days is just like getting new players because of the Big Bang Theory or because "yer mom shouted the address out while i was bangin her"

What are you talking about?

[Malken]

I'm always confused about how we maintain first place on TMC, the site where you have to login to vote, and we aren't breaking the top ten on TMS, which has an arguably less tamper-proof system, even though we are competing against the same games.
Seems legit to me....

That's because nobody cares about TMC. Getting new players from TMC these days is just like getting new players because of the Big Bang Theory or because "yer mom shouted the address out while i was bangin her"

What are you talking about?

I'm saying that TMC is useless and that's why nearly no other muds put effort into it, while TMS is where it's at.

It's not the fact that you are #1 on TMC that matters to a player that ends up there, he/she probably googled a few words related to Armageddon (like survival mud perma-death) and google sent him to TMC, so even if the mud is #1 or #100 it doesn't really matter.

-nobody- actually goes on TMC to look for a new mud, the site is such a mess to navigate through.

While on the other hand, mud players actually go on TMS by themselves and look at the muds that are in the top #10 first, then they might look 10-20.

A player that comes and says he found Armageddon from TMC is just as random as the dude that said (a couple of months ago) that he found Armageddon from "Big Bang Theory" and "yer mom".

[Marauder Moe]

Nyr's statistics always seem to say that we get a huge chunk of newbies from TMC.



Briefly looking at Midkemia, I believe they have an in-game reminder echo to vote.  I certainly don't want to see that in Armageddon, though.

I forget... do we have a regulation/guideline/suggestion to limit voting reminders to this subforum?  If not, maybe a post every now and then in Random Armageddon Thoughts or A Random Thought might help get people voting regularly again.

[Malken]

Nyr's statistics always seem to say that we get a huge chunk of newbies from TMC.



Briefly looking at Midkemia, I believe they have an in-game reminder echo to vote.  I certainly don't want to see that in Armageddon, though.

I forget... do we have a regulation/guideline/suggestion to limit voting reminders to this subforum?  If not, maybe a post every now and then in Random Armageddon Thoughts or A Random Thought might help get people voting regularly again.

I have a very hard time to believe that there were actually 118 accounts that came from TMC and created a character on Armageddon (not saying that Nyr made up the numbers, but something is definitely weird). Seriously, think about it.. 118 accounts on TMC vs 18 on TMS and nobody ever cares about TMC - But while you don't have to create an account at all, you guys went from an easy 7-9 position on TMS to struggling to keep in the upper 15-19 in the last few months.

Why -do- people say they come from TMC is what I'd like to know. I'm pretty sure that I'm right when it's the fact that they googled up some words and google sent them to Arm's TMC page more than them actually finding Arm by browsing the TMC list.

As a SEO ninja kung fu master, this is quite interesting to me. I'll research it a little further when I have more time today.

[Marauder Moe]

Except if you look back at last year when we were much higher on TMS for a few months:  http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,45208.0.html
Also look at the next month after that report: http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,45410.0.html

New accounts reporting they came from TMS had numbers much more comparable to those from TMC when we were high in the rankings.


If someone is searching for Armageddon MUD, then they already know it exists and wouldn't put the TMC hit as their source.  When I was shopping for MUDs, I'd look at multiple sites and survey the top 5-10 of each.

[Malken]

Except if you look back at last year when we were much higher on TMS for a few months:  http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,45208.0.html
Also look at the next month after that report: http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,45410.0.html

New accounts reporting they came from TMS had numbers much more comparable to those from TMC when we were high in the rankings.


If someone is searching for Armageddon MUD, then they already know it exists and wouldn't put the TMC hit as their source.  When I was shopping for MUDs, I'd look at multiple sites and survey the top 5-10 of each.

No, I'm not saying that people are searching for "Armageddon MUD", if that was the case, they would be sent straight to armageddon.org.

What I'm saying is that they are probably searching for something like, "desert-survival online game perma-death" and the fact that they are being sent to TMC instead of TMS is pretty easy to figure why.

TMC actually asks you to write a paragraph or two about your mud, which contains a lot more words and keywords, which makes google definitely love it more than TMS, which only contains a couple of lines for your mud.

So my theory is that people are being sent to TMC and they read about the mud and they are either interested or not in it (it doesn't matter for them if the mud is #1 or #100) - Which is why most muds don't care enough to fight for a position there.

And yeah, as I said TMS definitely matters, so the higher you are the more players you'll get, that's not an issue.

But like I said, I have a hard time believing that people actually creates an account on TMC and then look at the muds AND then pick one of them. I'll look at the in/out of the many links from TMC later on, I bet links from google to tmc to Armageddon are waaaaaaaay more popular than straight tmc to Armageddon.

