What exactly does "New Britannians" mean??

What I mean is that there is a proportion of those 60,000 accounts that are putting it on the backburner.
There will be some people who don't want to participate because of RL commitments, and also that they might wish to keep everything "unknown" so they are pleasantly surprised when the game is finished....then there are also people who just cannot or do not want to pay for the game.

THEN, what if 20,000 of the kickstarter backers made a second or third account for their alt account? That bulks it out to 20k-40k extra accounts. So yes that still means the 100k is a false number, that is indisputable...but I would hazard to guess the bulk are from 'human' accounts.

 

This does bring into question the fairness of the Anniversary Giveaway, as there were probably people who created multiple accounts on purpose to gain a higher chance of winning something.
I'm not going to dispute the results, but I would ask that Portalarium design a better system for any future competitions / giveaways.

 

I think the problem is a large number of those accounts look autogenerated by some kind of script

 

The Prior Marketing Survey System that Portalarium Didn't Make and it's Impact on Development Stages;

I've been an explorer deep within our Forum's posts ... in case you haven't noticed
So I've read one hell of allot of old posts I've seen some that appear to be "gangs" of corporate raiders (industrial saboteurs if you can imagine that. Some are just trolls and that's the fast way they find things out, or just get their jollies from), I've seen gangs of industrial saviors (as was the suspected case with the Oculus Rift situation), I've seen some that have the names of some I know, yet with numbers after them (some are alter egos of the original, others are just those that are checking us out, read the forums and such, they just don't have any want of any online persona).

We are Growing Like Grass, Instead of a Corporate Video Game;
Does anyone have the number amount of the Beta Testers of UO? I don't... How would we compare with that number? they surely didn't have to fork out money in the amounts that we did to Alfa Test<---<<< Yet this term too is just like the terms used such as PvP, PK and PvE, which are far outdated from their traditional meanings in ways we are not use to. Here we see what we would call an Alfa that will be what was known as a Beta upon launch, yet Beta Testing is a far outdated word for this type of game building as well. This is because we here in Alfa, will have already done all any Beta testing of it that had needed to be done before public launch.

Am I Skeptical About Our Numbers?....
"You bet I am", yet this is from viewing it from terms of what most normal games have been Pre-Market Tested, Alfa'ed and Beta'ed before their launch. So that amount of people (?) that have gotten a password, logged onto our Forums here, is almost a Pre-Market Survey all on it's own. So, many things are so different about how our SotA is evolving, that I don't think anyone can truly look at it in any traditional sense of any other game on the market.
EA or one of the larger companies may buy us out one day, which will open the game up to a much larger distribution throughout the world, or a merger may happen, or Star Citizen may launch and combine both games under their huge "speculated" Tidal Wave of cash$! and tell EA, Origins and every other corporate raider to go "$%#& Off" for our gaming dollar. After all, there's some little Royalty growing up in our Royal Family's home now that could give our grandchildren hope to have another revolutionary at the wheel of the world's gaming industry for their grandchildren to enjoy

Most of the quiet backers that I have found among our old posts are players that backed SotA early and never posted but a few posts, yet others posted allot, then went silent, yet many can be seen very happily running around in New Britannia

Growing Like Grass;
Basically I see our Portalarium has a market strategy that is similar to how RG first got into D&D, when some kids came by his house, asked him if he wanted to play and then all pitched in to have more fun.
If Richard Garriott came to any of our doors and asked us if we wanted to play a game, then would we check it out?
I think that's gone very well so far and I think all those kids that listened yet didn't join in, will come because of our laughter when we start killing each other

Great Thread Gracekain! and I am very skeptical
~Time Lord~

 

There was some information posted about this several months ago in here: The Official Forum Bug List.

There are several responses from tphilipp, Lum, and DarkStarr further down in that thread but I will leave this one from chillblain which sums up a couple of points: The Official Forum Bug List.

Since these posts, they have added more stats on the extended stats page. They are also aware that some of the accounts getting created are spam accounts, according to a few posts in the bug list thread provided above.

I really don't think they are doing anything deceptive here, they are just showing how large the community is and not limiting their metric to only people who have backed the game. It would be great if they could easily remove any spam accounts that have been created but it sounds like it would be too arduous of a task, taking valuable time away from game development.

