Before you read further - THIS POST IS NOT MEANT TO TRASH PROJECT. I want to help and point out things that can be done to improve it.
I want Kronos to succeed and for that people behind Kronos got to realise they need to fight for your potential playerbase and work for your image in in their eyes.
I recently participated in test of another not-to-be-named server, and the biggest reason for me to do so (aside of figuring for myself the levl of it's actuall readiness) was to speak with other testers about their aspirations for private vanilla server, preferences, and their opinions on Kronos.
Unfortunately, i must state the main replies that i got were:
1)
"Kronos? Is that server that already failed two times? There's no showing they learnt from that."
2)
"They got single developer who does EVERYTHING, from posting news to fixing scripts. He might be genius, but investing time into playing on server that ran by single guy? Nowai!"
3)
"They may be nice, but i here today can actually test this server for myself to see how things work, while on Kronoes there's some closed test going on and all i know their release date got cancelled recently and no new date installed. While here i take part in public test and it's the best PR move."
4)
"I do not care, going to play whatver comes first. This level of quality suits me fine."
5)
"Kro-what? Never heard of them."
Now hold on. You do not need to debunk these for me, i know the state of things.
What's wrong is that these replies are given by players, these replies show how they view Kronos, and these are exactly the things that need to be fixed.
And it's not nerds who were testing - most of the testers were people who currently playing on retail, who told they were way to young to expirience vanilla back and the days and now they want to see what's the fuzz is about.
Look at hot topics in these forums and compare with these answers by people. During test noone complained about concept of multiboxing, or having to level at x1 rate, or joining battleground queues from chat command. The main issues are related with Kronos not being able to show it's strong sides or show where it improved.
Let me summarise for you several moves that should help Kronos:
1) Media team got to capitalise on strong sides of project. Show what's improved and fixed. Show how you adressed weak points of previous incarnations.
Your FAQ answers very important questions, but to get to it one got to dig to find it somehow. Majority of the people won't click that much even if it's in reality just 2 clicks. Put FAQ link on top bar where you got "Home" "About" etc links.
Currently on the right side of
http://www.kronos-wow.com you got 2 widget-like areas for links to progress page and for forums.
Add widget for
your twitter and actually start using it! There were only 3 tweets in 40 days of 2015!
You do not know what to post about? Start tweeting about closed issues on tracker, linking to tracker.
Half the people on forums do not even know there's TWINHEAD databese, this will show that there're some tools already behind Project. it will also show that the project is alive and there're things going on under the serface every day. "Dem stuff refuse to name ETA but at least i can see dem working". Again, it's an indication that things are moving on.
Add widget for random video showcase which can be viewed directly from main page. Before the last video update, the main page was all text posts. When new person comes to your site he's not going to read all those posts. Half of the new visitors won't even be looking for media library link. They assume you feed movies to them - so do it. Your front page got to interest and interact with visitor to make him stay or dig deeper.
Less technicality in videos. I personally deeply appreciate these aspects and bow to those who make them, but many players do not get what those videos about.
In this post LaraDorren seems to understand what's it about.
As much as you make videos for old-school players you also make them for those who never played it. Imagine you are promoting your new game and think how you would do it for those who never played it.
2) You need to get rid of "one-man-project" image. Show that there're people behind this project other then Chero. Media team got to stand up again and take representation in their hands. Do some interviews with long term testers who speak about why Kronos is great. You might have problems telling that but i bet those old veterans can bring arguments for other players which you can't put to words yourself. Put emphasis on Twinstar team that runs servers and covers hardware and network side.
3) Do some kind of promotion like you did with Cristmas facebook event - let some players test your server. Yes, i know they won't help with bugtesting. But still let them come becouse it works for yout image.
And ABSOLUTELY interview them after. Not about their bug reports but about their overal expirience!
