Growing the Community

neccta · Feb 13, 2015

I think that it goes without saying that we would all like to see this forum get bigger and have a strong community behind it; but getting there is challenging. This is only a suggestion but I believe it would kill two birds with one stone.

Start a community 4.3.4 server. It doesn't need to be on any top100 sites or try to compete with other servers. It's purpose is to grow the community and find and fix bugs faster for the repack.

So how can this grow the community?
Speaking for myself, I would love to log into the community server to do dungeons and raids. I think one reason is because I'm a die-hard WoW fan and I only played Cata for 1 month before I needed to focus on other things and I missed the entire expansion; but I digress. It would be a great place to make friends that you may have never been able to on the forums. It would bring in additional traffic to the site, bringing greater focus on the Repack/Forums and thus in turn a bigger community.

What about bug fixes?
I may be getting ahead of myself here, but I could write a simple WoW addon that would submit bug reports in game that would be sent to the forums. But as you may imagine if you have hundreds of players on the site you would get more bug reports and a more stable server/repack.

Conclusion
I think that making 4.3.4 your "flagship" repack was a smart thing because it's the least supported expansion out there. I believe that you have something really special here and you can be the first place to have a rock solid 4.3.4 server. To state the obvious you would need a server to host this on which would cost you, but I think it would be worth it.

ExO · Feb 13, 2015

Hm yeah. I have been trying to grow the community and improve the forum in general by different things.

However, I also thought about something like this.

We had Zealot WoW which was an instant 85 realm though so not the same thing, and it was more based on being a server than a part of emucoach/the community.
But I just don't know if this is worth it, we would obviously have to buy a host etc, but the main thing is, I just don't know if it's worth it. If enough of players would come log on it and actually make use of it from emucoach. If we had to make more players come on it, we would have to market it, topsite and what not AND then it would obviously result in being more of a server than a part of emucoach.

Pretty sure you get my point.

neccta · Feb 15, 2015

Yeah I understand, my suggestion was pretty bold. But like you said, you just don't know if it would work. There are always other ways to gain members

ExO · Feb 15, 2015

neccta said:
Yeah I understand, my suggestion was pretty bold. But like you said, you just don't know if it would work. There are always other ways to gain members

Yes of course. I will consider it though, but right now it may not be something we set-up as I'm quite busy already with real life (school) and fixing the repack.

Disco2Disco · Feb 20, 2015

Your chances of establishing a community, a high populated community on your forums is slim, suggestions such as launching your very private emucoach server specifically meant to bring players to your forum wouldn't help your community growing in activity, it would increase the numbers of sign ups, but most people wants to play, not work on private servers, so overall that's a real bad idea, you get lots of idle members, and a whole bunch of bots.

What you need to do is look for new audience in other aspects of the internet world, not only emulation of wow servers, no! you need to reach out for all the people sitting infront of a computer screen daily, confronting that plan is never easy as you set a purpose for your website, who would in their right mind think this forum was for my little barbie girl discussions, no one!, because the name is emucoach, so here's what you do, to reach a new audience you need them to get overwhelmed by your forum, and find interest in it, and their interests so reaching out for shoot'em up gamers would require that you open another forum for discussions regarding specific games, where they can spend their daily time on the pc discussing games with their newfound friends. and same goes for everything else, anime, minecraft and all such things, eventually you will see a raise in activity and more and more members will come and try out this forum containing more than just emulation, and perhaps one day try out wow emulation themselves.

neccta · Feb 25, 2015

Yeah I got agree with you there. The emulation community really is a niche market. Having sub forums on other topics would be nice to see. Or even having something entirely new.

ExO · Feb 28, 2015

neccta said:
Yeah I got agree with you there. The emulation community really is a niche market. Having sub forums on other topics would be nice to see. Or even having something entirely new.

Yeah I agree, could be a big step to add other sub sections, but could be worth it in the end. I'll try to think about it, which kind of sections etc etc, in general how emucoach can improve.

DrkJstr · Mar 10, 2015

ExO, you are in a big catch 22 right now as far as building a community.

This site/forum is centered around EmuCoach as a closed source repack; so to launch a server using it specifically would be the easiest way to build a community. That being said, it will not build the community you are looking for (as mentioned it would be more about the game server than the forums).

Keeping EmuCoach closed source, limits the traffic by the types of people that could draw people to the forums. I can tell you I joined the forums about 6 months ago, registered, breezed through the forums and left. This is only the second time I've been back since I registered; and it was more out of boredom than anything (sorry for the honesty)..

There is nothing truly unique here.. and you will need to change that. I can easily find everything (even EmuCoach) on other sites that have more traffic and better help/tutorials/shares/etc.

I would start by "hiring" a medium to large forum team. This team would not be the typical delete/ban spam team, but a team of people with some actual skills, from programming to testing; but more importantly.. writing skills. This team would focus on bringing content, reviews, tutorials, etc to the site/forums.

Secondly you should consider having a test bed for EmuCoach.. nothing fancy and not to support 1000+ users consistently.. think of it more as a live action trailer for up coming releases to your repack. This would be the teaser that could increase traffic (and sales).

Feel free to ignore everything I've said, like I said, I haven't been here long nor often.. but I do see the potential. I thought I'd offer some words of advice and encouragement. If you want to bounce some ideas back and forth; PM me

Regardless, I wish you the best of luck

DevilSpeak · Mar 28, 2015

ExO said:
Yeah I agree, could be a big step to add other sub sections, but could be worth it in the end. I'll try to think about it, which kind of sections etc etc, in general how emucoach can improve.

I think you could poll the current community and ask what EMU development sections everyone would like to add.

Like lets just say for example "Minecraft" or "Nexus TK". and grow from there. This is a wonderful community as it is, from my first impression, and will grow very nice as long as you have sections that are very active, and mature members that enjoy to develop and share there ideas.
Adding more diverse subscription packages such as monthly ect added to your current ones.
Also adding advertisements for members servers ect to help pay for community, upgrades, ect.

Just my 2 cents, just my idea. Thank you for reading.

ExO · Mar 28, 2015

DevilSpeak said:
I think you could poll the current community and ask what EMU development sections everyone would like to add.

Like lets just say for example "Minecraft" or "Nexus TK". and grow from there. This is a wonderful community as it is, from my first impression, and will grow very nice as long as you have sections that are very active, and mature members that enjoy to develop and share there ideas.
Adding more diverse subscription packages such as monthly ect added to your current ones.
Also adding advertisements for members servers ect to help pay for community, upgrades, ect.

Just my 2 cents, just my idea. Thank you for reading.

I agree on most of the things you said. Any input is highly appreciated and right now I feel like we do indeed grow, with the posts and similar. It's just about keeping the sections active as you mentioned.