Some new player notes on website and such...

Greetings,

I wanted to make a separate posts related to the website, just to give some perspective to devs from the point of view of a new players. I think your web presence may lose you potential players

IMPRESSIONS and PR
The game has some potential PR problems and can give a poor impression to new players. Consider the following:

• Some of the posts I see on the page could use a little PR attention to help improve the impression they give to potential and new players. For example, the free trial post (https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?page_id=69568) is full of the negatives, what a free trial cannot experience, and says absolutely nothing about the positives. This could leave a potential player with the feeling "Why bother"
  • More about the positives, and more about what is good in the game, would make a huge difference here.
  • Also, I'm not sure the game in its current state should be open to free trials... it will be bad PR in the end/
• The store is a major problem for PR and impressions. I understand the economic necessity, but it gives the impression that the game is Pay to Win, and the very high prices give the impression that the game is beyond the economic reach of most potential players.
  • The store needs a redesign so that it can be made more clear up front that many of the items listed are for appearance only.
  • The high priced items absolutely MUST have some information to justify why they are high priced, and this must be on the very front page (ie... not require clicking the item to see it). Or, these high priced items could get their own category... ie "Luxury Purchases" or something like that. Something that makes it clear they are not expected.
    • For example, if I am a potential new player and click the store, I see the Kobold bundles. If I scroll down to see what is available, I see bundles that cost hundreds and even thousands of dollars. My instinctive thought upon seeing that will be "Are you kidding?". This is going to lose you tons of potential players if you don't make some serious changes.
• Another type of wording and post that is problematic are the telethon posts. In those, you talk about tons of items that are going to be expired on a certain date and will no longer be available later. Again, I understand the economic necessity, but the impression that this gives to potential players is that it is too late to get involved. A thought might be "Many items I may have liked are gone forever, so why should I try this game now? Will there even be anything left for me once it finally releases?"
• Finally, and this is one of your largest PR nightmares, your world is persistent and there will be no more wipes, yet you talk of expiring items, and yet again you haven't even finished the game. That leaves a bad taste in the mouth of potential new players. It creates a "Us vs Them" mentality in many kinds of players. A feeling of "Why should I bother, all these other people have been in forever and have access to things I can never get, so why try?"

Again, I am playing the game and love the game, and I have found this community to be very open and helpful. The people on the forums are awesome and those I have met in game have been great as well. I also tend to look deeply into issues and can see how many of these impressions are not actually facts. But, I am more open to such investigation than many of your potential new players might be.

Unfortunately, if you want new players, you have to deal with their impressions. The facts only matter if you can make them crystal clear at a glance, you cannot expect them to dig deep and figure out how much is actual fact and how much is impression on their own. You need to tell them. I believe you need some major additions to your site, especially visual aids like tables and graphics, to help clarify many of these impressions to people who just give your site a look for just a minute or two.

Just some thoughts from the point of view of a new player looking at the website...

Thanks!