Hire a marketing team - please.

[Arobas+]

Why is it taking 2 years to finish a website? Dezmond had one up and running for me in less than 2 hours. Granted it wasn't a top notch site, but you don't get much with the small amount of cash I put into it. We're supposed to have a whole team working on this...

First of all, there is a difference between a blog/cms freshly installed with a generic design AND a website with a custom design, database-driven with statistics and fully customized for the game. A lot of people don't understand the amount of work behind a real website with today's generic blogs. About why it takes so long, there was a plan to start a new website since 1 year ago. I was supposed to work on it but for real life reason, I couldn't start it. It was in march of this year. You have to understand, we need an actual player and if possible, someone who have already worked with TW websites to make the new website. Our main database contains near 300 tables and our current websites have been coded so quiclky and badly that we can't copy-paste the actual code. We need to start from scratch and for that, we need someone who knows everything. We can't hire a random guy/team for this reason. Of course, if any of you is good with PHP and want to help, drop me a message.

Speaking of face-lifts... that'd be a face-lift of a dead body, not of someone who is still worth to face-lift.

TW doesn't worth the face-lift? then why bothering wasting our money on a marketing team? It doesn't make sense. If you are ugly and you have a date, you will at least try to look better first.

but at this rate (i'm assuming the website is still below 50% completion by the sounds of it) ... can we see some previews or something?

Unfortunatly no, the design is being designed by a profesionnal designer. I don't have anything to show yet. All the coding part is not done yet.

Hey Arobas. VHS just called to thank you for the website. They said "it was totally worth the 20 years of waiting, now that we have a really cool new website people have to switch back to VHS"

Cool story.


Fact is, 5k$ can't do miracle. We do what we can with the man-power we have, it takes time, be patient and enjoy the game.

[kthx]

Ok so Arobas my question to you is then:

1. If you are building the website, or making the website, are you getting paid from TW donations for building this website?
2. If you are getting paid to make this website then you need to understand that someone is paying you to do something and as such it is considered a job. If you didn't have the time to make the website you shouldn't have taken the offer. Basically what I am saying is that if you are being paid for this then doing it during your spare time when you aren't busy is pretty shitty. (Sorta hard to explain but I mean if you are taking money to do something then it deserves to be as important as your real job is)
3. If you aren't getting paid to make this website then first off thanks for your donation of time in the matter but honestly we don't exactly have a huge time frame here to make advertising this game worthwhile. There has to be a time and a place to admit to yourself that nobody else can make this website based on the money we have, you don't have the time to do it yourself, and that unfortunately the current website we have is just going to have to make do.

That aside, you and the marketing team being so dead set on having a website that costs more to produce and has more technology in it than the game that it is for is sorta stupid. Honestly to me it sounds like a classic bait and switch, we advertise on whatever websites or whatever it is you are planning on doing to come check out the website and download a free game, they see the website and they like it, and then they play the game and realize it isn't what it was advertised to be. It makes more sense to me to rely on the "rustic charm" of our current website and just try to attract the right kind of attention from the right kind of websites. (People who play older games with shitty graphics and don't care such as Runescape and flash games).

None of it makes sense Arobas, and the fact that you can't assign a date on the mystery website that nobody can see and that the marketing team won't do shit without just makes it all seem less and less worthwhile every day.

[kthx]

Oh and before people get on my ass for getting onto Arobas for this keep in mind I am just trying to point out the flaws in the current idea that this website is the be all end all savior of TW. Trust me Arobas I respect what you have done for the websites on this game above 90% of every other web dev this zone has ever seen so this isn't me trying to troll you or anything, if anything I would be getting on 24's ass since I don't like him at all.

[Arobas+]

To answer your first question, yes I will be paid. I still don't ask a lot, about half the price I usually ask for a website. It will just take less time for me to do the work since I know most of the websites we have and the inner working of them. I already said no for the job in march for the reason you said, I had no time. Then I left from the map until I came back in july (moved to a new house, new job, etc.). I decided to come back and help TW again. Then they offered me to do the website again, I said no first, then they added money. This will pay for the spare time I will put for this. I do have a life and I can't see myself coding a 100 hours project without getting paid anymore. They accepted.

I am doing this during my spare time, this is bad? Sure, it won't be as fast as it would be at full time. Do we have a choice? We can argue a lot here and I won't go into this discussion. It would require a huge amount of work to make the requirements for the developer(s) to know what to do. Yes, TW is complex. And because of that, this is a no no for me.