[Marauder Moe]

Muh?  You don't need an account to view the TMC top 10.

Also, throwing a few sets of terms at google gives me TMS's entry for Armageddon higher than TMC's.

[Malken]

Muh?  You don't need an account to view the TMC top 10.

Also, throwing a few sets of terms at google gives me TMS's entry for Armageddon higher than TMC's.

No, you're right, you don't just to check muds out. Sorry, I was mostly just rambling on. I'll focus on it when I'm not working. I want to figure out why TMC has such a huge number of people trying out Arm vs TMS.

TMC has half of the traffic that TMS gets and if TMC really mattered then all the muds (especially the money-making ones that are always in the TMS top 10) would be all over it as well.

If ONLY the people who actually take the time to vote on TMC (where they are only allowed to vote once a day) would also go and vote twice a day on TMS, that would put Armageddon into the top 3 TMS list, and that's without counting the dozens of people who never vote on TMC and only vote on TMS.

[Marauder Moe]

Maybe they believe as you do, that TMC doesn't matter, and haven't collected entry statistics the way we have to see otherwise.

EDIT: I'd also submit that site traffic has much more to do with community than with players surveying MUD's.  I doubt many of the TMC newbies were active TMC community members.

[Malken]

Maybe they believe as you do, that TMC doesn't matter, and haven't collected entry statistics the way we have to see otherwise.

Don't be silly, these are the same people that tell their players to twit about the game and post in other gaming forums, yet they barely mention TMC.

Especially if number of players = RL monies, like the many IronRealms muds. Yet they are nowhere to be found in the top 10 TMC list.

[Marauder Moe]

So?  That doesn't have any bearing on whether or not they collect new player statistics.  It's much easier to make a tweet or a forum post every now and then than it is to implement data gathering forms.

[Malken]

So?  That doesn't have any bearing on whether or not they collect new player statistics.  It's much easier to make a tweet or a forum post every now and then than it is to implement data gathering forms.

You kinda lost me.. Mudding is a 30+ years old hobby and there's really only two websites that promote muds. I'm pretty sure that 99% of the mud community knows about those websites and that 100% of the Staff on every single one of them is also aware. My question is why are they not using or fighting for a good position on TMC? Is it "worthless" like I'm saying it is or is there any other reasons?

It's not like TMC is some sort of deep secret that only Armageddon is aware of, all the other muds in the top 10 TMS list are aware of it yet they don't seem to care either.

You can also be sure that any FOR profit mud like the IronRealms ones would have done massive data gathering on the worth of TMC and yet none of them are using TMC. Why? They want players because they want money, so they whip players into voting for TMS but they never mention TMC.

Mind you, I'm not trying to prove anything here (well, other that TMC is pretty much seen as useless in the rest of the mud community - and mostly because Desertman was wondering why we are constantly #1 on TMC and have a hard time with TMS).

[Marauder Moe]

You kinda lost me.. Mudding is a 30+ years old hobby and there's really only two websites that promote muds. I'm pretty sure that 99% of the mud community knows about those websites and that 100% of the Staff on every single one of them is also aware. My question is why are they not using or fighting for a good position on TMC? Is it "worthless" like I'm saying it is or is there any other reasons?

I submit that the reason is they don't know what it's worth.

It's not like TMC is some sort of deep secret that only Armageddon is aware of, all the other muds in the top 10 TMS list are aware of it yet they don't seem to care either.

Awareness and value are two different things.  Lobsters used to be considered trash fish and were fed to poor people and prisoners.  People of the time were aware lobsters existed, but they didn't know that they were actually delicious.

You can also be sure that any FOR profit mud like the IronRealms ones would have done massive data gathering on the worth of TMC and yet none of them are using TMC. Why? They want players because they want money, so they whip players into voting for TMS but they never mention TMC.

I strongly reject that assumption.  Many business dealing with far more money than Iron Realms do far less data gathering than Armageddon.

Mind you, I'm not trying to prove anything here (well, other that TMC is pretty much seen as useless in the rest of the mud community - and mostly because Desertman was wondering why we are constantly #1 on TMC and have a hard time with TMS).

The problem is if we take your assumption as fact then there's little need to vote on TMC.  If we stop voting there regularly and it turns out we were mistaken about its worth, then we lose out on potential new players.

[Malken]

Stuff

Again, I'm at work so my answer has to be short but -my- theory, and what I think other mud Staff believes as well, is that once you are on TMC, it doesn't matter if you are #1 or #100, because nobody (I mean, sure, there's a few exceptions), go on TMC and start looking at the list of muds from 1 to 10, like they do on TMS, but that they are SENT from another site, like bay12, google, bing, etc..

