So a long time ago I wrote an article for TCP Magazine on the history of forums (I forget the issue number). Anyhow, the rough theme of that article seemed to be about how the community had migrated around from/to different forums, split, diffused and so forth. So I was wondering what the state of the world of forum's is right now? I mainly ask this cause I always assumed that PCF (formerly EntropiaForum) was still the "it" place. But I went on there the other day to look at the discussion on Entropia Partners that Tia linked me and it was only 3 pages long and with just a handful of people posting and one or two seemed to be nerks. I looked at the rest of the posts in "new" and it all seemed to be forsale/wanted posts... Even the front page now only contains client loader news... As far as I knew last the entropia forum didn't really have a lot going on... but I think MA post there? Next island forum is pretty dead. I know virtualmindhive is largely dead. We have a bit of a buzzing community of arkadians on ark forum I think... I don't know much about how busy the cyrene forum is but guessing that is a small community. So I guess the question is, what goes on? Personally I'd say this seems to be a combination of the game being better with more content than it used to have (so less need to spend our time on forums when there is other fun to be had) and that we have the different communities on different planets. This is also the splitting of responsibility. We used to get this a lot in the old days with us only getting access to details through Marco. "I don't know, I guess we'd need to talk to the devs" or words to that effect was a typical comment. Now we have this "well we'd need to ask MA" line. With no access to the folks who know it makes more sense for communities to form around people they actually can talk to. ie the PP's with Ark leading the way from what I hear. Not really sure where I am going with this really, maybe to say we should be trying to push EP a bit more. It seems to be the only forum with a bit of a community that sits squarely in the middle of things and covers not just the different planets but even limited discussion of other games and tech and science (which is nice). Its starting to remind me now of the early e-pec days so it would be good to see things continue to develop. Wistrel
I think the effect of 'social media' should not be underestimated. Where in the past people discussed content at various specific places where it occured nowadays more and more links to content are shared on social media and discussed there instead of at the original sites. Yep, social media in fact is cancer, antisocially leeching off the work of others. In the long run it also looks like Entropia Universe is rather on a slight downward trend, considering indicators like http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=entropia+universe or the CLD performance: http://www.entropiaplanets.com/wiki/CLD#Chart. Regarding EP, the metrics say it's on a slight upward trend on the long run. Unfortunately EP has an insane ratio of active/passive users, a lot of people read it but only a few post themselves or edit the wiki, although the latter is slowly changing to the better. It's actually quite nice to see this overall development, being an indie no-profit site without spamming links and ads like other sites or having MA's support like other sites. And then, if you knew what I know you'd probably share my opinion that "the future" for EP "is brighter than ever". ;) So... what can we do to improve?
I'd like to see a lot of Entropia Planets adverts in the game... or is that not allowed? Good points on social Media Tass. I'd forgotten that! The search graph is interesting but I actually think there are a couple of things that might contribute to its drop off. First, there is a LOT more entropia advertising going on at the moment which would cut out the need to search for it as I imagine a lot of interested parties would simply click an add. The other effect is the pp's. People are more likely to be searching one of the planets now rather than the overall platform. The CLD well interesting to note this IS a slight downward trend but I think this was inevitable. The problem with CLD's is that they shit all over deposits. A lot of people will simply use them as a way of funding their game play (eg me) like a "one time subscription payment" almost. Of note is that their price recently jumped up a lot. I think one bad thing for entropia right now is the content of Kim's talk which didn't seem to be exactly positive. Another is the serious lack of updating there has been lately.
