"Joe Evango" <jjadeinc at hotmail.com> writes:
> We have a steady flow of traffic, we need to focus on keeping it.  I think 
> doing what we are doing now, having a civil discussion on the issue, is a 
> key start to getting the game built back up.  The petty bickering seems to 
> be dying down a lot on pickup games, which is very good, this seemed to be 
> having a negative impact on the game and new players starting out.  The hate 
> spam being spewed by certain people to the all board, I feel, is a definite 
> turn off for new players.

Here here. Ditto on all counts. 

jrd wrote:
>	It's not just 'having bots'.  It's having bots that are
>	worth playing against while you wait for humans.  The 
>	bots on continuum need to be tuned up, they are extremely
>	weak.

I think if we're trying to build up the player base by attracting newbs,
the current bots are ok. I did like the bots some server had that would
take orders. 

>	As much as I hate to say this, I will: with the exception of the
>	new Mac client the current client base has nothing to really
>	offer newer players unless they are looking for a new retro
>	game to play.  In this day and age most people expect more in
>	the way of graphics and audio (as others have pointed out in
>	this thread previously); areas that are seriously lacking.

I'm not so sure. It's a very good game that looks and sounds a bit dull. 
There are plenty of games that look great and are boring to play. The
trick is to get people past the initial appearance. We do have
something to offer, but it's something that isn't obvious to the
casual shopper.

It also is a stylistically different game; no matter how popular
first-person or isomorphic rpg stuff is, some folks will always want
to do something different. Unlike evercrack, it costs no money. It has
a very high ceiling; you can play for years and still have stuff to
learn.

And the mac and linux clients should be a significant advantage.
Linux is very starved for games. Macs are better, but I suspect it
is still an under-served market. 

I think once the mac client is debugged and the server infrastructure
straightened out, we should start pushing the game and see what we
can get. 

Talk it up on gamer boards, especially mac-oriented and 
linux-oriented places. Talk it up to trekkies. See if we can get
more articles written. Put up some money and run some more ads. 
But it should all be synchronized; having people trickle in and see 
no-one playing will not work.

A key thing to remember is that we don't need very many people. Sure,
you can look and say "We look lame compared to Warcraft, we'll never
get players", but WoW sold a quarter of a million units the day that
it debuted. We only need a tiny tiny fraction of that to be totally 
set.