Agree with this.I don't.

Why should RV go down? We are a community and communicate through this website... our purpose has temporarily shifted from 'helping RS players & remaining a close community of gamers with common interests' to only 'remaining a close community of gamers with common interests'. As long as something has a function, that something does not 'need to' go down. Obviously there are a ton of other similar communities out there, and perhaps even cheaper, 'free' alternatives to stay in contact with a community... but it's a matter of being independent and freelance, having a name. RV can go in whatever direction the people want - it's a phase of identity at the moment, just like in real life. Everyone has just too many expectations from RV, they should just stop being too cynical, you don't just ditch a friend if he/she starts being less exciting, do you?

Henner, if you just come here and pull the down card, it doesn't help much either... come on, I know you can be an optimistic person! :p What we need to do is figure out our identity, that means, figuring out what we want to do next to being a community. A community is likely to shrink after time, people grow up, change interests, stop playing games (or not?), get busy, leave the community.... so it is a good idea to consider ways of getting new faces. Like I said, if we want to only remain a community, then it will be difficult to get new people, as there isn't an obvious unique attraction.. so at the moment it's probably easiest to get new people by asking friends to join, but we can't just rely on that, or can we? If I were you, I would put more effort in finishing that topic, I mentioned now many times, and deciding on what we aim to be, then figure out how we will become that.... discussion, public poll, evaluation, implementation. We've had plenty of suggestions in our discussions, but the decision part is just missing... if everyone just wants to remain a community with forums, then we shouldn't be surprised about the consequences though.

I agree with the decision to make RV into a general gaming site was perhaps made too rashly. I agree that RV isn't what it was.

I disagree with the idea it should be shut down. I've made a lot of friends here and it will always be that kind of place for me - A home away from home.

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Taking a moment to note the irony in that these "omg RV is dying@@@" topics draw some of the most activity.

Maybe they're all like me, they lurk incredibly hard and never post.

Honestly, I don't find the activity of RV to be so bad. I used to be in a group called The Empire Rising (some of you may be familiar with it) that never was incredibly active, but it was enough that I could check every hour or so. It did get a little sad when activity was almost halted, but for the longest time, about fifteen or so people were there pretty often, and I became pretty good friends with all of them. Being a part of a forum with so many new posts every second is hard to keep track. RV is very mellow, with pretty constant posts, and doesn't require me to look back here every few seconds and check three new posts. I just wish I could get to know you all better.

Well, we are gaining new members, even if at a slow rate. But if getting new people really matters THAT much, then we should start advertising. Didn't we do that in the past, anyways?

And hell no, RV shouldn't be shut down.

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Add me on Steam! Click this thingy!
If you're in the Runevillage group, it makes it easier to identify you!

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Kikori wrote:

Topsummoner wrote:

Riptide wrote:

I used to get you and J@n mixed up. Except your funnier. And nicer. Happy 21st bro!

Oh man Jan, you just got zinged by Riptide. How much does THAT suck?

Well, statistically speaking, slightly more than a giant suckusaur. A dire one.

PenguinGuy wrote:

Lets see if I remember how to play...

EX REX IS MAFIA SCUM FOURTHVOTER UNVILLAGE BLAH BLAH BLAH SCUM BLAH WINE IN FRONT OF ME BLAH BLAH META GAME BLAH BLAH BLAH SMELLS OF ELDERBERRIES BLAH

Right?

No, Martin. I was on a forum that had lots of close people and it was closed by the band whose site it was on....it was pretty tragic.

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So - I implemented the FaceBook 'like' and 'share' features on news posts from the front page. That has the potential to spread the word a bit, granted people utilize them when visiting.

Perhaps we should think of adding something that'll catch Guest attention and give them a reason to visit the site. Users don't usually jump directly into the community, from what I've seen. I've only been to the Tip.It forums maybe 5 times(?) and that was only recently because I was talking to an administrator. Typically, if a page keeps your interest long enough, you will venture to test the community and become a part of the site.

What if we developed a text game for the homepage, similar to http://www.tribalwars.net, http://us.ikariam.com/, or even simpler, like http://www.ganglandmafia.com/. Starting out really small would let us gauge the impact and could give people a real reason to return to the site before joining the community. Just an idea. I saw that some of our users still play neopets. We seem to have a tendency of expecting visitors to join the community directly and gauge our userbase on forum registrations. It's time to focus more on how many unique hits our homepage gets as these are the people (should they not register) that came, saw, and passed on. We need to figure out why they decided to move on and try to capture their attention better.

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and this is me testing fun stuff.

Is there a way to gather information as well?
Like what brought them here? What are the 25 last sites they visited. To give us an idea of what they like. then we can use that and make changes that appeal to them

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Well, you can catch referrers (the site they linked from or came from immediately before you), but those can be manipulated. Beyond that it's more of an adware issue.. and tracking peoples' browsing habits (albeit so many companies do it) is quite frowned upon as an invasion of privacy.

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and this is me testing fun stuff.

Privacy schmivacy

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