Blocktopia..... Dying?
- Thread starter kingwic
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Well, TNT hasn't exactly had a decent amount of players on it since it's launch. May be due to a lot of people having their final exams, jobs, or being busy in general. Then again, I see RoF and JtE with the most players on almost every day.
A&T was closed down due to a lovely bug that kept turning the server off whenever somebody joined a world.
Pfft... The problem with those breaks, is that it consists of just a week or so, rather than around 3 months.
Summer break IS the time the population kicks back up. I know I would play more often in the summer, and especially if I somehow get a second computer. (Which has nothing to do with my point.)
Ok, now I have a few minutes to write something more cohesive. Let's begin.
Blocktopia's Ad Men (ben pls)
Attracting new players to premium is a bit more difficult to accomplish than Classic, and requires a different approach. Up to this point we have done admirably well through the strength of our existing community. These forums are one of the more active MC community forums, and Blocktopia has been around for a long long time. We have original content and polished servers (PTNT is a work of art). How do we tell other people this?
Premium Advertising Basics (and why it sucks)
There is no official server listing available, just 3rd party sites where everyone and anyone with a basic minecraft server makes a post. We've tried it with https://mcservers.org/detail/lobby.blocktopia.net, and we've tried it several times with minestatus. The problem is that the people who claim the top spots run schemes such as "Vote and get 64 diamonds!" They shoot to the top, attracting more players who provide more votes, and the cycle continues.I know that we've tried something similar in the past with in-game money for voting, but I don't think they have ever been effective. If anyone with the data can weigh in on this, let me know.
Paid Advertising
We did run an advertisement on /r/minecraft a few months ago. GmK , did that work at all? It linked to one of our /r/mcservers posts (http://www.reddit.com/r/mcservers/comments/1css0d/blocktopia_central_hub_smpcreativepvppve/) that have worked to some extent.
Subliminal Advertising
Another route is to post builds, videos, and screenshots that promote the server without actually advertising. One example of this is: http://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/y99by/it_started_life_as_a_rubiks_cube/ . This brought in quite a few new players, but these posts can be hit or miss. I've made similar posts about every other month with random builds, but none of them have had quite the same success as this first one. I'm starting to run out of builds to post, so this will dry up soon.
Also, having a major MC youtube person (I know nothing of this part) can apparently help out a lot as well. I know that Stieben and Razinao have both produced high quality videos in the past, perhaps visiting their pages and giving them likes and views will help boost their visibility?
Summary
If you want to increase the number of players on the servers, it would be best for players to collaborate on various projects such as videos, screenshots, or promotional events. Go forth and upvote the advertisements, reply to the topics on planetminecraft/minecraftforums, and post your own material. Link them back here for others to view and approve. And so on. I doubt they'll start offering stacks of diamonds or points in PTNT for votes, so it'll have to be community-motivated.
P.S.
But before doing anything major, wait for the servers to update to 1.5.2. Otherwise people will try to join and likely fail, then move on to something else.
P.P.S
RoF appears to be doing just fine. RoF staff, have you been doing anything differently? PTNT and AOD appear to be fighting over the same slice of pie which has resulted in both servers becoming low population. When the playerbase increases after server updates and summer break, this will hopefully cease.
P.P.P.S.
Rough banner I made, still needs to be trimmed a bit.
So I went into the imgur link that you had on the thread about your map, and this was what I found:Ok, now I have a few minutes to write something more cohesive. Let's begin.
Blocktopia's Ad Men (ben pls)Attracting new players to premium is a bit more difficult to accomplish than Classic, and requires a different approach. Up to this point we have done admirably well through the strength of our existing community. These forums are one of the more active MC community forums, and Blocktopia has been around for a long long time. We have original content and polished servers (PTNT is a work of art). How do we tell other people this?
Premium Advertising Basics (and why it sucks)There is no official server listing available, just 3rd party sites where everyone and anyone with a basic minecraft server makes a post. We've tried it with https://mcservers.org/detail/lobby.blocktopia.net, and we've tried it several times with minestatus. The problem is that the people who claim the top spots run schemes such as "Vote and get 64 diamonds!" They shoot to the top, attracting more players who provide more votes, and the cycle continues.
I know that we've tried something similar in the past with in-game money for voting, but I don't think they have ever been effective. If anyone with the data can weigh in on this, let me know.
Paid Advertising
We did run an advertisement on /r/minecraft a few months ago. GmK , did that work at all? It linked to one of our /r/mcservers posts (http://www.reddit.com/r/mcservers/comments/1css0d/blocktopia_central_hub_smpcreativepvppve/) that have worked to some extent.
Subliminal Advertising
Another route is to post builds, videos, and screenshots that promote the server without actually advertising. One example of this is: http://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/y99by/it_started_life_as_a_rubiks_cube/ . This brought in quite a few new players, but these posts can be hit or miss. I've made similar posts about every other month with random builds, but none of them have had quite the same success as this first one. I'm starting to run out of builds to post, so this will dry up soon.
