Join the new world

Player retention has been a hot topic on the eUS forums and in game newspapers lately so I figured I would weigh in on the debate for my first newspaper article. I've seen lots of people use stats from some guy or just guesses saying 75% do this or 30% do this. I have no idea how accurate these numbers are or where they get them. I'm going to focus on my own experiences of when I was new and running a company where I dealt with many newer players.

When I was a new and confused player I remember first signing in and following Plato's instructions to upload an avatar, get a job, and train. 3 minutes later I had done that and sat wondering what the heck I do now. I tried checking out the official forums but quickly found it was written in a foreign language that I didn't understand.

PEACE can not into space!!
AmericaMAXX!

Not exactly helpful for new players. After 15 minutes or so I gave up for the day. The next day I came back and it was more of the same. I just about quit at this point but after spending some time looking around I figured out that the eUSA was in a major conflict and was curious enough to come back a few more times. Heck it only took about 30 seconds to play the game as I saw it at that point. Click work, click train, DONE.

I hear there is a New Citizen Message specifically for people in the USA. I either didn't get it or deleted it without knowing what I was doing. I know now that there is a welcoming committee who tries to contact new people but I never heard from them. I remember wondering if there was a forum specifically for people in the USA but didn't actually find it until a few weeks later. With so little information and so little to do I should have quit. Two things kept me coming back, the USA was in a major war fighting for its life and I was intrigued by the thought of running a business and maybe someday an empire of businesses.

I did a lot of research the next few days and eventually I got to the point where I could fight. Luckily I was already living in Florida because whatever forum I heard about the game on said to make sure you started there. I was all excited and then I clicked the fight button and saw my 8 or so damage and laughed when comparing it to the other numbers flying past on the screen that were way higher.

At this point I nearly quit for the second time but again the ongoing war kept my interest. I figured I would stick it out to see how things came out and to try out owning a business. The next several weeks were so exciting as the war for North America was raging on.

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Midway point eye candy

Many weeks later I finally raised enough gold to open up my own company. I did a ton of work figuring out what would make it successful. One aspect I failed to take into account however was how inept the majority of the employees I hire would be. Out of the first 20 I hired (mostly skill 2 but some skill 1 or 3 people) I think 19 had no idea how to manage wellness by fighting and healing.

I came up with a letter explaining that they appeared to be new and I would be happy to help them out and gave them a few links to articles for newbies and the eUS forums. If they didn't live in a fortress state I would tell them they needed to move to be effective in the game and they could get free tickets by simply contacting the welcoming committee. The majority of the people I contacted would move in the next day or 2. The others would get a final message from me before I fired them explaining that as a business owner I couldn't afford to keep them but I wished them well and again told them they needed to move to be successful.

The point of this is to show what I feel is the 2 key things to increase retention....early contact and interesting wars/storylines! Many of these people would message me thanks and that no one had contacted them before or explained some of the simple things most of us who have been playing awhile take for granted. The interesting storyline and war is out of most of our hands but contacting people isn't. You can do it yourself by looking up new players or join up with the welcoming committee.

Personally I think the best way to make sure new eUSA citizens get contacted is by setting up a government funded company in each sector (land, manufacturing, construction) with unlimited skill 0 jobs that are the highest on the market. New people will then join these companies and the person(s) running them will be notified they have a new worker and can then contact them to try and get them interested. Those who don't find it entertaining enough to stick around get fired after a week or so and go off to die. The people who do get into the game would quickly move on to higher paying jobs as their skill increased and should become productive citizens.


"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
- Albert Einstein