I've yet to see any mmorpg do this but...what if you were to create an affiliate platform so a person can log in, get a personal link and be able to share that around the interwebs and recruit people to log in.
You could then track who said person has brought to the website and reward them. Could be anything from a small percentage of monthly fee, to in game cosmetic rewards.
I think people have no idea this type of game is in the works. With this kind of system out there people will have Pantheon banners all over and in will come future players as well as donations.
Just a though. I'm sure there are reasons why other companies haven't done this but it's not coming to me why this wouldn't be a great idea especially as this point.
Any thoughts?
Well the question would be then - are the RIGHT kind of people coming to the website. I prefer quality over quantity.
I could get a good chunk of people (Hey Aunt Sue!) to create an account just to get myself a reward, however they would not be here for Pantheon.
Pantheon is also trying to make it so that in-game items are secured in game only and that is a tenet I completely respect.
On the other hand, my friends that I think would be a good match for this game have already signed up. I have more waiting on the wings as development progresses and we see more. Word of mouth is wonderful and the people that are on this site have already have been and continue to promote it to outsiders.
I think it is great that you want to advertise Goreblade, and Pantheon is in a good spot for promotion currently. A lot of the news is now positive as development is progressing. We see a lot of new accounts lately because of it. My suggestion is take the video/screeenshots/new information and spread it out to your sites/forums/podcasts etc.. and spread the news that way.
Goreblade said:
I've yet to see any mmorpg do this but...what if you were to create an affiliate platform so a person can log in, get a personal link and be able to share that around the interwebs and recruit people to log in.
You could then track who said person has brought to the website and reward them. Could be anything from a small percentage of monthly fee, to in game cosmetic rewards.
I think people have no idea this type of game is in the works. With this kind of system out there people will have Pantheon banners all over and in will come future players as well as donations.
Just a though. I'm sure there are reasons why other companies haven't done this but it's not coming to me why this wouldn't be a great idea especially as this point.
Any thoughts?
I appreciate your thoughts Goreblade, I have seen this method used by other companies with mixed results.
I think our core target audience is for the most part aware of us but are watching, you will notice we are slowly starting to spread our wings a bit and interact on other gaming forums and social media platforms and it is my job to monitor and manage that side of things.
It's very hard to describe but our target audience are a lot more mature than most other games and our community has a different mindset and level of expectations, so using a system like that will attract some people that are not very well suited to our style of game and for us to use a system like that it could possibly do more harm than good to our community.
We rely heavily on interaction and word of mouth, which is one of the most powerful tools any company has available to them, anyone who has played EQ/VG for the most part, will have heard our name but as we move forward and make more progress, we will start really pushing the word out, we just need to get the game to a level we are happy with first before we draw a lot of attention to ourselves, hence why I am slowly starting to interact with sites like MMORPG.com, MassivelyOP etc.
The best marketing for this game and our community at the moment is our game (what we show off) and our community (how you guys and girls spread the word and how you interact with other gamers), the more of you that drop friendly replies, answer questions, politely correct misconceptions the more players like yourself raise an eyebrow and take interest in us, if we continue to build a game similar to EQ/VG and you guys be your awesome selves and spread that level of maturity and friendliness around the web, we will naturally grow with the type of players that will suit our game and our community.
To answer your question though, we would never rule out any system that we think may help us but we are not currently looking at using a system like that for Pantheon.
I like your thinking though mate. :)
Maybe I'm mistaken in the actual statement, but doesn't ever MMO do this? I know WoW, Rift and SWTOR all do this and can probably sum up a few others that have it as well.
To sum it up, I don't like the idea of rewarding in game for recruiters but wouldn't mind some sort of title or website status on it as well.
Rivacom said:
Maybe I'm mistaken in the actual statement, but doesn't ever MMO do this? I know WoW, Rift and SWTOR all do this and can probably sum up a few others that have it as well.
To sum it up, I don't like the idea of rewarding in game for recruiters but wouldn't mind some sort of title or website status on it as well.
Yes, a lot of the big AAA MMORPG game companies use this system and it works well for them because they cater to a much larger and broader audience, we on the other hand, are targeting a much smaller and more niche market and for that reason alone we do not want to advertise to every single gamer out there and risk unbalancing our community but instead, we want to specifically target our niche audience and to do that, we need to rely on producing a good quality game and our community spreading the word, along with marketing and advertising on our behalf once we get to that point.
We are starting to show more activity on other sites now and my goal is to steadily build on that so we have a solid platform to then push harder when we are at that point and it's working well.