Wheel of Time MUD

Pretty straight forward, I was having a conversation I think with Kordin the other day or somebody and I made mention that we should be doing more to attract new players to the game and he corrected me and suggested we invite back old players! I thought it was a good idea, so I wanted to hear more of yours.

So how do we do it?

What are we legally allowed to do?

What kind of tools can we use (facebook, instagram, snapchat, reddit?)

What can we do with these tools?

Wait for the WoT show to come out and hope its close to what GoT was

Quite a few have been poking around recently.

I think the biggest thing that hurt us was the port change.

I know Deirdre wanted to play but couldn’t find the game.

Then our website and forums changed so many times.

Could be as simple as making the actual port big on the site, or making that web portal more prominent

Edit: Make the port big as in make it so it’s the first thing that’s seen.

Ominas wrote: ↑

Fri May 21, 2021 8:15 pm

Quite a few have been poking around recently.

I think the biggest thing that hurt us was the port change.

I don’t pretend to know how telnet works, but could we set up a proxy that forwards the old port to the new? And by “we” I mean the people (person?) that has access to the backend server

For me at least anytime I take a break from the MUD what inevitably draws me back is anything that gets me thinking about WoT. Every time I’ve relistened to Eye of the World or any of the other books it would always get me thinking and remembering the MUD. So I believe for people that may have played in the past but aren’t on the Discord, or haven’t been around for years and years the upcoming show should get those gears turning. I think we should make every effort to ensure that people that look for “wotmud” find our site easily, and that careful, direct and detailed instructions on how to connect to the game are very visible at a glance. All those years ago when I was first reading through Wheel of Time, the way I found the game was just a generic google search for “Wheel of Time game”. I had no idea what a MUD was, how it was played.... no idea at all. So any sort of directions that we leave for oldbies to find should, as much as possible also aim to help people that aren’t even aware that MUD’s are a thing.

Hmmm, reading my post there and I’m thinking I didn’t get my last point across as well as I wanted. What I mean is that, the fact that back then the site was literally just a picture of some vaguely trolloc like dude with a “play now” button was the difference between me playing the game all these years or not. So, if we want to onboard new players we should try to recreate something like that as the homepage. I’m not a website designer, I understand its very simple to just say “we should do blank!!” So I really have no idea if what I’m suggesting is a giant pain in the butt or not. But those are my thoughts.

What drives people away (that we have control over, unlike families/work/life) is the filthy and stinky -players-. What brings people back is simply asking your friends and telling them, "things are better, players X, Y and Z are gone."

At least, that's my two cents. Nothing with the actual game mechanics really drives people away. Mayyyybe if warrior changes stuck, they would, but if they had just instead nerfed fear and kick, it might have been a welcome change in meta. Maybe.

Just tell your friends the game is fun and play with them. That's the best you can do.

Edit: honestly drawing newer players to the game is more important than drawing all their ones back I think. The older ones that have stuck around this long or not been kicked out are here to stay, maybe they'll come and go, but they're here to stay. New blood is what we need. Those young teenagers who have 14 hours of data play and test their limits and talk back and have fun lol. Bring back the Glory Days even if us Glory Dayers are too old to participate now!

P.S. one oldbie is back from a super long break! They're returning, please be nice and show 'em around.

Sanguine wrote: ↑

Fri May 21, 2021 11:57 pm

What drives people away (that we have control over, unlike families/work/life) is the filthy and stinky -players-. What brings people back is simply asking your friends and telling them, "things are better, players X, Y and Z are gone."

At least, that's my two cents. Nothing with the actual game mechanics really drives people away. Mayyyybe if warrior changes stuck, they would, but if they had just instead nerfed fear and kick, it might have been a welcome change in meta. Maybe.

Just tell your friends the game is fun and play with them. That's the best you can do.

Edit: honestly drawing newer players to the game is more important than drawing all their ones back I think. The older ones that have stuck around this long or not been kicked out are here to stay, maybe they'll come and go, but they're here to stay. New blood is what we need. Those young teenagers who have 14 hours of data play and test their limits and talk back and have fun lol. Bring back the Glory Days even if us Glory Dayers are too old to participate now!

Only speaking for myself here, but I didn't stop playing due to any particular person or their behavior, and that isn't what keeps me from returning. I definitely agree with you that the game mechanics or lack of any meaningful development of the MUD didn't drive me away, but if there had been changes and developments throughout the years, it may have kept my interest. I'm not sure. It does look like the current imms are doing a pretty spectacular job making changes, addressing bugs and engaging the playerbase now, which is awesome.

This had me reflecting a bit on what keeps me from wanting to play again, and I think that your edit touches on it a bit. When I came across the game in high school I was a depressed kid with social anxiety. The MUD gave me an escape from the real world where I had to deal with an alcoholic step-father who was....not pleasant...I was 100% addicted to the MUD at the time. I had the time to spend 14 hrs a day playing. Now I'm grown and have a great life, but am constantly busy and exhausted from it. Its not that the MUD is bad or the players are bad. I simply don't have the energy to sit down and try to relearn the MUD or make new friends on it.

Rerolls.

Been a few players I've seen who come back for a sec, try out their old characters and are expecting that they can get better stats now. Then they try a set of rerolls, ask if it's broken, learn that it's pretty useless now, and don't have the same excitement they came in with and usually take off.