Please tell us how the hell, trial keys are given to pro-adena website advertizers when in the mean time I know of several fansite who do their best - and for years now! - to fully enforce your advertisement policy and are rewarded with nothing...namely sites like L2pets.com or L2FFS (lineage2.free.fr), Stratics... !!
I mean.. come-on !!! That's not unfair, that's a total joke : please, feel free to explain us why Gamespot, whose openly advertising for cheat gets such generous treatment?
click on the 'about'-link and it'll lead you to this disclaimer-site (http://bwp.gamespot.com/search?show_disclaimer=1) but it's really sad to see such 'promotion' while other sites (mainly the real fan-sites) have to do everything to remove such advertising from thier site or otherwise ncsoft would 'ban' them from the official fansite list ....
That is actually part of the (at least it looks like) Google's AdSense advertising service.
I know that over at the Vault we do battle with them constantly because of the ads that come down the pipe to affect us, based on relevancy. As they pop up, they get nuked on our end, but we have little control (As I would imagine Gamespot has little control) over the relevant ads that AdSense provides.
I know a good many sites are starting to debate hassle vs income from AdSense. Some of the smaller sites I manage are planning to do away with them altogether, in fact.
What does what I know about free sites and online advertising have to do with anything?
I get that NC is trying to increase their playerbase, but advertising on a website that also advertises CHEATING methods is in bad taste.
If I had a business I wouldn't advertise on a free site that was against my business policy, conflict of interest. It's OK for me to advertise on their site just as long as I don't use any of their other services??? Ok, you're right, I just don't know much. Advertise where adena sales are offered. Makes perfect sense. Right.
I guess they should start advertising on brogame then, and l2itemgarden, and various others that you can "google".
Our marketing team who set up the promotion and I are looking into this. You are absolutely correct that we do not allow sites that we support to list sites that violate our ToS. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.
Please tell us how the hell, trial keys are given to pro-adena website advertizers when in the mean time I know of several fansite who do their best - and for years now! - to fully enforce your advertisement policy and are rewarded with nothing...namely sites like L2pets.com or L2FFS (lineage2.free.fr), Stratics... !!
The idea of trial codes is to get new players to play the game. Those websites you listed (most of the L2 fansites, in fact, if not all) have a much smaller potential market than GameSpot. Not only do they have fewer visitors overall, but those who do visit them likely already play the game (or used to). Advertising on GameSpot has the potential to reach many more new players than advertising on any (or all) of the fansites ever would.
I'm not saying I like the fact that GameSpot advertises that stuff, but on the other hand I would really like for L2 to gain a lot more players, so it's a trade-off I'd be pretty satisfied with (if it worked to attract new players.)
To relate it to real life stuff (as someone already did) it would be like an Evangelistic television program trying to get more people to watch. Advertising on the Christian television station they are already carried on wouldn't do much good, because those people most likely already watch the program. So they go and buy advertising slots on the major networks. It doesn't matter that they don't agree with the morals presented on those stations, they are reaching a much bigger potential audience. (Sorry for the religious example, but since we are talking about 'morals' here, it's hard to make a good comparison using a cooking show or something like that.)
This is slighly off topic, but i do think the lineage2 should be advertised slighly more, to compete with WOW (world of warcraft) Most people do NOT play lineage becouse they dont like it, they dont play..... beocuse they have never heard of it before.
People have no control over google adsense. Depending on what you've typed... or what site it's on... adsense will stick in any add that seems appropriate.
For the one stating that fan sites reach a smaller player base, allow me to tell you that you are wrong in several ways.
First, you dismiss the existence of a network, between a fan site and the external gaming world : be sure that many news mags, online or not, do try to reach that kind of fan site to get a slight taste of any given game. Not to mention that these forum users will also participate freely to external advertisement of the trial account. Also as a player, the first thing I do when I wanna check a game is to go.. on several of its fansite : these are the very sole places where you can get a balanced and general feeling of its community. Same goes for movies alse.. would you tell me here that no one else does the same?
Second, additional benefits for using a fan site trials operation comes indirectly , through the various help these new trial players will get : where do you think newbies go when they need info/answers to the game : Lamespot or Stratics/Vault/etc..?
Third, if you really really wanna reach those who do not know of L2 whatsoever, why not simply advertise through newspaper website/major TV or dedicated Computer game mags? These should offer the very "mass" communication you seem so eager to seek and being non "mmorpgs" oriented, TOS issues will less than likely occur. there are also those various Direct download websites, where ppl can buy and dl their games immediately, like direct2drive or fileplanet, etc...
