Is EMC's policy of directing new players onto less populated servers necessarily the best idea? Obviously, the current players on the less populous severs want company, and there are more open residences, but is it possible that the quietness will also be putting a lot of new players off? Busier servers are (often) more fun to play on, and if we could try to fill up the busy servers, then players could spread out into the (currently) less busy ones afterwards. I'm assuming that new players joining a busy server would increase the % staying on in EMC. [It should be noted that even the busy servers don't seem to get absolutely full too often, hence the suggestion of trying to fill them up properly. This would seem to be sacrificing the quieter servers, but were this to bring more players to EMC, then it would bring more players to the quiet servers in the long term as well.] That's how EMC grew originally, filling up one server then adding another. Perhaps, back then, we added slightly more servers than is sustainable (or maybe not), but we can't just delete servers and therefore everybody's hard work (or at least if we did, that would be a pretty radical approach), so I thought it worth bringing up the question of whether we should be trying to mimic EMC's initial growth to repopulate, for example by the idea stated above? Of course, the busier servers also tend to have a lack of open residences, so something would need to be done about that (for example temporarily restricting the number of residences a supporter can claim on one server). [EDIT: I admit it's a bit awkward how the recommended server's currently the 2nd busiest now I've posted this!]
I'll just add that I know EMC's already advertising a lot and using many other methods to gain new players (such as abolishing compulsory tutorials, I believe), but I thought that this is potentially another idea of throw into the mix
EMC is not leading people to the less busy servers. Aikar saw that people leave since there is pretty much nobody there so he leads them to places like SMP4, which is populated but not THAT populated.
The thing is there needs to be a middle of the road. You want some population to keep everyone entertained and not bored (smp7, SMP5) but you don't want one that is heavily overpopulated and filled residence wise (SMP4, SMP9, SMP1). There has to be a balance instead of one way or the other. Right now smp4 is back (which is the current recommended server)
That's what I was wondering So surely the best servers to lead people to would be the busiest at the moment, as even the busiest rarely seem full? Yes, I admit there is an issue with lack of residences, but I'm sure there's some way of sorting this out.
It's something I've been playing with to find the best answer. We are currently sending all to SMP9. I fully agree with you, that busier = better retention is why its now on 9. I will likely rotate it between 1 and 9 until we can send off the Email campaign. I'm expecting the email campaign to give us a large surge of returning members which should fill up the others better, and then be easier to send traffic there when they are active.
Also to add on, now that we are spending money to get new members, we want to ensure we have the best bet to keep the new members, and that means making sure the server they join is not a ghost town. So the others will get love eventually... but it does us no good to pay for a person to come here for them to only leave due to the server having 2 people online.
They do switch it, I am sure they just give the server a chance to become popular before moving on to the next.
Hey, our current promotion is essentially returning 50% of all Diamond supporters back into the community Try to find a Diamond member who has not used their free supporter gift.
Also, its not good to direct them to smp4 anymore because of the disconnection/crashing issues we have had for the past several days . Bad for new and existing members.
