I would love to see EMC get more rupee purchases. I'm sure it would help keep the servers running a lot smoother and other advantages. Just now I was trying to find the price of rupees (not to buy any - just for curiousity because it came up in discussion). The places I looked (in order) and didn't find it were: Front of site, clicking 'Rupees'. Took me to the rupee history. No link here to buy rupees. The 'What are rupees?' link in the rupee history page which took me to the wiki. The wiki says nothing about buying rupees. In fact, at the bottom is has in red text saying "WARNING: RMT (real money trading) is strictly prohibited." From that, without any mention to the contrary, someone may easily even fall under the impression that you can't buy rupees. Unlike becoming a supporter, no links at the top or bottom of the site are labeled something along the lines of 'Buy Rupees', not even under any sub-menus. I may have missed easy links, but the point is - if I missed it so could someone who was potentially looking to buy rupees. My recommendations are as follows: On the main menu, possibly under 'My Empire', add a link to 'Buy Rupees'. The one labelled 'Overview' is not effective. In the Rupee History page, add a link at the top to buy rupees, right beside the 'What Are Rupees?' link. Update the wiki to contain relevant information on the rupee buy process, and a link to where to buy rupees. Update the red warning on the rupee page of the wiki (IRL trading) to mention that rupees can be bought through the site. Have the 'Become a supporter' banner at the top alternate with a 'Buy rupees' banner or any special deals at least some of the time. These changes should be simple and bring a lot more funding into EMC over time! I don't think you should say no to free money. Edit: I noticed during writing that the wiki does in fact say "Purchasing instantly delivered rupees." however it still doesn't mention how or have any links.
Very good arguments indeed! What I like most about your suggestion is that it doesn't get too intrusive. Because that is also a very important issue to keep in mind: it is beneficial for EMC to point players to those "available for purchase" options, but if you overdo things then you risk scaring people off again. In the mean time I just did a small update on the Rupee wiki page (obviously because of your post) and added the link to the supporters page. Next I added the page to my "todo list" so that I'll go over it again (soonish) to give it more in-depth thought on how we might be able to improve the page even further.
Of course! The issue was that I couldn't find it quickly. And when I went to the second page and still didn't find it, I came here to get it resolved instead. Your change so far looks great. I certainly wouldn't want to annoy anyone with something like an advertisement for buying rupees that repeats regularly in the chat and can't be disabled.
Great idea I would also like the Supporter page to be renamed back to Store. When I see Supporter, I assume everything in there is supporter ranks and not vouchers/rupee purchases.
Improvements to the site is always a good thing. I have had my issues tracking my way to the rupees purchase sections once or twice after the site changes happened. Your ideas are brilliant, Azoundria.
It's entirely up to you as this is your site and I can only make suggestions. I don't think I fully explained the reasoning for this link. Generally viewing the rupee history is the first place a player goes when they see a lower balance or that they are out of rupees (to see where their money went), and is therefore a common place where a player will decide they need more rupees and perhaps to buy some. Such a direct link would be really handy in that situation. This type of thing would tend to be an impulse decision for some people, and having them go through even one extra link would drop off some percentage of people, especially if that link doesn't directly say what they want (to get more rupees) and the next page involves a lot of reading and lists dozens of alternative ways to get them. I'm sure you know of the common grocery store model where they have chocolate bars and other 'quick grabs' at the checkout. They could just as easily put those in one of the aisles of the store, but years of consumer research and testing shows that the difference in placement has a dramatic difference in how many people actually end up making those purchases. People are already at the checkout, the same way they are already at the rupee history. It just makes sense to me that you would want to make it as convenient as possible for them. Not to mention a situation like mine where the player goes to the only link on the page that says 'Rupees' looking for how to buy some. I understand that under 'My Empire' there will now be a link, but it's still not immediately visible. The one that says 'Rupees' is still, in my opinion, the most likely first place someone will go when looking for rupees. I have to wonder what the benefit of not having such a link is. The space is currently unused.
We debated this already, and supporters agreed Supporter was a nicer label. It's very clear in game that our "ranks" are called Supporter. It only takes 1 visit to the page to realize there is more. Anyone willing to spend money will make a visit to that page, so "Store" is un-necessary.
As for the suggested, many of these do make sense, but note that there is also a rupee purchase box on the My Empire section itself =P But yes I agree a few more places wouldn't hurt.
