Grow the World

[Deathromancer]

if you guys get more leeway or input for marketing suggestions with new set up that would be a good way to increase game awareness, I did something similar with ULTIMA ONLINE I set up a booth at local conventions to pass out gaming material and free gifts to get ppl to try the game out and join my guild, overall I had a lot of success with this as an unofficial ambassador and made some friends I was able to hang out with outside of the game, heck we even had a few lan parties this way and the added bonus of people in the same time zone, so more of us where online together. And the only problem I had was one guy tried to cash in the joining bonus I had set up for new players and using the free gift codes for his own acct, so it would need to be a new player bound to acct non transferable thing. IF DDO was willing to supply some type of ambassador package to people willing to do this at Conventions , this could only help the game as long as safeguards where put in place to avoid abuse of it. Also I've tried to get more friends to play but since a lot of them have played pen and paper and have a favorite class or race, when I tell them the game is free to play and the first thing they see in char gen is they have to spend money to play the 1 class or race they want , they get turned off by the free to play angle.

One way to combat this would be a free to play acct getting a one time, one character only pass to try the game out with something they want, for example, they start off with a drow warlock, let them do this by creating a test character slot that lets them get to lvl 20 and only in the one character slot, and once they have done that too advance they would have to buy the warlock and drow unlocks and this test acct could not use epic destinies or TR until they do. If that's plainly stated during the creation process and they invest that much time and money they are more likely to spend the cash, than quit the game. Another good thing that would help new players especially free to play players, would be giving a grouping bonus for groups that group and tutor them. To keep this from being abused new accts would need to be giving some sort of special icon that lasted 30 to 90 days visable on the whos list, of whose on line, this would let growing guilds actively seek them out to help, or the more Jaded TR grinders, seek them out for the extra xp they bring to the group.