The links on the races page seem not to work. Great re-design, but I'd appreciate it if the element on creating a character was toned down other things scaled up. Not a lot, but if it's 80/20 right now, then maybe 60/40...

By the way, Nocht snuck into Ayridion's entry in the Gods page.

One of the reasons I picked Lusternia instead of I think Imperian at the time was that there was a lot more information available on the Lusternia site to help me understand what the world was all about, races, orgs, stuff like that, while Imperian didn't have nearly as much.

Oh and this now constant 'Want to play?' 'Make a character!' 'Sign up today!' 'Try us out!' etc gets really old and tiring fast Seems almost too desperate, but that's a general direction IRE has taken recently with its own site revamp and congregating of all its games into one place. It's so commercial that it makes Lusty feel like it's lost its authenticity as a deep and powerful game world? *shrug* OK that's enough griping from me now!

Overall I don't really enjoy all the flashy of the new sites (yay for old.lusternia?). I also have never liked Chris' (or however you spell his name) artwork much.

I guess it would attract new people more so with it but in the end is it really worth attract the type of person that I feel the new site will attract?

Meh, it looks pretty terrible to me. The stuff at the top and bottom is lined up right, but the actual content of each page is shifted over about half a page to the right. Every thing looks way too big. It definitely gives off a vibe of, "Oh, shiny, another game I can play for two days and then forget about." The old website was fine, it was by far the best of all the IRE sites.

/agree

I actually like it, except for one thing: The 'Info' link where you can find all stuff on the races and guild and org and everything is way too inconspicuous considering how important it is. Before I make any characters on any game I've ever played, I want to look at all that information and I can't be the only one like that. It actually took me a couple of scans of the page before I even spotted that Info link.

I don't think the redesign as a whole is bad, but the "I can't wait to play LUSTERNIA" thing is just abominably stupid and reflects poorly on the atmosphere of the game.

I think it needed to be updated--nowadays a lot of websites are being designed for a more flexible layout and are working on it. After seeing the revamped IRE site, I expected Lusternia and the others to be moved towards this. I also think it needed a bigger and more flexible design than the one it has.

I think the font needs to change to something serif, either Georgia or one of the new Vista fonts. (Or a good Mac one).


And with the whole Flash browser games becoming more and more competition, I can accept this aspect of marketing, though I think they should be more emphasizing how MUDs are more sophisticated in their own way than either the flash browser games or the traditional MMO stuff. I think we can grow, but it involves marketing smarter and not harder.

Perhaps the biggest complaint I have is not the Lusternia site, but the IronRealms site (which I've been using to log in to occasionally check in game messages and news) and it's "news" section.


http://www.ironrealms.com/seolist

Jeez, they even name their News URL URL SEO list. This is not NEWS, it's a bunch of random articles that tend to cross the line towards "black hat" SEO. Half the articles are generic "what muds are about", and it's not anything I'd call "news". Call it "testimonials" or "About MUDs", but not news. This is the type of thing that can get one blacklisted from Google PDQ. I'm sorry for griping but that's the kind of stuff that can hurt the whole company IMO.

On the other hand, it made me want to create a new character, and I already have WAAAAAY too many.

If I was doing the Navigation, I'd probably do the following.

1) Put the Play first, don't have the option to create a character, as it is likely to only be used once.
2) Make info "About Lusternia" or "About the Game" and have it be first or Second.

Now that I very much agree with. When I clicked on that link the first time and saw it was nothing but a bunch of filler encyclopedia entries I laughed and cringed.

Whoa! I had a bunch of Help and History files open. What a surprise when I hit refresh or attempted to move onto another one. Mostly because not everything's loading on my browser (Flock, as Firefox crashed too much after an update). I'm having trouble navigating the main page beyond character creation & reading more about text based games. Big font is... so big. It'd be nice if this actually brought in and kept new folk (lol ironic statement considering my status). Kind of nervous about what that'd imply for how much they know about Lusternia's lore, but if that's what you gotta do to get 'em, then that's what you gotta do.

Agreeing that the Iron Realms site's News section is anything but.

I'm not one to care all that much about a website's "feel", but the new Lusternia website is actually a turnoff to me. The light sans serif text on brown dirt background - on the pages with actual information - is actually very difficult for me to read. The bottom third of the page is taken up by wildly outsize text advertising website news, Lusternia's "feed", and Twitter/Facebook/RSS icons. In fact I feel like most of the text is really strangely sized, with links being ENORMOUS and the rest of the text being itty-bitty by comparison. It looks like someone was trying to do a drop-cap for each link or topic header, as well.

And what's with the randomly placed "n/a" on the credit page?

You've found our first test run!

If you have constructive comments or ideas, and especially if you see any bugs or mistakes, please let the Webmaster know! Thanks!

"News Event" is a standard under the Create Content of a Drupal page. Yeah, Drupal terminology to describe blog-style "node" content pushed to the front page with an option to sticky. Wondering if they had someone within Iron Realms design the template, or if they employed an independent Drupal contractor. This might explain the use of the term NEWS.

Dunno, the histories are tough to move through, namely the History of the Elder Wars. Does your webmaster know anything about the Drupal book layout? An orientation with backward, forward, and home (back to the table of contents) would enhance readability. I wonder if the same could be said for any other "groupings" of info such as races.

In other news, I really love the layout to the Orgs & Guilds. From what I can remember, this was missing from the old Lusternia. At least in a way that would make any impression upon someone new to the game. This is especially important as you should emphasize the idea of organizational conflict (along with an ever unfolding storyline) as the game's main propulsion.

From a design standpoint, I think the website is very well done for a numerous amount of reasons. Its alot better than it was before.

I love how Jeremy Saunders is co-author on, like, all of them, too.