New (?) PR Strategy

[gonger]

Hello,

Some thoughts and reflections on (mostly) vain attempts to make PlaneShift better known.
Why have those attempts been in vain? I believe because commercial websites do not care much about a game that is Fully Free to Play (FFP). The game has no regular income (except through Patreon), and therefore no budget to run advertising with them.
They cannot make money with us, so they do not care about us.
Instead these website publish lists about "free" games, and include World of Warcraft, because it is free up to level 20... When I add a comment about PlaneShift as a FFP game, my comment is either ignored or deleted. Once I was even asked how I could dare to create an accout just to drop such a comment.
So I believe we should turn to websites for free / independent games - these websites would probably not exist if making money was their purpose.
I am posting this because 1) I would like to learn what you think of these reflections, and 2) if you know about appropriate websites, please let me know. I will do my own research as well, of course!
Now that I am writing this I wonder why this did not came to me earlier. Which only shows how important it is every now and then to just sit back, take a deep breath, and try to look at things from a different point of view.
A New Year is always a good moment for this!
I am also putting this on Discord, and will discuss at tonight's Q&A meeting.
Thank you for reading until here. You are a hero!
Travel safely,
Gonger

[Volki]

Many players found this game through websites that advertised free games. I did.

The problem is that it doesn't cater to the roleplaying audience it once did. We've moved on to carving niches in other games or back to good old fashioned tabletop.

A lot of us were here for the authentic roleplaying, not the faux-RP offered by other "MMORPGs." Getting to choose my character's race, sex, appearance, favorite weapons, and preferred magic isn't enough. We were here to make stories and were put in awe of our own creativity. We had that taken away by nonsensical, unwritten rules set by moderators and overly controlling community members, and future development made it clear this isn't a game for people who want to roleplay.

[Damola]

Hi.

@Gonger: I basically agree with what you say. I am not sure about good alternative web pages to go to, but I will ponder over this a bit more. I follow a German language based site called Holarse Gaming. Their page about PlaneShift is highly outdated, but quite detailed¹. And their last news items is also a time ago². But they do care about free games as well and they certainly do not do this for money³. I can try to ask them on IRC on what would be required in order to help updating those pages and probably giving out a up-to-date news item about.

@Volki: Have you been playing PlaneShift recently? While a challenge is to have enough other people to play with when logging in at some random time, during the regular GM events hosted by Uadjet each Saturday there is a very good quality RP going on between player based characters and GMPCs (Game Master Played Characters) as well as other player based characters. Consistently so! I really look forward to those Saturday evenings!

[1] https://holarse.de/wiki/planeshift
[2] https://holarse.de/search/node/PlaneShift
[3] https://holarse.de/wiki/%C3%BCber_holarse

[Talad]

future development made it clear this isn't a game for people who want to roleplay.

Where did you get that? Nearly all the interactions I see in game are in character, people are roleplaying. New game features can be leveraged by players for more roleplay, like the new dungeons or fishing. What are you referring to?

[gonger]

A lot of us were here for the authentic roleplaying, not the faux-RP offered by other "MMORPGs." Getting to choose my character's race, sex, appearance, favorite weapons, and preferred magic isn't enough. We were here to make stories and were put in awe of our own creativity. We had that taken away by nonsensical, unwritten rules set by moderators and overly controlling community members, and future development made it clear this isn't a game for people who want to roleplay.

No, Volki, a lot of us ARE here for the authentic roleplaying. Which "rules" and "controlling" do you mean? There are some rules against cheating, that's about it.
Remind me, when was the last time you participated in one of the RP events? Believe it or not, we have great fun during those events!
And with the (slowly) growing player numbers, spontaneous RP is bound to happen more often.

[gonger]

[1] https://holarse.de/wiki/planeshift
[2] https://holarse.de/search/node/PlaneShift
[3] https://holarse.de/wiki/%C3%BCber_holarse

Hi Damola,

Thank you for your support. You might wish to fix the third link, the leading "h" is outside the url tag.
I had some trouble creating an account there, only to discover that I had used my mail for this purpose already two years ago, without ever getting a notification, neither then, nor today. They seem to have some issues with account creation, but be that as it may, I added a comment about the current state of PlaneShift.

@all, let the links roll!

Greetings,

Gonger

[Damola]

You are welcome, Gonger.

Damola shuffles that "h" into the [url] tag with her special letter shuffling glyph. That "h" resists at first, but with that highly advanced magic it finally agrees to go into the right place.

[mohonin]

Gonger Sir, are you aware of those type of website, which keep a database of different game and theres a voting option where the players of the respective games, Vote and depending upon the number of votes the sites are arranged from top to down in popularity. Hope i cud explain it properly.
A pleasure to tell you that i have been voting on those sites for more than 10 years for other games and the best such site i found is this site --> http://www.hotrpgames.com/
I was going through its instruction and options and what i cud make out, you can join with your website with voting enabled absolutely free. But i may be wrong. so there is 2 things for you to do. 1st check wheather adding our PSU website banner and link is really free or there are hidden charges? 2nd is if you go ahead with it then how can we tell our planeshifters to vote for it once every 24 hour. maybe almost everyday we can show the link which with the PSU member wants can vote in, in discord. and for those who visit Yliakum, maybe Talad sir can make an icon for voting.
Anyway, have a look at this website and see what you can do. website URL --> http://www.hotrpgames.com/