NWPAD - June 18 - July 3, 2012

[Legacy_Elvamir]

               Sorry I'm coming in to this late. Work has been a **** for me lately.

First - The Caenyr community is very proud to see a World of Caenyr player won the challenge! He's an awesome and long time player in our community, and we're all very happy for him! '> And huge congrats to ALL of the winners and participants for helping strengthen the NWN community (and of course, to the organizers most of all! You guys rock!)

Secondly, for my feedback: I think we should do this on a regular basis. I'm not sure if every few months is appropriate. It is a lot of coordination for everyone, so that may be too much of a burden and also take away from the excitement if it becomes too commonplace. I like it being an annual event, in my opinion. To celebrate NWN and its community on every anniversary seems very fitting and appropriate.

In regards to participation, I was a bit disappointed as well that more new people didn't come sweeping through our server, and also that our players didn't explore more of the other servers. I ran a poll on our website, asking what other NWPAD servers they checked out, and it allowed them to check multiple options so they can update it as they walk the worlds. The results are as follows:

Arenthyor    4%     4%     [ 1 ]
Dalakora    4%     [ 1 ]
Netheril Rising    4%        [ 1 ]
World of Aenea    11%    [ 3 ]
Aventia 3, Merged- Unlimited Levels    7%     [ 2 ]
A Wombat Loose in Nordock    4%        [ 1 ]
City of Dohral    14%     [ 4 ]
Ravenloft - Prisoners of the Mist    4%        [ 1 ]
World of Caenyr    50%        [ 14 ]    

Granted, not everyone that participated in NWPAD may have voted in the poll, but overall it shows a trend that most players (at least in Caenyr) stuck to Caenyr and didn't venture out too much, which is a shame. HOWEVER... I think you have to start somewhere, and this was a good start. To me, it was very new and probably a lot of people either didn't fully grasp what it was all about, despite our best efforts, or didn't realize how cool and rewarding it could really be until the end when we announce all of these results. I think next time, now that we have one under our belt as sort of an "advertisement" of the program and also having feedback from this run on how to improve it in the future, players will be more engaged. We may also entice other servers next time, to widen the community reach, and if anything, the worst case, is that we form a nice strong "ring" between the servers that do participate. Any coalition of players in this community is a good thing. We all make each other stronger, in my opinion.

Only thing I can think to change right away, for next year, is for us to be a bit more organized in our approach and advertisement of NWPAD next year. Let's start earlier, and let's team up better, as Admins, to set the example for the players to follow. I know, for me at least, I got a late start at getting organized for this and getting information to the players in my community, and can do much better next time. But I can imagine things like, what if each of us world leaders goes to each of the partnering worlds and posts our hello's, and tells the other communities about our world and makes the invitation to participate and world-walk our way more formal? If we all do that, across all of our servers, it would be fair and also demonstrate to all of our communities that the admins see us all as one big family of NWN players. Maybe we all even try to organize a group "World Leaders" walk, and visit each others worlds together, giving each other tours and letting the players see us stand together in each server to lead the way for them to follow. Things like that might be cool. I don't know, just throwing out ideas, nothing concrete yet, but stuff to think about. '>

We can also look at more public advertisement, not only with things like the NWN Podcast peeps, but even provide some material that community members can use to advertise locally at game shops, conventions, amongst friends, etc. Really get it out there.

Anyway, I'll keep thinking, but if there's anything I can do to help keep this alive and make it even better next time, I'm glad to help. I think you're all great for what you do to keep this community thriving, and am proud to be a part of the effort.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Elvamir]

               Ooh, one other cool thought just struck me. What if we also had a special "NWPAD Server" a module specially designed by a team made up of builders from each of our servers, for players to explore, adventure, and hang out in only during that 16 day period? A unique experience, brought to you by all of the servers. Another example of our teamwork and to show everyone we are one big community together. We could even have special events there, like a NWN birthday celebration, or even a quest ran by DM's from across our servers (yet another partnership example), things like that. Not a huge module, but just something unique and short lived for the event, a place where players from all servers can definitely meet up and engage each other. Then they can also do a lot of the advertisement for us themselves, by sharing great stories from each of our servers and inviting new friends to check them out as part of NWPAD world walker challenge, and so forth.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_BelowTheBelt]

               Elvamir,
Thanks for the info and the creative ideas - and to everyone who gave feedback earlier.  I'd support the idea of doing it again and am up to help coordinate for when the group thinks would be a sufficient period of time between events.  And definitely, having more time to prepare would enable us to get organized, create more awareness, and generate more server participation.

My big learings for areas of improvement are that:
1)  Many servers don't check this forum/thread frequently or at all - need longer lead-time to generate awareness and direct contact.  Reaching out to them directly via their own server forums seemed to yield good results.
2)  There may not have been enough percieved value to larger servers to participate.  Need to more fully articulate the potential benefits.
3)  Reaching players en masse is difficult - need more breadth of advertising and lead-time. 
4)  The event was launched in the summer, which is generally a slower time for servers.  An event run in more of the peak season may result in higher participation.
5)  While the global prizes were fun (NWN Diamond download), they did not seem to motivate participants to visit multiple servers. 

Having said that, I also learned:
1)  Players appeared to enjoy themselves
2)  Participating servers were satisfied with the experience (both in providing something interesting to their playerbase as well as the minimal effort required to participate)
3)  Server-specific in-game prizes seemed to be of most interest to participants (since most NWPAD participants participated through their 'home' server).

With more time and help, we could really make this a big thing that can have impact on growing and reinforcing the community.  This time arould left little time for thinking about what we could do and then improve on those thoughts.  We had to just go and figure it out as we went along.

And of course...we'd need a cooler name, heh. NWPAD doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.

Anyone who's interested in helping to shape what the next event looks like should PM me and we'll start a casual discussion about timing/events, etc...

Thanks again for all who participated.  It was great to see the players have a great time.  I know I enjoyed meeting people on my server and the other servers.  
               
               

               

                     Modifié par BelowTheBelt, 28 août 2012 - 05:26 .