Growing…

I blame everything on Gleemax and GTO……

375 was right during a release of a game or just after. The site does not get traffic like that unless a substantive game(s) are coming out. These spikes in viewership always occur and only represent the total people at ONE TIME who were on the site.

This site has been growing strong already because average monthly totals of views have been growing over the years.

I would like to see things pick-up also. I moderate on a number of other A&A forums but would be up for some forum promotion as time permits. I play mainly on the Mini’s side but have played the entire A&A series over the years.

We need to have stimulating conversation to coax people to login or register and participate. When the membership gets quiet its up to moderators to get things going again. To do that you need topics thought out and ready to go when needed. Forums do get to a point where all the good topics have been discussed to death over the years and it gets difficult to find topics that get people can get involved in.

Many of the Axis and Allies forums have seriously slowed down over the last couple of years. Even the Forumini as seriously slowed down in the last year. Things bump up when new games and boosters are released but slow down if no new sets are foreseen. Right now things at WotC are really unclear. Even the employees don’t really know what the future holds for our games. The Angels 20 game wasn’t earth shaking either which hurts the chances of future mini’s sets and new game development.

Most don’t know me but I must come clean and tell you I own the Underground Forum. We are more of a club but we support the Mini’s games and own the cards database for AAM. I know what you guys are up against in real time. I will offer any support I can give because I am a firm believer in game promotion on the forum level.

Darth Maximus is mostly situated in the games section and has been for years…

Death Head 420 is mostly in the AAM sections doing the same.

The best thing for somebody like you is to go on OTHER AA sites and flog our site. That would be BBG, HGD, even Amazon reviews for AA games you may add a link in the review.

Well, I lurk mostly in the games section as well - but oft times I try to sneak a peek at the general discussion.  But that’s kind of ancillary, no?  It’s not the MAIN theme which is getting butts in chairs in front of the forums here, yes?

In 2004 AAR was released, we probably saw a spike then as it was the first TRUE reincarnation of the game (yes there were theater specific versions, but lets face it, the real heir to the empire then was AAR, then Anniversary, then Global 1940.)

In 2007 the Axis and Allies Minitures (specifically the expanded rules) was revamped (Source: Wizards of the Coast’s own webpage, google it!).  It has felt like minitures were kind of the new foundation of the site (dont ask me why, I dont even want to know why it’s different than the board game which - coincidentally HAS MINIATURES ON IT!) so that might explain the sudden influx at that time.

Also, I cannot remember exactly, but we had political discussion back then.  We had a lot of NON-gamers (Falk, et el) on here stirring up trouble and not producing a dang thing for the community (AFAIK, they were worse than the spammers.)

Now a lot of us are growing up, this isnt 1999 anymore (my first account was made in 1999, I lost the password so I had to make a new one, but the rip fest on Gore/Bush was fun as heck back then!) so we just gotta figure peeps left, taught their kids, or maybe play one game by tripleA or forum or USPS, who knows.

We had a lot of NON-gamers (Falk, et el) on here stirring up trouble and not producing a dang thing for the community (AFAIK, they were worse than the spammers.)

OMG F_alk was one of the worst! what a snot head.

Also: Sexual Harassment Panda, Agent Smith and I remember that Mary (whatever was her last name) was big trouble too.

but that was back in 2004-5.

I think there are too many A&A related websites and forums.  We need to combine them all into A&A.org

@Imperious:

The best thing for somebody like you is to go on OTHER AA sites and flog our site. That would be BBG, HGD, even Amazon reviews for AA games you may add a link in the review.

Thats fine if we want to promote something we have done but if its simply to troll for membership we could find ourselves alienated from the other communities fairly quickly, some loyalties run deep. But if we have created some interesting contest, game mechanic or rule set we can peddle that on other forums it should be fine.

Have some flashy downloadable 81/2" X 11" A&A.org posters designed so members can download them, print the on a standard printer to put up at local LGS’s, colleges and etc. It should explain the services we offer such as rules clarifications, scenarios, find players and etc.

Have some contests and competitions designed as ice breakers for new and old members a like. If we can’t afford prizes then a cool banner for the winning members profile would do.

