ive seen posts suggesting there will eventually be an earth app on facebook.

the game desperately needs more people. are there app plans? what sort of timeline?

good question.

lol its an interesting idea. in all honesty, if it launched on facebook, there could be more new players joining in one day than this game supported at its peak.

it's gotta be done right. another game that was born after the demise of e2025 launched a face book app and it still has fewer users than this game.

are we going to have some sort of beta release so that maybe existing players give feedback before it gets released for real?

Just use the Evony advertising model. Boobies + Flash = $$$ :-)

You are free to use my cleavage for ad material if you like.

i won't touch a facebook game that needs to send me an email.

rofl, now3p!

it's already in a form of beta. not sure who are using it, but admins have been able to use it for quite some time now.

Basically, the admins know that simply having a facebook app won't increase playerbase. since the game opened, they have been working very hard on 'filling out' the site with more content(mostly wiki thx to player contributions but blog and forums as well), link building(the papers have helped a bit recently), graphic redesign, making the game more user-friendly for those no0bs that do eventually create accounts(help pages, ingame recruiting, etc), and loads more that probably isn't noticeable to the untrained eye all for the sake of both better SEO and new member retention.

If u want to help get to a facebook launch quicker, have a look at the wiki for red links and add some (appropriate) content! the site itself really needs to be ready to take on loads of no0bs. even with a facebook app, when noobs get to our site, a big part of whether they stay or go is the first impression that they get.

Also, another way to help is to make a primary country and look for noobs to help(even if that means attempting to recruit to your alliance). Heard someone say that they hadn't received a single recruitment message to their primary country yet.

A game that doesnt advantage bottom feeding would be awesome too.

You're absolutely right, retaining noobs will be vital. How viable would a noob server be?

Getting people to stay may mean showing them what the game is like mid and end set. Often the beginning of the reset can be terribly boring. If new players were given a stock country in a fast paced server, they may be more willing to stay, and more interested in learning and getting better.

By stock country I mean, for example, a 10k acre country will preloaded CS and military, whatever amounts might be appropriate for that level. Build in some sort of credit that will allow turn and cash free building for a certain % of the default acreage. Have an accelerated turn structure and maybe an extended protection phase. All of this, combined with ingame blurbs of advice can show new players what the game can really be.

To prevent vets from ruining it for noobs, a limit could be placed on how many times you could play the server on your account. Combined with current anticheat methods, most ppl intent on spoiling the idea could be stopped.

Meh double post

Excellent post by Zarcon. Another way to help is to post in the help threads.

Zarcon - I have some experience w/ doing QA and application development documentation. If I can lend a hand, feel free to ask.

If there's anyone that would be willing to give me a quick tutorial on the Wiki, I can try and lend a hand there. My free time is rather sporadic, but I can usually find at least an hour or so a day.

we need lots of stuff documented and updated in the wiki! not to mention better help articles for in-game users & some more get-started guides for new players that we could even deliver in-game during gameplay

basically, you logon with your forum username and password, then go find something to edit.

http://wiki.earthempires.com/index.php/Wanted_pages
http://wiki.earthempires.com/...l_articles_to_be_expanded

not sure if those links accurately represent stuff that needs padding. and i usually don't see any red links when i'm there.

It's the editing I'm not too sure on, Dibs.

No worries, I'll find fordie and have him give me a run through.

hmmm, might be more complicated than i thought. i could probably edit a category, but would run into problems editing the subs, or linking things together.

i edited a few pages, but it was pretty much just expanding pre-existing ones. there's loads of wiki tutorial on teh net.

Osloos, i'm not sure we need a 'tutorial island' of sorts, as the stuff learned through those is part of our ever expanding tutorial system. pre-built 10k acres wont teach anything about efficient country building, startup, etc.

my thinking was more to aid retention, with glimpses of efficiency, and less a real tutorial.

looking at the game for the first time, a 10k country is much more interesting than a 100 acre one. it would be like when you play need for speed, and the first race is with a car thats already mod'ed.

sorry to bump an old thread..... BUT, generally speaking, the thing with teenagers etc is they have a short attention span than most of us when we were teenagers (I should know I'm a high school teacher). They need to be able to see progress and even success quickly whilst still learning the game and NOT be reading through a wiki. Games like Evony did that well, with certain goals throughout progress of the game.

A few thoughts:

1) A no-attack all-x server that runs at the same time/pace as the express server (and maybe even shares a market?). This would be open to all players so that vets and less new players could optimise starts, all-x strats and learn to play the market. This stops new players getting farmed to death and giving up within a day or two for that reason.

2) To enable Indies/All-x TMBR to function build in certain military requirements for each land goal that are based on 'the norm' - things like 5k acres = 6k troops, 30k jets, 300k turrets and 6k tanks or something like that. This would also teach new players about military minimums before they went into an attacking server.

3) A expansion of the tutorial mode that is available. The old question marks next to any part of the game. For instance, in the building screen a question mark next to labs could say: "research lab - allows you to research technology to make your country stronger" or residences "residences, increases the amount of population you have". Something short and to the point (plus the ability to turn this mode off for experienced players).

4) Maybe a 'tutorial' that shows them turn by turn how to do a generic 100 turn mon-indy startup. With the option to then play casher/indy/rep. The tutorial guides them to certain checkpoints like 2k acres and 35bpt, tech percentages at particular stages, 50 bpt and 5k acres reminders to buy food, sell military. Teach them the dynamics of the game, without giving away the optimal strategies.

5) Honestly, maybe a revamp of some of the pictures in-game. Mafia Wars was/is insanely popular and was just text-based with a few carefully placed pictures.

6) Facebook users need not get an email notification or anything like that, they could have messages sent to the facebook inbox.

If anyone has any of KoD's old stuff the way he described many of the game concepts was great.

I didn't start playing this game because of some wiki or whatever crap you guys are waiting for. Given it was a different time, but there were still games out there with cooler graphics and fluff.

You can wait for whatever the hell you want before you start advertising the game, seeing as how it is yours and all, but thinking that you need a wiki to get people to play is kinda silly IMO.

I usually send advice to players after i farm them when they run obvious rainbows.

the only reason they play Evony is because they get to pretend about boobs.

Would someone be willing to write up a quick wiki tutorial for me (eyes fordie)?

I have been known to crank out 20-30 pages of documentation in a day when I get good and motivated for it.

I tried to do it before, but I got the distinct feeling I was doing something incorrectly, as I wasn't seeing a lot of the content that was being discussed.

Thanks for the links, Dibs - I'm gonna try and muddle my way through some of that tomorrow if I can.

we dont need a full wiki to release the fp version...