How old were you when you heard about them?   7-8 y/o?
 

Posted by MikeT23 on 1/16/2015 12:15:00 PM (view original):
I've never said "Don't advertise."    In fact, I've said they should.    But you can't argue with me if you don't believe I said "Advertising is stupid."   So I'll repeat myself.

If someone wants to play SLB, a quick check could set them on their way.   If they drop out after two weeks, no big deal.   They set up their team and it's going to play as it's going to play.   They weren't going to learn anything about tweaking to make a huge difference in the end result after drafting the team.  HBD is a different animal.   It's much more involved and someone clicking a link to "give it a shot" is going to be over their head relatively quickly.   It's not that complicated but it feels like there's so much to do.   He drops his team, the commish/owners don't replace him, the franchise is **** for that season and, depending how much was done/not done before departure, maybe a few seasons in the future.   If you get 100 "let me give this a shot" guys and 10% stick, you've got 10 new HBD guys.   And 90 teams that could be wrecked for years(especially if the n00bs liked to trade).    So where does that put HBD?

IMO, HBD is better served by getting people who think "I'd like to play a sim dynasty game" than "what's this all about?" then "**** it, takes too much time" guy.   Again, a $15 investment is easy to forget about.

Posted by njohnson78 on 1/18/2015 5:09:00 AM (view original):
Right now there are seven worlds with double digit openings, and another handful that are a few disgruntled/impatient owners away from joining those ranks. Only one of those worlds seems to be seriously discussing a merger, and I think that is only happening because the merger guy is pitching it to them. Every other world is still in the two categories of either "this is just an aberration, we're special and will fill soon," or "WIS needs to do something."

I really liked this notion "When is the last time we had a major upgrade? When are they going to reduce worlds to match demand? I am going to ask customer support these questions and see what I get back. They are going to continue to lose owners with long waits like this." As if it's up to WIS to scale back the number of worlds in order to bring supply in line with demand. A guy in another world said that this is WIS' fault, because they haven't done anything to adjust to the shrinking demand.

So if very very few worlds want to merge, and if we've established that WIS isn't going to advertise, then what is the solution? Anyone? Bueller?

Changing things, just for the sake of changing things, is hardly a great idea.

Posted by arcticlegend on 1/16/2015 11:41:00 AM (view original):
It's not so much that people wouldn't know what a sim is, it's just that they probably never really thought about it before. I mean, it's the same reason companies like McDonalds and Coke advertise. Sure, I know what McDonalds is, and I could find one on my own if I had a craving for some McNuggets, but McDonalds doesnt want to wait for me to search for them - they take every opportunity to remind us all that they exist.

I first played Sim League Baseball back in about 2005. I did so because I saw an ad for it on a sports site (don't remember which one). Before I saw that ad, if you had asked me if online fantasy baseball games exist, I'm sure I would have said yes. But it wasn't something I'd ever thought about enough to want to play. Once I saw the ad and clicked on it, I realized it was kind of fun.

I think there are probably a few thousand other people like me who go to sites like Fangraphs or Baseball Reference and would enjoy a game like this if WIS took a few seconds to remind them. It can't be too expensive to advertise on sites like that, so why not do so?

Posted by MikeT23 on 1/18/2015 7:30:00 AM (view original):
I read the chats of worlds that I recognize as open for months from time to time.   If they're not silent, it's very much someone else's fault and somebody needs to do something.    I followed shobob's keeper league circus.   Ford, who had about 15 openings, finally accepted the idea(2-3 weeks later) when shobob offered "take it or leave it" as the only option.   He pitched the idea to several other worlds and to say "interest was lukewarm" would be an overstatement.   Most rejected the idea without discussion.   Basically "It changes the concept of building a dynasty" which is funny because sitting for months on end with no hope of filling changes the concept of actually playing. 

There really is no solution if you're waiting for a knight on a white horse to save your world.