Signed.

Updated the statement with Shiri's grammatical corrections as well as suggestion for the last bullet point.
The link to the online petition is here. All that's needed is your name and email. There's also the Comments box. Remember that this is being sent to the Webmaster! Thanks everyone!

I've really not been bothered by the new changes, mostly because I use http://old.lusternia.com/index.php

So I had a look...

I do like the artwork but trying to lure someone to a text based game with art is cheating, the fact that on the right there's always a form trying to get you to sign up is a bit lame, too.

It's not TERRIBLE in and of itself, as websites go I found it reasonably easy to navigate. But I prefer the old website by a long margin and the fact that time, effort and money went into this instead of something else is a bit disheartening.

I can understand the motive, lure people in, people buy more delicious credits with delicious money and then you have more money, Lusternia is a business after all, but if you're going to do something do something right.

Signed.

Am in agreement. Signed!

Signed. The old website is part of what made me join Lusty, this new one is rather off-putting. All it's missing is an elfen chick with huge knockers telling us to 'play free forever, my lord'.

I'll sign. I thought it was okay at first, but now I don't even bother going to the new site, I just go straight to the old.lusternia.com one because it's so hard to find what your looking for on the new one.

I don't use the website often, generally, but I find finding information on the new one a lot more difficult than the old one. It's not just being hard to find, sometimes I'll find it and oops, there's nothing there except and error. Boo urns, time to switch over to the old one. I haven't had much opportunity to include friends to Lusternia lately, (September I'll be trying again!) but I would first put them on the old website. I honestly just find it far more visually appealing and less OMGYOUPLAYNOWYESNOWNOWNOW.

I use the old site so much I forgot the new one existed.

Signed, at any rate.

Are we supposed to sign with our real name or character name?

/signed Winston H. Churrito

Signed.

I'm just using character so none of you know my real name. >>

But that makes stalking you that much harder.

Random Idea: If the petition is heard out, would the Lusternian community be willing to set up a Kickstarter to get funds going towards a shiny new website design?

Kickstarter- all or nothing, if you don't reach your goal you get nothing and everything's refunded to the prospective donors.

I don't think that would be a good idea--because at BEST there's 200 active players, and how many people are going to want to contribute to a web site redesign as opposed to in-game stuff. Plus, a truly professional outfit would likely cost them in the low five figures.

I think there are two main problems. The first is that I think it's all in-house people who aren't that familiar with Drupal and advanced web techniques. Jeremy the web master might also be president Jeremy Saunders, who seems to also be experimenting with other web projects such as DiedAgain. If this is the case, then my suggestion to IRE is to consider getting a "mortal webmaster" involved in helping to organize the site, offering in-game credits for the work. I'm sure there's enough of a talent pool across all 5 games to either do some advanced design or to tighten up the Drupal sturcture. If we have any true pros here, giving a few thousand credits for the work would be a Bargain for IRE.

The second are the goals. There's been a lot of changes in the promotions. My biggest concern is this sudden push towards "SEO optimization", which is not being done carefully and I think some significant mistakes are being made. Some of it is reasonable--Digg is a better resource than The Mud Site to help get new players. Others are a little awkward--the IRE site now feels more like a content farm instead of a place that tells us about the company, and the title of everything now begins with "Text Games | " which is actually a mistake and makes all your content look the same--put that key-phrase at the end of the page title, not the beginning. If that's the goal, then I think it might be harder to convince the upper staff of these mistakes. I know in some cases the existing player base is "resistant to change", but there's a fine line between "being stubborn" and "legitimate concern". Arix's point about Evony is well-taken. Some of the campaigns are bordering on the types of things that get mocked across the Internet.

The IRE games work in part because of the true social element, the advanced role-play. While the advanced combat may also be a factor, a text-based game is the worst way to handle advanced combat. I've never seen a recent "corporate" promotion that promotes the role-play elements, it's always about power gaming stuff--XP, Combat related stuff, etc. I hope the owner understands this--these games will never have the wide-market appeal of the larger MMOs or even the free-to-play flash browser games. You are unlikely to "transform" the original audience, in fact you can make the 5-10 year players who have the capital to purchase credits quit. An audience who takes the time to play these types of games is sophisticated enough to want intelligent campaigns and advertising.

If they are actually after this audience, then the best thing to do is create a sub-division or spin-off of the company and spin it off and actually create games that compete in this area--Matt Milay rightly did this for Earth Eternal, and while it failed, the failure did not affect the original company. (And vice versa--if they want to get out of the MUD business, the spin-off would gradually overtake the original).

Keep in mind, I do agree with new promotions, social media is very important nowadays, and you can't keep a 10 year old web design up forever. But I think these promotional needs will benefit from smarter thinking.

Bah. We have loads more than that, even on a relatively narrow definition of 'active'.

Well, I agree and I signed anyway.

Good to know. It's hard to tell with GemCloaking and all of that.

But my point stands, I doubt even if hypothetically everybody hates the new site that we could collectively afford to pay for a new one.

Is there anything extremely wrong with just going back to the old sight, though? I mean people have been saying they prefer that by a great deal so maybe just build on that?