For me personally, I have several accounts but only two of the accounts are actual backers thus far (waiting on family members to cough up some cash for their accounts). All of the names are similar because I'm too lazy to come up with original names for all of them.

As a side note, I am merging this thread with a previous one because they are similar in discussion.

 

And this is standard practice?

My thread is not about why or how spam/spoof accounts are being created, my thread is about how we praise fake numbers to make the public think we have a much larger community than we actually have, and that is just purely dishonest. In less than 16 hours we seem to have an increase of 269 unique New Britannians registered on our site, that doesn't seem odd to anyone? The fact of the matter is, spam/spoof accounts are being made and we are proud of them. If we know spam and spoof accounts are an issue but we still want to boast about it, what we really need to do is add a few hundred thousand more fake New Britannians and make it seem more interesting, because that number would be just as real as the current one.

So instead of just commenting in the thread i have created about Portalarium being dishonest, you bury it in the bottom of a totally non related thread....

 

@gracekain
Maybe you did not read the referenced posts that I provided. I will assist by quoting them here for you. Specifically this post by chillblain addresses the issues you have set forth:

And yes, merging threads that are about the same topic is standard practice to keep the forum tidy.

 

I did read the quote, and i have read it back then. All you have shown us is that they know the number is fake but praise it anyway. Making the public seem like we have a much larger community then we actually have. I understand it is hard to determine who is a spam account and who's is not, but that doesn't make it OK to boast about fake numbers.

Imagine how excited politicians would be if they were allowed to just make up voter approval numbers to make themselves seem more appealing to the public. It is dishonest and can't believe that we know this is a problem and we chose to turn a blind eye and act like it is not happening.

 

Also on a side note, the quote that you are so adamantly trying to get me to read is about back when they merged forum members and backers. The number went from 33k+ Backers to 60k+ New Britanians and people didn't know where the numbers came from and felt like Portalarium was faking the numbers back then. All this happened way before our current tracking system, which has nothing to do with my concern or my thread you got rid of.

 

@gracekain
Actually, the quote illustrated to me that they are not trying to be deceptive. I guess it is just a matter of how you interpret the development team's statements.

They also have the extended statistics available for all to see. I fail to see where the additional details Portalarium has provided can foster any deception. IMO, accusing Portalarium of using fake numbers seems wholly unfounded considering the information available and statements made in the thread I linked.

 

FYI.., we do not ~allow~ spam bots and do have measures in place to prevent them from creating accounts on the website. Do some spoof accounts get created? Probably, sure, but we DO have measures in place to discourage it.

 

I'm not sure why this issue got brought back up when it was discussed at great lengths months ago. As a result of that Tassilo took time out of his schedule to publish a complete statistics page that breaks down where our membership comes from in great detail.

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?page_id=35155

As I said when this was first brought up months ago, considering that we actually make the money required to continue developing our game from actual backers, we have very little interest in inflating the numbers of "New Britannians" that don't actually buy the game.

There are many people who participate in our forum (including VERY active posters) who have not contributed a single cent. They are as welcome to participate as anyone and I hope they are eventually moved to become backers.

There are also spam accounts, as noted, which manage to get through our signup process (which since it's a non-standard signup sequence isn't easily bottable - however many spammers simply pay microtransactions to click farmers to 'automate' the process that way). Keeping up with removing those accounts is a full time job in and of itself and frankly, our time is better spent in actually developing the game you're waiting on.

I hope this helps and that I don't have to make this post AGAIN three months later for no apparent reason.

 

We all understand that there are spam accounts and I am not asking anyone to filter them out or take time to deal with them. I am only asking not to advertise that false number on our main page and weekly updates knowing that that is a false representation of the actual community.

 

I am in 100% agreement that not only is it probably impossible to keep up with those accounts, but that it is CERTAINLY a better and more desirable use of everyones time to make the game. I am glad that cleaning out the spam accounts is *not* the priority.

But, can you guys understand why it doesn't seem appropriate to use that number specifically to tout interest when it is know it is at least SOMEWHAT inaccurate? Why not just use the Total Backers number which shows not only interest but people willing to put their money behind the project?