Also, having a major MC youtube person (I know nothing of this part) can apparently help out a lot as well. I know that Stieben and Razinao have both produced high quality videos in the past, perhaps visiting their pages and giving them likes and views will help boost their visibility?
SummaryIf you want to increase the number of players on the servers, it would be best for players to collaborate on various projects such as videos, screenshots, or promotional events. Go forth and upvote the advertisements, reply to the topics on planetminecraft/minecraftforums, and post your own material. Link them back here for others to view and approve. And so on. I doubt they'll start offering stacks of diamonds or points in PTNT for votes, so it'll have to be community-motivated.
P.S.But before doing anything major, wait for the servers to update to 1.5.2. Otherwise people will try to join and likely fail, then move on to something else.
P.P.SRoF appears to be doing just fine. RoF staff, have you been doing anything differently? PTNT and AOD appear to be fighting over the same slice of pie which has resulted in both servers becoming low population. When the playerbase increases after server updates and summer break, this will hopefully cease.
P.P.P.S.Rough banner I made, still needs to be trimmed a bit.
The City of Relic
PvP map that started life as a Rubik's cube, then turned into an ancient structure that pilgrims have turned into the city of Relic.
Created 9 months ago
1,194,582 views
Holy, thats alot of views, the blocktopia thread imgur link had 300 views...
That's very much an anomaly, the average ranges from 1k to 20k on the posts in /r/minecraft. What seems to have happened is that the album was picked up by one of the minecraft twitter accounts (https://twitter.com/FrMinecraft/statuses/235750478716211200). And, go figure, this was the one post that did not include some link for the server information in the album, just in the reddit comments. Which of course weren't included with that twitter post. Still kicking myself over that.
Alternatively, this was the most successful reddit post, and reddit proceeds in tiers. New submissions languish unless they receive enough votes to crack the front page of /r/minecraft. Submissions that make it to the top of /r/minecraft then make it to /r/all, where everyone, not just people browsing /r/minecraft are able to see it.
Either way I haven't been able to replicate. The quality of /r/minecraft has gone downhill lately, and people now prefer to upvote junk such as "omg guys this island looks like a dick hahahaah" rather than builds. So it goes.
I have made a couple blocktopia videos, and I will do more 
I haven't been doing any recording lately, but I will start doing them again
Guys:
Don't just wait for the admins to advertise blocktopia. Is is your community as well, so if you want it to live on, please do something about it. Like mentioned above, even if it's just twitter posts, youtube videos, every little helps. #Tesco.
I haven't been doing any recording lately, but I will start doing them again
Guys:
Don't just wait for the admins to advertise blocktopia. Is is your community as well, so if you want it to live on, please do something about it. Like mentioned above, even if it's just twitter posts, youtube videos, every little helps. #Tesco.
I went searching for MC servers and look at what I found...................
Obviously 2000 people is insane to have but I checked it out and they have many many servers. That picture is advertisment paid on a website. So who knows what it can bring.
Tottaly true. I cant play, due to 1.5.2 update, and i know that people say 'oohhh get mcvc' but when i use it it says to update my minecraft launcher, and i cant. So i cant playIts just sleepy - closure of classic, 1.5.2, exams. Wait to summer, then we can advertise our quality servers
your YouTube videos will never successful because you disable access to them on mobiles :cI have made a couple blocktopia videos, and I will do more
I haven't been doing any recording lately, but I will start doing them again
Guys:
Don't just wait for the admins to advertise blocktopia. Is is your community as well, so if you want it to live on, please do something about it. Like mentioned above, even if it's just twitter posts, youtube videos, every little helps. #Tesco.
your YouTube videos will never successful because you disable access to them on mobiles :cI have made a couple blocktopia videos, and I will do more
I haven't been doing any recording lately, but I will start doing them again
Guys:
Don't just wait for the admins to advertise blocktopia. Is is your community as well, so if you want it to live on, please do something about it. Like mentioned above, even if it's just twitter posts, youtube videos, every little helps. #Tesco.
I don't know how to change it D:
Summer is fast approaching by the way. Perhaps we should coincide the beginning of summer with some well-timed advertising?
We aren't going to die though. The Premium servers have always been like this.
The Classic servers have always been heavily populated, with Premium averaging maybe 24 players at a time.
We aren't going to die though. The Premium servers have always been like this.
The Classic servers have always been heavily populated, with Premium averaging maybe 24 players at a time.
That would probably be best, in my opinion.Summer is fast approaching by the way. Perhaps we should coincide the beginning of summer with some well-timed advertising?
We aren't going to die though. The Premium servers have always been like this.
The Classic servers have always been heavily populated, with Premium averaging maybe 24 players at a time.
We definitely won't die, but if we want more members, some advertising set up before summer break officially begins in the US would prove to bring in players. There will no doubt be some people who will look for some servers they'll feel like trying out over the summer, and having our server set up just might make their choice.
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