But then, you might realize one thing : the only sites where we can be sure of their TOS are these very fan sites you seem to judge "inappropriate" for mass advertisement. ;)
### EDIT #####
And I'm not even talking about the "potential market" of gamespot.. because we all know the great army of new bo.. erf.. of new players that came, right. :/
It's time to think new trial advertisements system and see how good would a fan site orientation be. Maybe they could ask EvE ppl how they did this : I remember using trial through one of their fan site, registration was mandatory with 24hours to wait before receiving the code.. because that gamespot one doesn't make it for the coding effort made toward ingame trial gameplay imo.
GameSpot® (www.gamespot.com) is a leading online source for gaming information, visited by 1.5 million¹ gamers every day.
Benefits
<ul type="square"> Attracts and retains one of the Web's largest concentrations of the coveted 13- to 34-year-old male demographic
Builds robust advertising efficiencies by reaching a large and loyal audience
Offers innovative marketing solutions aligned with highly sought-after content
Audience Profile2
<ul type="square"> Gender: 96% male
Average age: 24 years
90% between 13-34 years old
83% play console games, 74% play PC games, 50% play handheld/portable games
66% have played an online game in the past 12 months (excluding casual games)
Purchased an average of eight games in the past six months
Spent an average of $1,663 on games and game hardware in the past year
72% gave gaming advice to friends/family in the last year
94% would recommend GameSpot
86% use broadband
What fansite do you know of that boasts such numbers? Stratics and Warcry do offer a network outside of just L2, but even so, I don't think they can boast 1.5 million gamers a day. They might not even have 1.5 million members total. (I don't know, haven't looked.)
I'm not knocking the fan sites, I know they do a lot of good. But releasing trial keys to fansites only would severely limit the available audience. Most of the people on the websites (especially a website like L2pets) already play L2. The few that don't, would have to be specifically looking for information on L2 in order to wander onto those sites, in which case, they are probably already likely to buy it. I imagine NCsoft's target audience w/ these trials is video game players (MMO or Single players) who have never played L2. GameSpot offers both of those.
Also as a player, the first thing I do when I wanna check a game is to go.. on several of its fansite
I've never once done that, unless for some reason the official website doesn't have a forum. I imagine that the majority of players check the official site first and foremost. I also believe that if an "external" media source wanted to do an article or review of a video game, they are going to go straight to the official site first. Only if they were reporting on friction btwn devs and players (such as in Vanguard, Dark & Light or SWG) can I imagine them going first to a fansite.
Second, additional benefits for using a fan site trials operation comes indirectly , through the various help these new trial players will get
Obviously, players go to Stratics for guides, but how does that make Stratics reach a larger audience than GameSpot? I don't see how that has anything to do with advertising.
Third, if you really really wanna reach those who do not know of L2 whatsoever, why not simply advertise through newspaper website/major TV or dedicated Computer game mags?
We all wish that NCsoft would do more advertising. Players have been calling for it for years. There seems to be no answer as to why NCsoft NA does not place more advertisements in gaming magazines like PCGamer or websites like MMORPG.
However, a newspaper? That would not be a wise way to spend allotted marketing dollars. NCsoft is trying to reach a target audience - video game players. It's probably even more narrow than that. Most companies will narrow their target audience down to a very specific age range, gender, household income, etc. Then they choose the advertising media that will reach the most members of that target audience. Advertising in newspapers may reach millions - but it would not reach millions of their target audience. A gaming company like NCsoft is going to ask, "how many gamers read newspapers?" and "how many newspaper readers play games?" I don't know the actual figures, but advertising in a newspaper would spend a lot of money to reach a relatively small amount of people, even if you went in a national newspaper like USA Today.
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Advertising on GameSpot was a good move, IMO. You can all cry about the amount of farmers that were doing this event, but I don't believe that all of those farmers were trial accounts. Plus, I have seen a LOT of new players doing this trial, so I believe it worked. How effectively? I can't say. But it did give many new players the opportunity to try the game.
Instead of complaining that GameSpot got trials and fansites didn't, why not congratulate NCsoft and then encourage them to do trials on the fansites at a later date? Who says NCsoft is only allowed to do this once? It would be great if they would continue this upward trend they've got going on lately and continue to advertise. Why not offer encouragement when they try (what you've been asking them to try for years) rather than shooting them down for everything they do?
People have no control over google adsense. Depending on what you've typed... or what site it's on... adsense will stick in any add that seems appropriate.
Actually thats untrue, sites can set up filters with google that removes these kinda of ads.
We had google ads on Stratics for a while, on rare occation a seller site would find a way to circumvent our filters, we then decided to take the zero tollerance approach and remove all google ads from our sites even though it meant a slight loss in ad revenue.