You talk about false advertising, why we would do false advertising? We won't advertise a 3D game. You are saying we need a crappy website to attract people for a crappy game? Rustic or not, our current website doesn't work. Not appealing and I'm not talking about the design, I'm talking about the content. The website was designed in 2002, we live in a new era where websites are community-driven and our website is not like that. This is the main reason why we need a new website.

Why I can't assign a date? Because I know if I will, you guys will be there at this date and say : "Arobas, you said it was supposed to be ready today, I don't see anything, fuck staff". I'm guessing the design will be done in 2 weeks, after that, we will start working at putting the design in an actual website. After that, the coding part will start. How long it will take? a few months. But it will be done by phase, it means that we will put it online even if some features are missing because eh.. we don't want you to wait anymore.

If you have more questions, I'm here to answer them all.

[kthx]

Well considering this is some of the first honest answers I have seen I will have more questions and I am sure some other people will also. My main concern is that it feels pretty unprofessional to take money for a job and then not have some sort of set time you will be done with it. My thought is if you are being paid for it even if it isn't your first job you should consider it to be a real job as well and spend X amount of hours a day working on the website, I mean you are getting paid for it (even if it is discounted).

To me it seems like the equivalent of taking a second job at lets say a bar that your friend owns, he says hes going to pay you a fair wage even though it isn't as much as you make at your first job. You say yeah sure I guess I will do it but you keep showing up late, missing shifts, and you don't take it seriously. I guess thats my main concern... since you are getting paid for it at a certain pricetag you agreed to, you should really not consider it just something you are doing in your off time as a favor. Surely it wouldn't hurt to have like a progress bar that you change once a week based on how far along you are.

[kthx]

I mean really people in general, not just myself are tired of seeing nothing being done, information like this at the time it happened, or like a weekly update from 24 about whats happening would really stop the public from complaining about this shit. Its just ironic that the "marketing team" can't even market the lack of marketing to the community they have been assigned to market for.

[Vys]

I don't understand why we are trying to save this game, just let it die. All the people who play it are like 18+, we only play it because of the people we've met over the years and we're addicted. It will do most of us a favour if it dies. Just create some sort of instant chat where we can stay intouch or something.

[Arobas+]

It may sounds unprofessional the fact I take this job as a second job during my spare time. I don't know what to say about that. The job will be done and If you want to know the progress, I can easily setup a beta website where I test my work there, you should be able to see the progression near real-time. What else you want me to do?

See, my skills are in web development and this is my contribution to that game. If people want to participate, go ahead and take the INITIATIVE. To be honest, I don't know exactly who is behind the marketing team and what they are doing. I just know one thing, any marketing will fail to bring new people with our current website.

[kthx]

I just mean it sounds unprofessional to take money to do a job during your spare time that you don't really have the time to do and not toss out a rough estimate of when it will be done because in players eyes it could look like you aren't taking it that seriously even though you are being paid to do it. Like I said before I am not trying to call you out just sorta let you know how the general population of the game that cares about this kind of stuff feels about it is all. But yeah I mean when the website is closer to being done and assuming it wouldn't be wasting more than thirty minutes to an hour of time that could be spent working on the website I would love to see a little beta website. I think that might get people more excited about the idea if we can see with our own eyes how much better its going to be is all.

[Jason]

TW, as far as I'm concerned, has a do not resuscitate order hanging around its neck. Bottom line is that it's just not worth the effort anymore.

That's why I'm staying out of the website refresh. Where's the incentive? Utterly thankless job and then some.

Swyped from my thumbs using Tapatalk

[Pandagirl!]

aubrey as in drake

How about you put me in his music video and I'll wear TW gear. I'll do it for free

[Raver420]

It seems KTHX is our whistle blower as always, as he tells me all the time KTHX... your are a crazy Texan MICK and i thank you! So who is running the the donation money and sitting on it like mother HEN? Maybe we just give Stark the 5k and make a EPIC music video ehhh???

[Raver420]

How about you put me in his music video and I'll wear TW gear. I'll do it for free

Hmmmmm So if i purchase the tw thong and bra you will dance to starks song with these items on for us? i will donate 200-300 and ilya will account for it

[fiS]

TW doesn't worth the face-lift? then why bothering wasting our money on a marketing team? It doesn't make sense. If you are ugly and you have a date, you will at least try to look better first.

No, I was saying that the face-lift would maybe be too late then :/ I still got some hope though that this game will be revived somehow.

[Crescent Seal]