59 replies to this topic

[Dimento Graven]

Early on, I was receiving adds for MWO in my Hotmail client (actual web ads), now though I'm not seeing anything, haven't seen anything anywhere in recent or long term memory.

Given that it 'feels' like the game population has dropped off even more harshly of late, I'm wondering if PGI is spending some of our 'mech purchases on advertising to potential "new" customers.

Anyone seen any MWO ads in any magazines, or pop-up adds, or anything like that?

[Bud Crue]

Nope. I've never seen ANY form of add for this game outside of this website.

I wonder whatever became of the CW advertisement video they made? Was here for like a month and then disappeared. They obviously paid somebody to put that together...so presumably a budget item. Why they put it together and then shelved it (the clanner voice wasn't that terrible/silly) is anyone's guess; but I digress. I think the last time this came up, someone posted a vague recollection of seeing an ad on steam right before the steam push, and someone from closed beta days said they used to have advertisements on some gaming sites but as far as I know no one posted any verification of these mythological efforts. In any case, those examples (true or not) are the only "advertisements" I am aware of.

As an aside, Its interesting to me, that PGI has done several cross references to HBS Battletech game yet on the HBS Battletech website there is no reference to MWO as far as I can tell. You'd think PGI could have pushed for at least a mention or a link.

But yeah, their marketing of this game is nonexistent as far as I can tell. Personally I think after the steam bomb they decided to give up on attracting new players and are just focusing on the whales and existing player base to keep the lights on and fund MW5.

[Juodas Varnas]

To be honest, i think i've seen more ads of that Mechwarrior Tactics game (before it went belly-up), than i've seen of MWO.

[El Bandito]

Remember when PGI bothered to make new videos for fresh hero mechs? Pepperidge Farm Remembers.

Edited by El Bandito, 19 March 2017 - 10:16 AM.

[Monkey Lover]

They spent it all on the tournament

[Mystere]

[Erronius]

The new MW game is probably the only advertisement for MWO that they're worrying about.

[Khobai]

its a little late to be advertising MWO, its near the end of its development cycle

[SuomiWarder]

They run a Facebook campaign. For whatever that's worth.

[Thorqemada]

Civil War is coming soon and after that its riding on it till sunset...

[El Bandito]

Thorqemada, on 19 March 2017 - 11:44 AM, said:

Civil War is coming soon and after that its riding Jihading on it till Dark Ages...

Fixed it for ya.

[slide]

PGI used to have little splash adds on various email websites and such but that was probably an IGP thing. Nothing much has been done since then.

That however is a good thing.

This game is in many ways a disappointment to a lot of people. It needs fixing in more ways than one and isn't really any better than it was in closed beta. They need to do whatever they have planned to to fix it (if they can) before you can advertise for more clients. There is no point in disappointing even more people than they already have.

PGI have had excellent opportunities to grow the player base.
Launch
Re-Launch
Re-Re Launch
Steam
Mech Con

All have seen a reasonable influx of players. What they have failed to do is keep those players. Why? Because endless grind and endless TDM with out purpose get boring for most people very quickly. MWO has no purpose, what purpose it has had in the past gets diluted more with every revision.

[Sunstruck]

If they were smart they would team up with HBS and do a special introductory promotion for MWO thats tied in or related to the release of Battletech. It wouldn't be unreasonable since they're helping out HBS with mech assets.

Edited by Sunstruck, 19 March 2017 - 07:17 PM.

[Dimento Graven]

Khobai, on 19 March 2017 - 10:55 AM, said:

its a little late to be advertising MWO, its near the end of its development cycle

What makes you say that?

And ultimately, why would that have any bearing. If your product is 'finished', you definitely want to take a portion of the money you've been previously investing in development and put it towards marketing to get more customers.

Or did I misunderstand you?

[Dimento Graven]

slide, on 19 March 2017 - 06:45 PM, said:

...

All have seen a reasonable influx of players. What they have failed to do is keep those players. Why? Because endless grind and endless TDM with out purpose get boring for most people very quickly. MWO has no purpose, what purpose it has had in the past gets diluted more with every revision.

I dunno, there's plenty of 'F2P' or 'freemium' games that have on going issues and continuous development that also appear to invest in marketing their products at a level significantly beyond anything I can recall ever seeing from PGI.

[Dimento Graven]

Promessa, on 19 March 2017 - 08:17 PM, said:

I've never seen an add, I didn't even know about this game until like 16 months ago and I was the target audience and very much watching adds for many similar games during the times this game was new. I wish I found it sooner really.

I wish they'd start advertising a bit... MW5 is coming at some point, attention this game gets is attention that game gets.

Out of curiosity, how'd you learn of the game if you didn't see an ad for it?

Word of mouth, or Steam, or you typo'd an URL for another site and ended up mwomercs.com?

[Dimento Graven]

Promessa, on 19 March 2017 - 08:30 PM, said:

Word of mouth. I think my buddy found a youtube video on it at random and told me to try it

Well, there's YouTube, probably by now hundreds of thousands of videos created by the community.

Of course... They're competing with the probable billions of videos from everyone else, on just about every other possible subject.

So the chances of accidentally stumbling on it on YouTube has got to be small.

Your friend should probably buy lottery tickets...

[Dimento Graven]

slide, on 19 March 2017 - 06:45 PM, said:

PGI used to have little splash adds on various email websites and such but that was probably an IGP thing. Nothing much has been done since then.

...

I remember those, used to see those when I'd log into my Hotmail account.

It was stupid too, because I already had the game when I started seeing those ads. Never sell a product it's not possible to own more than one of to someone who already owns it, sell 'em something NEW. Sales 101.

I couldn't figure out if it was putting the ad up BECAUSE I already had the game (stupid to waste the time/effort in that case), or if it was because I played a lot of computer games. Considering I saw it nearly every day for a few months...

[slide]

Dimento Graven, on 19 March 2017 - 08:14 PM, said:

I dunno, there's plenty of 'F2P' or 'freemium' games that have on going issues and continuous development that also appear to invest in marketing their products at a level significantly beyond anything I can recall ever seeing from PGI.

I quite agree, World of Warships is the first to come to mind, I see banners a lot on you tube, youtube commercials and even on the TV here in Aus. ATM.

For me WOWS is a lot like MWO, lots of grind, plenty of TDM and not much purpose. What is the difference? Wargaming have confidence in their product and an established fan base to try and convert (Tanks) PGI have neither and are continually trying to please everyone whilst at the same time pleasing almost no one.

PGI absolutely should be advertising their game. But they run the real risk of getting more bad reviews than they do paying customers. But it is obvious to me that it is a risk they don't want to take right now (if ever).

[Dimento Graven]

slide, on 19 March 2017 - 08:42 PM, said:

...

PGI absolutely should be advertising their game. But they run the real risk of getting more bad reviews than they do paying customers. But it is obvious to me that it is a risk they don't want to take right now (if ever).

What's that famous quote? "Even bad press is good press."

Even if you've got ONE person out there who yells, "Haysoos marimba MWO, that stupid BattleTech is a flaming piece of garbage, keep it away from me...", every time he sees, hears, or watches an ad for MWO, there's probably going to be TEN people who yell, "WAIT A MINUTE!?!?!?! THERE'S AN ACTIVELY DEVELOPED BATTLETECH (or GIANT ROBOT) SIM OUT THERE??? HOW DO I GET IT?!?!?"

And of those 10 people there may be... TWO who say, "Oh wait, I better check the reviews first..."