Honestly I love Vault, but I kinda wish they'd take the same decision and remove that center google row, its so often filled with adena ads and powerleveling ads :(
1. Sites like Stratics are MMORPG networks, which is the target audience.
2. Gamespot is for all games and consoles (what interest would a Wii player have in Lineage II?), so while they have a huge visitrate larger than say Stratics, a lot of the exposure would simply go to waste as most regular players or console players would have absolutely no interest in Lineage II.
3. Even though many Lineage II players see the trials too, they too are important, since it will give them an oppertunity to get friends to try out the game. Heck while Gamespots trial key thing has been going on, I've invited several people to join the game and try it out, even some fellow staffers.
This of course being said, it certainly does make business sense to work with places such as Fileplanet, gamespot, etc.
1. Sites like Stratics are MMORPG networks, which is the target audience.
I know they are MMORPG networks, I even said so: "Stratics and Warcry do offer a network outside of just L2, but even so, I don't think they can boast 1.5 million gamers a day."
2. Gamespot is for all games and consoles (what interest would a Wii player have in Lineage II?), so while they have a huge visitrate larger than say Stratics, a lot of the exposure would simply go to waste as most regular players or console players would have absolutely no interest in Lineage II.
Was your very first video game experience an MMO? I know mine wasn't. MMO players do not typically start out as exclusively MMO players, they start as video game players (console or PC.) So why shouldn't NCsoft target them? Their target audience is going to be "video game players", which would include, but not be limited to "MMO game players". GameSpot targets both.
If I owned a gymnastics academy and wanted to advertise my gym and get more children to come take gymnastics, I would not just advertise to kids who I knew had already taken gymnastics before (whether at my gym or another). I would try to go to the preschools and the elementary schools and advertise to all kids, whether they took gymnastics, soccer, softball, ballet, whatever. I would want more kids to come to my gym, so I would market to all kids. If I marketed only to kids who were in gymnastics already, sure, a few may leave their current gym and come to mine, but not nearly as many as if I marketed to all kids.
Not every kid I advertise to is going to come to my gym, but I've reached a much larger group of potential customers (for instance, in a city w/ a pop. of 200k, there would be about 45k kids under 18. Out of those, perhaps 6.5k have ever taken gymnastics. Why would I advertise to only those 6.5k kids, when I have 38.5k other kids to pull from?) Depending on my gym and program needs at the time, I might narrow my target audience down to preschoolers or elementary aged boys, but even in doing so, I still would advertise beyond the "already in/taken gymnastics" category.
In L2's case, 'all kids' is all video game players. 'Kids already taking gymnastics' are MMO players. I want players (kids) to play L2 (my gym), so I market to all of them.
3. Even though many Lineage II players see the trials too, they too are important, since it will give them an oppertunity to get friends to try out the game. Heck while Gamespots trial key thing has been going on, I've invited several people to join the game and try it out, even some fellow staffers.
Many MMOs give out "buddy keys". In fact, LOTRO just gave their players 40 keys each to give out. You're right, it's a good idea. Word of mouth is a good thing. This is, however, a separate advertising tactic than giving out free trials on a site like GameSpot. As you point out, there's some cross-over between the two, but it's fundamentally different. It's ok for NCsoft to have more than one advertising tactic. I hope they do either do more buddy keys (they've done a limited amount in the past, I believe) or more trials on fansites. However, the fact that word-of-mouth is good, doesn't negate the benefits of using other tactics (such as doing it on a site like GameSpot.)
People have no control over google adsense. Depending on what you've typed... or what site it's on... adsense will stick in any add that seems appropriate.
Actually thats untrue, sites can set up filters with google that removes these kinda of ads.
We had google ads on Stratics for a while, on rare occation a seller site would find a way to circumvent our filters, we then decided to take the zero tollerance approach and remove all google ads from our sites even though it meant a slight loss in ad revenue.
Honestly I love Vault, but I kinda wish they'd take the same decision and remove that center google row, its so often filled with adena ads and powerleveling ads :(
But on the other hand as L2Vault has there is a link asking for ANYONE to report these in. There is a filter they use but, I am sure LC will know this, the filters are hard to keep up with the adena sellers. There are more adena sellers coming out of the woodwork.
As for L2Vault site, there are times weeks go by that I don't see sellers on that ad's. Then when I do I report them as a few others do.
REPORT (http://www.arktic.net/wrath/REPORT.jpg)
So if more people do that the less sellers you would see in the ad's section. :)
Not to make this too long, but no thats not what you eluded to, you compared MMORPG sites to the 1,5 million visitors of gamespot, these 1,5 million visitors might be less valuable since a lot of these people are outside the target audience completely (console players) or in the zone of "highly unlikely to be interested".
