[the_logos]

[the_logos]

[the_logos]

[Malifax]

Very slick!

Your "market" research is very impressive and informative. Thanks for sharing.

[IZDemon]

That looks pretty badass.

[the_logos]

Thanks! We've been putting enormous energy into the entire newbie experience on all the Iron Realms games for more than a year now. So much work.

[Leech]

Damn, why do IRE MUDs have to be pay-for-perks? Can't you live off donations by now?

Regardless, this looks great and makes me want to jump back in!

[the_logos]

You might be interested to know that we recently (earlier this week) made it far easier for newbies to tri-trans their class skills. You can get 1000 lessons for $10, though each character can have that package bought for them twice over their lifetime, so 2000 lessons for $20 basically. First day that went in is also the day we've had the most individual purchases in nearly 17 year history of Achaea.

[Leech]

That's a pretty ballsy marketing strategy - I'm glad it worked out for you! One of the other (and apparently now, only) hurdles is the fact that you need to learn a scripting language to be halfway decent at combat. Some day... maybe some day...

[plamzi]

What would be interesting to know is whether having graphical character creation for a non-graphical UI has a positive effect on overall conversion, or if it merely shifts dropout rates to further steps, e. g. the point at which someone new to MUDs is confronted with the text-based gameplay interface.

[the_logos]

So, you might ALSO be interested to know that one day after we unveiled that strategy, we also implemented a server-side configurable curing system.

Documentation is here:

Not only does it largely remove the need for client-side triggers, but it's ping independent, so it levels the playing field between people close to our Chicago-based servers and our significant contingent of players outside the US, who suffer from substantially worse pings than many of our US players.

[the_logos]

Oh, it definitely helps overall. There's some shifting of the dropout point to when they hit that wall of text of course, but there's an overall gain. The thing to remember about all free games (where someone's not invested anything to start playing) is that most players make the decision to continue or quit in a matter of seconds. Of course, many will still quit after minutes or hours, but a huge chunk of people will make that decision nearly instantly. So, it behooves any kind of free game to make that initial experience as sticky as possible.

We also tried easing people into the text-based environment by having graphical popups during the newbie intro that would show up to explain certain things better/more easily explained graphically, but those didn't go over well for whatever reason, so we removed them. I think having graphical pop-ups as someone is trying to get their head around/get used to a text interface was too disrupting, though it's hard to know why - we just know the numbers were better without the popups.

[flbellman]

I have been playing Achaea for 3 1/2 years and I grant that in all this time the Admins worked their ass out to improve the game constantly. Great game, always improving. I am probably the only Italian player there, but the player base is huge compared to the other mud I tried.

[Realedazed]

I've been playing Lusternia for years, now, but I just starting playing Acheaea. I can honestly say that client side healing is GREAT addition. I just picked up a pack of lessons for my Lusternia character. It's right on time, since I just switched guilds and lost a ton of lessons. This saves up tons of credits for artifacts

[the_logos]

Glad they worked out! Hearing a lot of this feedback. Everyone but a couple players seems thrilled about server-side curing and only one person has complained about the cheap lesson packages.

[green_dragon]

Yes we should say thank you to administrator. Game is awesome and they always keep this game improving. I been playing Achaea ever since and I'm not going to change it. I been playing this game for more then 4 years.

[the_logos]

Glad to have you!