I have put together a list of possible promotional work everyone could do. Its a mix of small and larger tasks in no particular order. I really do think it would not take THAT much work to actually get some new players, and I actually think at least a few would stay too. The more people we reach out to, the bigger the chance some may find our world fun. There are worse MUDs than ours out there with a much larger playerbase, so obviously the text game concept isnt really dead. But we need to let the world know we exist.
Check it out, comment, and vote on the poll. Would rewards for doing these things help? If so what type of rewards? Dont be shy. Wish for anything. (within some type of reason).
Here's the work in progress list:
- - Playing the game. Even if people are idle, or LD, seeing more players is motivating, being in the game even if idle is better than not being here at all.
- Being an active newbie helper.
- Voting on mud sites
- Inviting people on Facebook / other similar sites. We can use the client on the webpage or a client I have set up as a Facebook app. http://apps.facebook.com/genesismudfacebook/
- Mentioning Genesis and its webpage / game adress on other forums.
- Mentioning Genesis and its links on places where you can leave comments. Online magazine articles, newspapers or blogs for instance.
- Getting someone you know to try the game and help them through the newbie area.
- Getting someone you know to try the game and help them reach at least wanderer level.
- Creating web banners
- Making Genesis web banners appear on other sites.
- Trade banners for a banner on our site, or maybe our forum since it probably has more visitors.
- Starting a fundraiser to raise money for paid banners / Google Adwords / Facebook Ads, etc. Using for instance http://www.kickstarter.com/
- Donating money for advertisement. Yes paid advertisement really does work. Especially since we need a pretty small number.
- Getting a magazine/website, on or offline, to write an article about Genesis.
- Getting someone who blogs to mention Genesis, or if you blog yourself.
- Putting up paper posters.
- Adding web page contents, etc newbie guide, maps, etc.
- Adding content to the magic map.
- Adding a suggestion to this list.
Edit:
- Adding Gub's suggestion to the list:
The /r/mud community over at reddit does a "Lets MUD together!" event.
You can read about it here
http://www.reddit.com/r/MUD/comments/mx ... ddecember/
You could set up an event for redditors and make it something exciting for them, talk about how we've been open since 1989 (some MUDs brag about being open since 98) and we are the original LP. The event could include mortal and wizard support. I'm scratching the surface of what you could do, but I think it'd be good enough to bring in at least 10-20 newbies for a day.
Hell if nothing else you could do a write up and post it on there, there's a lot of advertising for MUDs and they seem to welcome it.
I am just throwing this out as an idea, coordinating events like this isn't my specialty. I think it has potential though.