Warrior General Games

the admins could do a better job of getting involved with the gameplay itself. they could use the Announcements page, or better yet the home page to share regular, almost daily status updates a la a GLB twitter built into the game. topics would range from insane replays, to very close games or bad upsets, and generalized playoff hype for Pro leagues and WL. yes, this is done to an extent on GLB's Facebook, but it's nothing compared to what it could be if it were made into an in-game "thing"

we, the users, define most of our experience, and that is almost entirely limited to leagues we play or coordinate in. it would be cool if there was a meaningful news feed on our home pages that gave inherent value to the gameplay (particularly at Pro and above, but again also recognizing the share-worthy moments in lower leagues). maybe even something as corny as an admin writing a fake backstory for the WL championship matchup every season, dropping a few key player names and such. the same news feed could of course be used as an admin blog for developer stuff, on a much more frequent basis than what we typically receive now.

basically, GLB needs its own GLB Sports News Network to pump out GLB news and highlights to our home pages. make people care about stuff they didn't realize was worth caring about. people aren't naturally interested in stuff that doesn't concern their teams and dots - but I suspect that if you actually feed them that info, it could create quite a following, not to mention a little more legitimate motivation for everyone to get their dots to the top

it certainly doesn't have to all be shouldered by the admins, either. hire users to regularly contribute stories, and display all daily GLB news headlines in a ticker on the homepage. this is a MMORPG, and plenty of users already go for the full immersion aspect of it with the power rankings, creative write-ups and other stuff in both league and individual team forums. does your team have an actual motivational speaker? chances are they'd jump at the opportunity to write articles for the GLB news feed and get paid a tiny amount of flex for it, no?

It really had all of this for a long time. There were sites updated regularly with GLB news talking about the changes and big games around. GLB Radio was a staple for those 2 things. But there just isn't much for big games anymore. At least to the point that more than just the people in those games would care about. I just brought this up in the GLB main thread but once Regional identity lost its power, GLB as a whole started to sink as far as the forum and news life.

yeah there have been separate venues for this stuff, but I just can't help but wonder if there's any merit to delivering this kind of news straight to people who are completely oblivious to all of it. throwing it at their homepage right in front of their face so it's unavoidable. advertising the game, within the game.

keep in mind, stuff that doesn't impress veterans in the slightest, can be exciting to the newer or inexperienced users. fake/fabricated rivalries, corny game write-ups, lulzy replays where someone breaks 7 tackles against a CPU, all that stuff may seem like unnecessary fluff but it might actually work to draw people in to exploring the game further than their one dot/team/league. but the biggest hurdle by far is getting that information, just like all information on the site regarding builds and strategies, TO them.

edit: it's 5:10 am and i'm getting to rambly, so donezo for nao

Naw I agree. I just recently played a game and there was a rivalry within the game (and it was posted right on the front page) that it actually got me more interested in the game. I ended up joining up in the rivalry before quitting because the game ended up sucking after awhile but still.

Originally posted by bhall43
I just brought this up in the GLB main thread but once Regional identity lost its power, GLB as a whole started to sink as far as the forum and news life.

Multiple factors went into it, and calling "regional identity" the the biggest factor, let alone the sole cause is a bit shortsighted.

Regional identity existed because it was before turnover. It was the same people playing against the same people for over a year, simply because they signed up at the same time. After the first wave of players, that part of the equation just disappeared.

The popularity and growth also played a pretty significant role. Despite what some people claim, the lowest tiers of the pyramids weren't bastions of activity and rivalries. Most were generally dead. Partially, again, because teams had started making farm teams at the time, which didn't exist in the "first wave".

Not only were the number of teams expanding because of the growth of the game, but no players and few teams were disbanding because nobody had hit decline yet. The pyramids would have just continued to grow, along with lower tiers becoming more and more meaningless.

World League also hurt it in the sense that it cut down on the actual regional identity, the pro leagues. Cross-pro-league rivalries were great for the caremometer, but that pretty much got snubbed out, both by the World League and by the mod/admin team deciding the league forums needed to be treated like glass children.

Most people are remembering something that was simply unsustainable. The benefits of the "first wave" can't really be recreated.

Originally posted by Deathblade


World League also hurt it in the sense that it cut down on the actual regional identity, the pro leagues. Cross-pro-league rivalries were great for the caremometer, but that pretty much got snubbed out, both by the World League and by the mod/admin team deciding the league forums needed to be treated like glass children.

Agreed with the rest of what you said. But this is what i mean by the Pro leagues losing their regional identity. World League took over and a lot of what was great about regional pride just kinda made them the AAA league of the game.

+1

Originally posted by Deathblade
Most people are remembering something that was simply unsustainable. The benefits of the "first wave" can't really be recreated.

Nostalgia is also a lot of what you're looking for term-wise.

People tend to stick to the positive associations and forget about the negatives that existed alongside them.

Originally posted by Deathblade
the mod/admin team deciding the league forums needed to be treated like glass children.

Good thing they haven't looked at the league forums where I hang out.

Originally posted by InRomoWeTrust
Nostalgia is also a lot of what you're looking for term-wise.

People tend to stick to the positive associations and forget about the negatives that existed alongside them.


No, that's not it at all.

There's an old baseball sim game out there called Season Ticket Baseball that has this. It's not anything massive... just notes on players of the week and month, injury reports (yes... I know we don't have injuries... that's not the point), and reports on outstanding happenings by players in games (like hitting for the cycle, pitching a shutout, ect, ect....) That'd work pretty cool here without really needing to go psycho overboard with complicated stuff.