I don't accept your theory is that they don't know what the worth (or not) of TMC is. Again, there's only two websites and only been two for YEARS, it's not like it requires massive amount of manpower to research that stuff, and it's not like Nyr is the first and only Staff that would have an interest in numbers like they are displayed by the months.

Of course, I can't prove anything, all I can show for proof (for now) is that nobody seems to be fighting for TMC's top 10 and that if they actually cared to, they could kick us out of at least #1 easily and that there MUST be a reason for that.

[Marauder Moe]

Very well.  We seem to be stuck in a loop.  I'll stop here until more data is presented.


Though I'm also still interested in:

I forget... do we have a regulation/guideline/suggestion to limit voting reminders to this subforum?  If not, maybe a post every now and then in Random Armageddon Thoughts or A Random Thought might help get people voting regularly again.

[CodeMaster]

Random braindump on this topic:

Anecdotally, I hold mudconnct in higher esteem then TMS, but maybe it's just been my standby for so long.

Of course, I can't prove anything, all I can show for proof (for now) is that nobody seems to be fighting for TMC's top 10 and that if they actually cared to, they could kick us out of at least #1 easily and that there MUST be a reason for that.

Here are some of the things stopping them (n.b. Aardvark or whatever is making a run at us as we speak):

- Many of the successful TMS muds use prompt flags and global messages to rally their players into voting every time, on time (only 10 more votes to get into 5th place!!).  Focusing on two voting sites would force them to inundate their players with even more messages, so maybe they have chosen to play to their strength.

- A TMS vote is a "yeah whatever" vote; you can vote from any (and all) your devices in two clicks.  Your players don't have to be that enthusiastic to get these numbers, as long as you ping enough of them to vote.  (It makes perfect sense that a game with lots of casual players that uses global reminders will cream Armageddon on TMS, almost surely)

- Meanwhile mudconnect requires an email-verified account.  That's a small additional investment, but I'm sure votes drop off superexponentially as the time-investment per vote increases.  For this reason a mudconnect vote is more of a "hell yeah" vote.  (Armageddon is a high-investment MUD with what I believe is a highly enthusiastic player base, so it makes sense to me that it would beat casual games on mudconnect).

[Desertman]

Stuff

Again, I'm at work so my answer has to be short but -my- theory, and what I think other mud Staff believes as well, is that once you are on TMC, it doesn't matter if you are #1 or #100, because nobody (I mean, sure, there's a few exceptions), go on TMC and start looking at the list of muds from 1 to 10, like they do on TMS, but that they are SENT from another site, like bay12, google, bing, etc..

I don't accept your theory is that they don't know what the worth (or not) of TMC is. Again, there's only two websites and only been two for YEARS, it's not like it requires massive amount of manpower to research that stuff, and it's not like Nyr is the first and only Staff that would have an interest in numbers like they are displayed by the months.

Of course, I can't prove anything, all I can show for proof (for now) is that nobody seems to be fighting for TMC's top 10 and that if they actually cared to, they could kick us out of at least #1 easily and that there MUST be a reason for that.

I guess people who are in "the know" seem to know that TMS is where it is at.

For people who aren't in "the know" and haven't already developed opinions about what MUD is the best, TMC and TMS are equal.

I myself started playing Armageddon with no knowledge of what a MUD even was. I certainly didn't know which MUD websites were "the coolest best ones".

So it seems that TMS is where people who already play MUDs and probably already have a favorite will go to look at other MUDs, while TMC is where everyone will go/might end up.

I bet TMC gets us more people who are "new to MUDs", while TMS would be responsible for getting us more people who already play other MUDs and just want to try something different.

I might argue that Armageddon is so unique and different from other MUDs that we are better off taking a newbie from scratch and building them into a player than taking someone who already thinks they know how to play the game and trying to adapt them. But really, that would just be my, "Armageddon players are better than everyone else", showing its ugly head.

(We are better than everyone else in every way.)

[Desertman]

- A TMS vote is a "yeah whatever" vote; you can vote from any (and all) your devices in two clicks.  Your players don't have to be that enthusiastic to get these numbers, as long as you ping enough of them to vote.  (It makes perfect sense that a game with lots of casual players that uses global reminders will cream Armageddon on TMS, almost surely)

- Meanwhile mudconnect requires an email-verified account.  That's a small additional investment, but I'm sure votes drop off superexponentially as the time-investment per vote increases.  For this reason a mudconnect vote is more of a "hell yeah" vote.  (Armageddon is a high-investment MUD with what I believe is a highly enthusiastic player base, so it makes sense to me that it would beat casual games on mudconnect).

This was my mindset. It seems like TMS is the "Carebear Casual" easy voting site and TMC is the "Real Mudder" site.

Again, we are better than everyone else in every way. I have no shame in admitting this.