ACCOUNT DRIVE 2013! Read me!

Waldoff

Administrator
Staff member
Addition: Anyone who donates more than 75 dollars or self advertises at least 5000 pageviews (or 10 accounts) will automatically get a Box of Angry Halflings . In addition to this, anyone who donates over 200 dollars during the drive or self advertises at least 10,000 pageviews (or 20 accounts) automatically gets a Digested Hexdoll. (These prizes will be sent once a day or so, since they are not automatic in the system.)

It is once again that time of year!

Overview:

This years account drive goes from SEPTEMBER 6th to SEPTEMBER 20th. On September 21st there will be a raffle (with details below) for all those who participated in this years account drive.

This years drive will have TWO WEEKS with double experience. We have done this because a poll on our Facebook and elsewhere have shown that it will allow the most people to enjoy the bonus! The weeks will be September 21 through 28 and October 12 through 19. This nearly doubles the amount of exp time as last year.

We have added a good deal of things for this years drive, so please be sure to read the post if you want to participate!

Participation:
There are three major ways to participate in the account drive!

Option 1:
First, you can advertise or promote the server yourself.

Make a post, buy an advertisement, stand in the middle of the street with an SoD sign... whatever you want wherever you want within the rules outlined below to bring in people to the server. Do you know of a kick ass guild or forum who might want to relive their EQ glory days? Make a post about SoD. Know a group of people who enjoy MMOs and want a new challenge? Tell them we have one.

Further, if you want to do something IN REAL LIFE (oh the horror) that is also awesome! Do you go to college? Post some signs around saying to try out SoD! All you have to do is either send me a picture or tell me where you are, and I can use geolocation data to see who checks us out from your efforts!

All you have to do is PM me with whatever you did, and I can use the site analytics to tell how successful it was. Simply give an effort and you will get an entry into the drive lottery. Further, for every 50 pageviews you get 1 fame and if any of those page views end up making an account you get another 5 each. Each 100 pageviews or 5 referred accounts that our site gets from everyone combined will add 1% to the experience bonus for the bonus weeks. Feel free to have them add your name to more than one account if they want to two box, but you will only get credit for one account referred per IP unless you talk to me to let me know that there are more than one person playing from one location!

We also have a new offer this year! If you go after friends or family, have them put your character name in the "Referral" box of the account creation menu. Anyone who does this gets a fame bonus for themselves AND the new account! This bonus will be handed out at the end of the drive since I will have to go through and make sure of legitimacy. Also both characters will get 1 entry into the lottery.

Some rules for self advertising and referrals:
  • The website must WANT us there. If there are rules against advertising or advertising game mods specifically do not post!
  • Using tricks to get people to click your ad is not allowed! No free Ipod banners!
  • No spamming! If someones posted a thread on a forum do not post another one!
  • You can not just ask people to click your referral link as a favor to you. You have to actually be selling the game!

Option 2:
If you would rather leave the advertising work to the staff, you can also donate money during the account drive. Money donated during the account drive is separate from server costs and is put towards advertisements. Last year we had adverts on Google, Facebook, Reddit, Something Awful and a few others. If you think you have a great idea for a place for me to spend the money - let me know and I will throw you some fame if we use it!

All Account Drive donations should be through our online portal. Fame will be given instantly upon donation at 2 fame per dollar for the first 100 dollars, and then 1 fame per dollar afterward per character. You will also get an entry into the lottery for each 10 dollars.

If for some reason you can not use our portal (there should be no reason like this!!!) you can give via paypal and send an email to [email protected]. Fame this way will *not* be instant. Please do use paypal unless you have to!

The Lotteries:
There will be TWO lotteries. One will take every one of your "entries" into account while one will be a pure single entry for everyone who participates. By participate I mean even TRY to make a post somewhere! Even a comment on a youtube video! Anything! Just post it in this thread if you get below 50 pageviews and I will manually add your name to the participation lotto.

I am hoping that this lets people without much time throw in 10 bucks or post something quickly on a webside without being completely out of the running.

