TMW promotion

[Derpella]

As many people noticed, a priceless population of noobs decreased. And as everyone knows, noobs= potential developers, more diverse community, more elastic economy, and, what's most important, a feeling for current devs they are making a great job!

My ideas:

1. The biggest source of fresh newbs was Ubuntu Software Center. Now, the version of Mana there is obsolete, so the person who randomly installed it will see glitches and thing the game is one of those amateur ones...
Besides, the comments and votes are almost nonexistent.
Well... the best choice would be getting manaplus into repos, since this client allows playing evol, etc., but I know this idea alone can be a base to a bad flamewar I would like to avoid in this topic :(
I guess best idea would be taking care of freshness of mana (also in playdeb) and deleting 0.0.29. Trying to add tmw to djl ( http://en.djl-linux.org/ looks inactive, but game list is constantly updated) And mobilise people to vote/comment in Ubu software centre!

2. YouTube. All vids I found are either people who tested out tmw, but couldn't got out desert or do anything (and who would read faq's, duh :P) or some young players from tmw who made vids which were very enthusiastic, but not of too great quality.
Maybe making a contest for best promo vid? With some really cool prizes? Like, ekhm, assassin boots?
plz?

3. Social websites... Since we're on this scary evil facebook, maybe it'd be fun thinking of some cool way to promote (I have no idea, I am not very good at facebook :( )

[argul]

see http://www.facebook.com/themanaworld
also there is a google plus page.

[Derpella]

I know, I am a mod there :) The page is nice, Irukard made awesome graphics... I mean, some promotional idea.

[ZdlN]

Maybe it is a way to bring new pictures and informations and versions in the web there to find good -
If i search for pictures of The Mana World - the first one is:
http://happypenguin.org/show?The%20Mana%20World

the second:
http://a320.emulate.su/2010/12/16/the-m ... nt-caanoo/

and so on.

If i search (im german) only for "Mana World" the first page i see is:
http://www.chip.de/downloads/The-Mana-W ... 53595.html

all very old pictures and not new informations (maybe also bad votings)...
It's a difficult work, but if anyone only search for Mana World in the web and see to contact pages have not new informations (the first one f.e have a link named "[ Submit an update about this game ]") maybe a player think about to come here realy come here

[Crush]

Initiatives to create a Wikipedia article about TMW were stopped by the deletionists, but our TVTropes page could need some more love.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/V ... eManaWorld
A longer introduction text and a picture would be good, but what's missing most to get some exposure is adding back-links on the trope pages it links to.

[Piateluca]

if the videos emphasizes candor/ cindy etc etc it would be better

[Derpella]

Initiatives to create a Wikipedia article about TMW were stopped by the deletionists, but our TVTropes page could need some more love.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/V ... eManaWorld
A longer introduction text and a picture would be good, but what's missing most to get some exposure is adding back-links on the trope pages it links to.

IMHO back-links on trope page are only good when:
1. Something is known enough for people to stop and think; "oooh, this example, I see now!"
2. Something is a really interesting or good example of some trope.

Otherwise, it's just annoying. There is no such thing as notability, but...

[Crush]

I found a lot of great games, movies and TV shows on TVTropes because they were linked as examples somewhere.

[ImNotPirate]

i dont know why but when i ask some friends about tmw they all say it sucks , they dont like it and they prefer 3D games .

[Chicka-Maria]

Personally i prefer 2D games considering theyre lighter then 3D games. I do enjoy some 3D games online but tmw is great if your computer cant handle 3D games. As for the promotion, maybe a blog can be started? About the tmw community and such. I did have the Idea of a mana world news paper, and was working on one the other day but i might not be able to finish it until Sunday. due to completing some work i have for my online course. Ill post a link here when its finished.

Regards,

[Reid]

You can already use what you got to do this promotional work.
Using much efficiently the front page of themanaworld.org could be a nice start, (news, screenshot, everything of what the player would look at).
Social networks are also a nice card, but does somebody know that they exist? There are none visible links which redirect there.
For the blog, there were hundred of gamer blog about tmw. http://charlestmw.blogspot.fr/ This one is particularly good, and there are none better advice than the one from a player of the game that you are looking at. ^^

i dont know why but when i ask some friends about tmw they all say it sucks , they dont like it and they prefer 3D games .

TMW's strong point is on the player community, from an outside view, the game looks like one of these try to do a 2D MMORPG, so playing with the community theme could be a nice thing.

[Nard]

As many people noticed [...]
1. The biggest source of fresh newbs was Ubuntu Software Center. Now, the version of Mana there is obsolete, so the person who randomly installed it will see glitches and thing the game is one of those amateur ones...
Besides, the comments and votes are almost nonexistent.
Well... the best choice would be getting manaplus into repos, since this client allows playing evol, etc., but I know this idea alone can be a base to a bad flamewar I would like to avoid in this topic
I guess best idea would be taking care of freshness of mana (also in playdeb) and deleting 0.0.29. Trying to add tmw to djl ( http://en.djl-linux.org/ looks inactive, but game list is constantly updated) And mobilise people to vote/comment in Ubu software centre!

I think the web site is one of the central part of it, if not the heart. It is not up to date. (The client welcome message is often late too compared to the game update releases.) The the download page Unix versions, point to critically out of date versions, for example :
http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=tmw
there are up to date versions:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?suite ... words=mana
BUT
as you can see the mana client (and manaplus as well) do not have the TMW name and does appear linked in search engines. There is a "marketing" mistake here.

Matt mentioned Browserquest in the thread Yay, BrowserQuest! he opened. And Ablu almost immediately made a test here:http://manasource.org/tmwjs/. I do think that even a small browser adventure (ending to registration page?) could bring a lot of players in TMW.

2. YouTube. All vids I found are either people who tested out tmw, but couldn't got out desert or do anything (and who would read faq's, duh ) or some young players from tmw who made vids which were very enthusiastic, but not of too great quality.
Maybe making a contest for best promo vid? With some really cool prizes? Like, ekhm, assassin boots?
plz?

If I remind well I saw a few tutorial/introduction there. Sorry, I can't find the address.

3. Social websites... Since we're on this scary evil facebook, maybe it'd be fun thinking of some cool way to promote (I have no idea, I am not very good at facebook )

There are several groups, there; one of them since at least 2 years. An "official" one went without wondering if somebody had already did the job. If I remember well "i" (not me )was in charge of it. I never saw a lot of players there anyway, maybe because it somewhat breaks role playing?

[SudoPlatypus]

.

[o11c]

The TMW 20110911 package is the right thing.

[Crush]

Some years ago I suggested to turn the news section on the main website into a development blog where every developer has post rights. The Development Weekly Summary would then be posted on the front page, for example. But there wasn't much feedback from the developers.