 

Greetings good people of New Britannia!
Please allow me to comment on this thread and then I also have a request.
First, we are just reporting the data, exactly as it is, in the direct database, which is the best information we have.
We do not in any way try to deceive or prop up any position with the way we present the data.
I expect it is true that some number of accounts of New Britannian's might be dupes or bots.
But, we do not think it is important to take time to address this at this time.

Please heed my request to shut down this thread.
All our time would be better spent debating real issues of game design and development.
There are plenty of issues of real concern and contention in other areas.

Thank you very much for your support of SotA, our team, and our shared world!
- Richard "Lord British" Garriott

 

They are doing fine.

And most advertisements are far, far , even farer away from reality then SotA is.
Actually i consider them to have such a great deal of open door into what is happening in the company that i can almost count the coffee beans in there kitchen from here.

 

Well said, team.

 

Absolutely agree!

 

Folks, I am going to shut down this thread per RG. It's a topic that's been rehashed and well explained. If there are further questions drop me a line and I'll try to help you get any answers if they're not already on the forum.

 

I was somewhat taken aback to read comments such as these. We put a great deal of effort into openness, transparency, and honesty, including founding our company upon those principles (see Principles #4 and #8 at Portalarium Company Culture). I'm the one that drafted those founding principles. I am also the one that wrote the update praising our growing New Britannian population. I am the one that suggested we post New Britannians (i.e. registered website users) on the SotA front page (which I copied from my friend and colleague, Chris Roberts, with his number of "Star Citizens"). I can assure you, my intention was not to be dishonest or deceptive.

The intention, as has been stated previously, was to demonstrate the growing interest in Shroud of the Avatar. In order for SotA to succeed, and for all of us to be able to play together for years to come, then we must continue to attract the interest of the general gaming population. This is done through community word-of-mouth, pickups from news sites, company press releases, etc. The more that people are noticing and talking about SotA, the better. It is important that we utilize every statistic that we have to generate increased public exposure. News sites are more prone to pay attention to 100k New Britannians and rapidly growing, as opposed to 34k Backers and slowly growing. The New Britannian statistic in an extremely important marketing metric, similar to a website's "page views" or Facebook "Likes", or Google "+1's". It communicates the message that many people are paying attention to this game, so maybe you should look at it too.

Now, most of you probably already understand the marketing value of this, and agree with it, but some of you feel that we may be purposely lying about the number of New Britannians in order to trick prospective new members into signing up. And I admittedly regret that any of you would think us capable of that. I hope that we can alleviate those beliefs, because trust is a critical foundation upon which all relationships are built and maintained.

As members of our team pointed out in this thread and previous threads, we are aware that some number of registered users may be fake, or duplicate, accounts. We don't know what that number is, but we suspect it is anywhere between a low of 1% and a high of 15%. This is a plight that all websites have. We take steps to minimize fake accounts, such as: 1) CAPTCHA to create an account, 2) confirmation email sent to new user, 3) new user must click confirmation link in email before account is validated.

Other steps are taken by our bulk email service provider, MailChimp. I first created our MailChimp master email list by importing the Kickstarter backer's emails. I then imported all the SotA registered user emails. Every week I import the new SotA registered emails. With each import, MailChimp provides the following filters:

1. Removes all duplicate emails
2. Removes any emails with syntax errors
3. Removes any emails that look role-based (i.e. "postmaster@example1.com" or "support@example2.com")

Also, after each weekly email campaign, MailChimp further cleans up the email list by:

1. Removing any emails that hard bounced during the campaign
2. Removing any members that requested to be unsubscribed

As of the latest update mailed out this past Friday, this "cleaned" master email list for SotA has 99,668 members. This is pretty close to the 102k New Britannians displayed on our website.

Here are additional stats for our email list provided by MailChimp:



Now, granted, it is still possible for fake or duplicate account to get past our processes (CAPTCHA, email confirmation link) as well as MailChimps filters (syntax errors, duplicate emails, role-based emails, bounced emails). We don't know how high this number is, and hope that it isn't very high, because if that's the case then we are paying MailChimp extra money every single week to send our project updates to those fake/duplicate accounts. I wish we had the time, money, and resources to explore the issue of fake/duplicate accounts, but we don't. Suffice it to say that we are not intentionally padding the numbers, or misrepresenting the numbers, to deceive the public into thinking we are doing better than we are.

Respectfully,
dallas

COO/Co-Founder, Portalarium