The prizes for the "every entry counts" lottery are:
Race Change (1)
500 Fame (1)
250 Fame (3)
75,000 Platinum (1)
50,000 Platinum (1)
5,000 Platinum (5)
Shoebox of Plagued Rats
Bag of Rabid Bunnies
Crate of Pissed Gnomes
Portal of Midgit Elephants
Apes in a Barrel
Mesmo Gun
Snakes in a Pail
Bottle of Leeches
Melwin's Idol of Joy (3)
Digested Hexdoll

The Prize for the "one entry per participant" is:
Custom Player Title
Lucky Charm of Power (1)


Bonus Experience:

I was considering capping the bonus experience at 100% but have decided against it. Instead, at 75% bonus all percentage gains listed above will be halved. At 150% they will be quartered. Remember this will be for twice the period of last year. I still see the bonus easily reading over 100%.


That is all there is to it. Remember that we have two new guides for newbies that really can help things out: the Starting Guide and the Starting Area Guide.

Bonus Competitions:

During the bonus experience weeks themselves, we will be having a bunch of interesting competitions to go along with our shiny new leaderboard page. This will include races to 65 during the drive for possible titles and other things!



Good luck everyone! The GM team has a few fun things planned as well. Enjoy the festivities.
 
Kind of stingy on the fame, yeah? $1,400 Race changes even being a possibility is sadder than breaking your glasses in a strip club parking lot. Clever idea breaking up the xp weeks. Maybe it will break the cycle of xp bonus starts = PEOPLE!, xp bonus over = still enough people!, one week later = crickets noises in Athica.
 
I have $100 left in my ad campaign from the last time I participated in an account drive. The campaign is now active until my funds run out :)

(I'm curious as to how many people actually sign up to play out of the thousands of clicks I will be getting)

What seems to be the best method to get people hooked?
 
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What seems to be the best method to get people hooked?

Answering questions in <Dalayan Beginners> guild chat without being a smartass (seriously). The main thread among all of the "this is why I stuck around" comments that I see is community. Some of that is staff-based with red and blue names on posts on the forums and answering petitions without a "someone will be with you in 6 days" response. However, the real kicker is when non-staff characters take the time to be helpful, polite, and sociable in public channels. It's really what we bring to the table that games like WoW just can't.
 
I'll be honest; part of the reason I enjoy WoW so much is that I got in with a raiding guild right off the bat that was extremely nice and helpful to me. It was the same way with the community here as well, with the added benefit of EQ nostalgia. Still, the community definitely was the deciding factor even for me.
 
Answering questions in <Dalayan Beginners> guild chat without being a smartass (seriously). The main thread among all of the "this is why I stuck around" comments that I see is community. Some of that is staff-based with red and blue names on posts on the forums and answering petitions without a "someone will be with you in 6 days" response. However, the real kicker is when non-staff characters take the time to be helpful, polite, and sociable in public channels. It's really what we bring to the table that games like WoW just can't.

This is true, I stuck around because Goons were cool and helpful, so was the rest of the community, except that jumbers dude.
 
I know it's a bit late to say this but wouldn't the account drive be best started when client 2.5 is up and ready to go?
 
2.5 beta is scheduled to start soon after the end the of the bonus week.


There will definitely be a celebration then too, but this time of year right after summer is perfect for account drives and we are a bit overdue.
 
I know this is just my 2 bits, but as a noobie one of the hardest things to learn was MoP.

What about selling/rewarding/raffeling an illision item to make you non KoS? (Kinda like the fold thingy does).

Make it drop in the catacombs or something and steer noobs to it.

Or a potion clicky that bocks one of the DT's or something like that.
 
Well, MOP seems alot easier now that if your under 20 or whatever you cant die, and the little buff balls that give you bard speed or the illusion pass thing.
 
Oh I know. I am just trying to point out some of the big speed bumps that I think hold noobies back or make em rage quit lol.
 
Anyone have any cool flyers that would go well with putting them up around a college campus?

I thought about it, but the 10,000 viewers cutoff thing kind of prevented it for me. My school doesn't start going until Oct 4th, and even then we only have ~4500 students total across 2 campuses.

Ah well, I'll make some posts on some other forums I think.
 
I thought about it, but the 10,000 viewers cutoff thing kind of prevented it for me. My school doesn't start going until Oct 4th, and even then we only have ~4500 students total across 2 campuses.

Ah well, I'll make some posts on some other forums I think.

Remember that if anyone actually makes an account, it counts for a ton more. I also am going to try and give a bit extra to people who do things IRL. The problem with view count is if I put it too low, people can throw 10 bucks onto google adwords, put things to make people click, and advertise on a bunch of pages with REALLY low clicks per cent - the kind of sites where no one will end up playing.

So if you think you want to do something IRL, shoot me a picture in PMs, and I will happily take the methods into consideration when giving fame.
 
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