Find a niche. Find something that nobody else is doing and harness it and make it ours. On the Underground we have a over the top painting and modeling section run by a couple of outstanding moderators. There are 15-20 projects posted per week and lots of advice and pointers for those modeling in 15mm.

Loosen up on the Signature ban and allow people to create identities here on the forum. I am not privy as to why the ban was imposed but I think its time to revisit it.

I own the Trinity card database and if we have good reference content we wish to put on the site that can be done. The article can be linked back to the forum.

The main page for the site should have a larger block dedicated to the forum and what it offers and why people would benefit from joining our community.

@Imperious:

We had a lot of NON-gamers (Falk, et el) on here stirring up trouble and not producing a dang thing for the community (AFAIK, they were worse than the spammers.)

OMG F_alk was one of the worst! what a snot head.

Also: Sexual Harassment Panda, Agent Smith and I remember that Mary (whatever was her last name) was big trouble too.

Oh yea, I didn’t mean my list to be all inclusive!  Hell, I can think of a character so nefarious, so devious, so power mad that I cannot even type his name in this forum (and no, I am not thinking of a guy with the letter “m” as the first letter in his name.)

Unfortunately, the most online ever is not a real number. It counts crawlers like Google and Yahoo.

@Gargantua:

Most Online Today: 123. Most Online Ever: 375 (June 26, 2007, 03:57:21 pm)

Today, I painfully noticed the listed statistic above.

Now… 5 years ago, 2007, I don’t know if the forum was saturated with far more spam accounts active/online, but even if that’s the case,  our trend is all wrong.

The larger this community is, the stronger and better it becomes, there are more players to play against, higher standards of player calibre, more community activity, more flexibility in finding other players in your area, and more political “buy in” power with the game developers and so on.

So the question is… how do we reverse the trend?  What idea’s are out there? More importantly who wants to join me in the cause to break our 2007 record?  Or who can I join?

I’ve got some basic theories we could try, to draw more users to the site…  but before I begin, who else is willing to jump in the trenches on the team?

Signatures will never come back. They make threads impossible to read. The most important thing to a forum is the ability to read a thread quickly and easily. Signatures break up that natural flow.

@Gargantua:

Thanks for the good input FM, if the power trolls cut the chatter in this thread, we’ll be on to something.

Loosening up the signature ban (or atleast having rules for a signature standard) is a good suggestion, but we’re not likely to see that kind of expression allowed here.

@djensen:

They make threads impossible to read.

I don’t mean to put you on the spot Dave but, how so? Is it a bandwidth issue? A page load issue? Size issue? They can all be overcome fairly easily.

It’s basic usability. A signature appears between responses and has nothing to do with the conversation at hand. On the extreme, you have large animated images between chunks of good content. I don’t want to see that crap, I don’t want to see repeated links to your blog. I want to read the discussion. I hate this forum software as it is and I refuse to make it event less usable.

Look at all the major sites and you’ll not see signatures in any commenting system. The only systems that have signatures between comments are the arcane home-grow forums, of which this is one.

What is it about signatures that people want that cannot be achieved with an avatar and the text snippet below the avatar? I’m not against customization, I’m against breaking the flow of conversation.

@Field:

@djensen:

They make threads impossible to read.

I don’t mean to put you on the spot Dave but, how so? Is it a bandwidth issue? A page load issue? Size issue? They can all be overcome fairly easily.

Totally agree, but also because spam accounts have been known to use the signature to convey porno and various nefarious websites. This can never be allowed to occur again.

Their is room for short messages under your avatar to use, or perhaps your avatar could convey what signatures used to do.

I think there are too many A&A related websites and forums.  We need to combine them all into A&A.org

This sounds wise.

@Cow:

I think there are too many A&A related websites and forums.  We need to combine them all into A&A.org

This sounds wise.

It won’t work. Every forum has its own flavor and identity. Each forum can potentially create many different kinds of content on their own platforms. If you put them all together you will loose the overall creativity. Forum owners loose control of their own vision and it becomes watered down. If we come here we cannot have signatures, if you go to the Underground we are a support forum and WotC Bashing isn’t allowed, if we go to the Forumini you play by their rules and so on.

A&A.org needs to reinvent itself and its going to take some thinking outside the box to get us there.