It is also pretty unlikely L2 would be a good candidate for "first timers" to MMORPGs, gamespot even had crappy ratings for Lineage 2, so the only way first timers would generally be attracted to this would be by word of mouth of existing players (especially because of the limited scope of L2 compared to WoW), which again means targetting L2 players specifically.
I was simply mentioning this because I felt your value assessment was a bit off.
I started off on a Nintendo, not a PC. I was a console player, now I'm an MMO player.
My first MMO was L2.
o_O
So you went directly from Nintendo to L2?
Even if you did, its pretty safe to say that you're an incredibly small minority. The chances of a console player even seeing or taking notice of the ad, then ontop of that actually wanting to try the game with gamespots poor ratings of it is nearly infinitely small.
I didn't miss your 'point', I disagree with you. There's a world of difference.
Eh, are you Vampyress or her alt or something?
You didn't see who it was adressed to?
First of all, if you want to yet again initiate a public debate on these forums reguarding who is using underhanded tactics we can certainly do so. I am going to make sure it is noted on the record that it is YOU doing so not me. Luckily, this being a weekend, the community will have 2 days to read for itself who's starting this before people can lock this up and pretend it didn't happen or skew it.
To answer your question, this is not me it is not my husband, and it is not any of our other accounts and I fully expect Alyra will be making her promised IP checks. Whatever your issue with Cor is it is seperate then the issue you have with me.
I think you completely missed the point, but thats ok, my origional point stands alone, no need to drag it on.
No it is again you that completely missed the point. You stated that you wish Vault would take the step you took to remove the google ads, thus, filtering out the adena sellers. Seridove does not have the authority to remove the ads from her section of site, instead, they are campaigning to have adena selling sites removed from the google search results via the link in that image I provided.
Typically when people are replying to someone, they quote them. No, I didn't bother to look at who it was actually responding to, since it came right on the heels of my reply and seemed to respond to mine.
The chances of a console player even seeing or taking notice of the ad, then ontop of that actually wanting to try the game with gamespots poor ratings of it is nearly infinitely small.
GameSpot users, on the other hand, have rated it an 8.0.
As far as seeing the ad... I received an e-mail from gamespot advertising the free trial, so I think most GameSpot users (who are signed up for e-mail) at least saw the ad, even if they did not pay it any attention.
First of all, if you want to yet again initiate a public debate
I don't quite see how being confused when someone responds my replys to you have anything to do with "initiating public debate". It was simple sarcasm directed at Cor, it has nothing to do with you.
As for the rest of it, I said that matter was closed with that one statement. If there's any issue with it, either Jay or Seridove knows how to contact me.
Typically when people are replying to someone, they quote them.
There's no point in quoting when I wasn't adressing any specific points of the posts :p It does say right above the post who its directed to ;)
GameSpot users, on the other hand, have rated it an 8.0.
As far as seeing the ad... I received an e-mail from gamespot advertising the free trial, so I think most GameSpot users (who are signed up for e-mail) at least saw the ad, even if they did not pay it any attention.
I agree with you on many on your points, my point is just that 1,5 million of those users wouldn't generally be as much worth on a one on one scale with mmorpg players or specifically targetted networks.
In the end, its fairly pointless to make a long debate over, I agree with you that large networks such as gamespots should have trials on them, its good for Lineage II.
Thank you, LC, for so lovingly pointing out that ad. Knowing you are there policing the few that slip through the cracks while the managers are out doing other things makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.
I only hope that someday I may return the favor.
Secondly, I think that any discussion other than the point of this thread and the debate that it has spurred should remain out of this forum. Clearly, these are not the places to discuss such things.
And, more to the point of the thread it self, in keeping with my last point: I say that any site with relevance to gaming, be it Gamespot, PCGamer, IGN, Stratics Network, Warcry network, Nintendo.com, Sony.com, etc should be given a chance to host trial keys. Now, obviously Sony would be a bad choice, given their competition in the MMO industry, but it was made as an example.
So long as they are ATTEMPTING (that's for you there, LC) to control the ads that they receive as part of their revenue stream, they should get a chance.
Does traffic matter? You bet your [censored] it does. Reach out to the largest base you can, and then promote the living daylights out of it through everything else. Then take turns cycling through the different networks.
New players biggest hurdle in the game (I won't count ebayers since a new ebayer isn't really a positive addition to the game x.x) is money for gear. Running the trials during piggietime sorted that out and gave people a far enough stretch until frustration hits home to really get hooked on the game and the people.