Scarlet Shocker

The best product (or service) in the world is useless if nobody knows it exists; which is exactly what this game suffers from most I'd argue.

Ok

*considers*

No!



But I'm glad you appreciate what we do

I was offering an addition to his suggestion

So far as I understand it's a sliding scale discount: The more you take the less you pay per unit. As for the 2nd part I suspect that's not available here because there's very little independent advertising so my guess (I stress it's a guess) is that it's a no.

Yeah let's ban marketing and save the people from themselves!

Huss

You don't know much about marketing do you? It's getting people interested in the product and wanting to know more. As for "due dilligence" you don't need to do that in the opening gambit (and for the record the all sales are final disclaimer is pretty limited at best.)

Right.

Where's the competition? If you read it as criticism you may just be inferring.

But ok... let's compare and contrast some examples with the above and see how they stack up.

How about this example?

This is ok. It's pretty good in fact. It tells you what you're getting in a punchy expression that's actually amusing, and delivers most of what you need to know succinctly and neatly. Most importantly, there's no negative listing of its limitations.

Let's try another - a totally "like for like" example by comparing another travel power desciption:
This tells you what you're getting. It doesn't tell you what it doesn't do (well the short description does a little so it loses a mark there) but read the key words: Golden, Magic, "Like Alladin", Fantastic!

See the difference? It makes you imagine being there "soaring across the skies like Alladin" - and there's no mention in that description that it'll detoggle your powers.

Yes, there is a need to let the customer know what will happen before they buy, but it's completely inappropriate in your marketing introduction. Marketing is about generating interest.

Coincidentally here's some of the best marketing I've seen recently - albeit to an audience that's already solidly sold but this is pretty ace - except it's come from the Community team, not marketing. This wins because it's just a very brief sentence which encourages you to click the link and then suddenly you're presented with a huge "Wow-Factor" - you only have to read the posts following to know how well that went down.

Paragon can do marketing sometimes, but sadly the marketing team frequently turn out sub-par stuff. Considering how great this game really is, that's a real shame.

Yes, but how did the giant bones get there... and even more important: What killed them?

How's that for an amazing sales pitch?! Two neat paragraphs only three short sentences. No extraneous guff or irrelevant details just a simple "this is what it is, this is when you can use it and then an entire paragraph dedicated to telling you what it won't do.

Perfect: No unrealistic raising of user expectation, no unwitting exhortation to rush out and buy the product (because now we know what it won't do, we're going to buy it on impulse, right?) There's no unnecessary hype - or even a waste of space outlining the features and benefits of said travel power cuz... it's a panther stealth power and it turns everything off when you use it... that's all you need to know. EVER!

Brilliant stuff Paragon Marketing. You have finally excelled yourselves! Black Pebble, I salute you! Superlative work that leaves us other professional marketeers dead in your wake.

Praetoria

Habashy

Twinshot

Mercy (Oh mandatory Mongoose how I miss you [not])

First Ward

Death From Below

Drowning in Blood

There's plenty of 1-30 content
Whether you like it or not is entirely subjective but it IS there and the Devs clearly have listened

Nobody needs to go into the Hollows these days unless they absolutely want to (and actually the Hollows arc is pretty good taken in isolation but it did burn a lot of players out with its constant re-runs)

And just who gets embarrassed running older content? I don't think I've ever blushed saving Atlas Park Bank. I don't think I even piddled myself when I got caught robbing it either. If you go beetroot when you run older stuff I'd suggest that's your own issue - and it's nnot a huge leap of faith to suggest there might be an outcry if the older content got removed - because, you know actually some of us still like to run it.

The good news is, if you don't like it, you don't need to do it. But I'll decide what is "good" or what is "bad" within my own frame of reference.

Which would be true, and thus completely fine. Giving away stuff for free is GOOD. There is no down side here.

Believe me, I'm no fan of Black Pebble whoever is behind him/her/them - the marketing strategy of this game falls way short of the mark far too often but this isn't one of them. In fact it's so good I suspect somebody from outside of marketing suggested it, it's really that good!

True... but give enough people enough warm fuzzies and they will be less inclined to unsub.

Besides, if they want to long in a fremium to claim their prize they may well decide to unlock that other character they've not played in a while... and suddenly... ;-)

There are a lot of virtual environments that offer their members regular "treats" - one well known virtual world offers its subscribers a weekly stipend of in world currency plus a free home plus monthly free gifts. They could eat Paragon Studios for breakfast even though their platform is open source and if you had the skills you could compile the code and make your own. They are neither desperate nor getting rid of "clearance" items. They are simply saying "Thanks for being part of what we're trying to do here" and offering those who play a little bonus.

In fact you can easily argue that things are going well for Paragon: Freedom is going so well that they are able to give stuff away for free instead of making every single $ of revenue they can.

This is a very good thing