Does anyone have any ideas on how we can attract people to join in things on the forums. I think that this is a large part of what makes EMC good and many people will play only online and never even know about the forums. ...coming to the website to get vote links can help but since you don't have to sign in to get those it really isn't a good answer. I'm not sure I have any great ideas on how to do this but I feel that it is lacking overall involvement. I really got this thought looking at a poll question about "how long" people had been with EMC and my first thought before I clicked was I'll bet most are longer duration players since 1) it helps build community, 2) the longer you are around the more people learn and 3) the newer people in general don't use this at all. I was the first to answer in the 1-6 month slot.
Im 3 years on here in about 3 months. When I first joined i didnt join the forums until like a month later. And if i do remeber correctly it was because one of the various links that the servers broadcasted regularly, im like ooh what's that? And then i was brought to the forums where i signed up. And it was a little boring at first I'll admit, but once you know how everything works and the features it hooks ya XD As for it lacking involvement i think its fine. Some people just are not interested in forums. I think we have a great community here, just as fun as being in game
The reason i found out about the forums was with a ban appeal... maybe ban more people? /jk Lately, I have found the forums boring cause now every single Forum Game is similar to one another, or the recent threads are just auctions. The only thing interesting for me are the EMC suggestion box and the blogs that the publish once in a while. April Fools was fun cause it was a roleplay forum game, kinda, on my part.
i used to love the Nations games on the forums. we need to bring those back. sadly they end up dying out at some point
Another question could also be do we want to have more people involved? Now, don't get me wrong here: the more the merrier of course, but I do prefer if people join for the right reasons. And in my opinion that should be a genuine interest in the forum, it's involving community and what all that has to offer. I don't recall from mind (because I tend not to pay too much attention to the in-game advertising) but if I recall correctly then there have been several broadcasts which invited players to join the forums, to seek out EMC through social media, etc. From there on it's really out of EMC's hands I think. Because you also don't want to become too intrusive either. Heck, several players already started muttering a bit about the amount of in-game announcements. So I'm not too sure they want to raise that. Quite frankly I think things are quite fine the way they are. I mean... One of the most commonly asked questions from new players is "How do I make money?" to which the answer is roughly something in the likes of: "Sell to player shops, start your own shop, do an auction or trade with promos". And how do you start an auction? On the forums.
There is the issue where many players of EMC are younger, and do not understand, or are unable to access the forums due to computer/family restrictions... Many players of EMC are on restricted computers, which make it very hard for them to be able to take part in the online forums... Then there are those who play the servers, but only check the forums when say an update comes out, or servers are down... They might find the forums too much talk, like as if you are on facebook, or twitter, and they might be trying to get away from all that... Those are some of the things that can make this hard for players... I myself was active on forums a few months after i joined, (Started being active around Sept 2012), and the reason was i was not too into EMC, back then... I wanted to get more into the serve before i spent time on the forums...Now its over 5 years on EMC and the Forums.... ~Finch
I have been here for 2 years, and found the forum within a couple days of joining to explore the live-map and vote because of the in-game announcements. Like shelluser said, a lot of players don't care about community involvement, but rather just want a server to play on. Also most servers don't have a forum community like ours, or don't advertize their forum like emc does so many players don't connect to the forums right away. Many players that come jumping from server to server are just looking for somewhere nice to play, and therefore don't see the forum as a part of the "game". Because when most player go onto Minecraft, they want to play Minecraft. They don't want to write forum post to people when they can chat in-game.
I've been around for 1 and almost a half about now, I joined the forums one day after I signed up because I was promised free rupees. Well that and the fact that the last forum I was in, I wasn't in for long and I kinda wanted to get the whole experience. Not everyone uses the forums, in my opinion that's fine. I really only use forums for when I have a question or something and that happens rarely. The only two forums I use are EMC, because we're an amazing community and it's nice to interact with everyone when I'm not in-game. Then I also do the Hearthpwn forums, a Hearthstone forum where I do card design and share my various stupid decks with people. They're great at getting salty about the game, though I did get the idea for the popular forum game Rate how well known the user above you is. In my opinion, we should really just let people come and use the forums if they want. It's a whole 'nother ball game here.
I've been here for over 5 years. I signed up on the forums the day I joined EMC, but didn't post messages for a long time. I think we should just let players come and find the forums as they do, because in my opinion, it's better if people sign up because they want to and not because they're told to.
