Sigh. Salem is failing proof inside.

[Thor]

Salem will never be that popular.

If we changed permadeath mechanic into dueling or something, then maybe - but that would kill the whole aspect of this game and we don't want that in the first place. This game is so brutal and hardcore that only a small portion of world's player base can enjoy it.

On the other hand..
This game being a "hate it or love it" thing, Salem probably will have a more loyal player base instead of lots people just coming and going constantly.

[Potjeh]

Still, Haven has at least 6x player numbers, and it's got open PvP and permadeath too.

[RuneNL]

Still, Haven has at least 6x player numbers, and it's got open PvP and permadeath too.

Bigger map, more polish, more to do.

[Binks]

I'm saying if there is 2000 people willing to watch some other nerd play that game. This game could have a huge portion of that easily. This game is so much better and nicer looker than Runescape. I just don't think very many people know about it and the few that do read bad reviews about the game and don't even give it a real try. The biggest turn off people have is the game is to much of a grind.

Potjeh how many of those are actually people playing and how many of them are bots?

Rune the map size is perfectly fine. It's honestly WAY to big for the current population.

[Spazzmaticus]

When last I scoured the interwebz Salem was nowhere to be found on any indie or advertising sites.

No entry on Desura, no entry on Indiedb, etc. Same with gamebanshee and pretty much every other indie dev site I could find. So the traditional way of just lazily browsing through a site like Desura just to see what new game you might not have heard of won't lead to you finding this game.

Really, it's just an unwillingness to put the name out there. Why? I have no idea. Something like Towns is on Steam Greenlight. People can hardly find this game on the Paradox website even if they try. Now that ain't right!

[Claeyt]

I'm saying if there is 2000 people willing to watch some other nerd play that game. This game could have a huge portion of that easily. This game is so much better and nicer looker than Runescape. I just don't think very many people know about it and the few that do read bad reviews about the game and don't even give it a real try. The biggest turn off people have is the game is to much of a grind.

Potjeh how many of those are actually people playing and how many of them are bots?

Rune the map size is perfectly fine. It's honestly WAY to big for the current population.

Map is too big but let's just focus on recruiting more. If we had 1000 people playing the map would be fine.

You're absolutely right, people don't know about it. I've been randomly hitting some of the game sites and trying to update the reviews and such. It would be awesome if one of our top players like You, Chief, PmP or Darwoth, who didn't have to fear anybody killing them would start live play streaming on Twitch or doing a let's play on You Tube. If you're shy just do a distorted mike and no pictures.

The grind is tough on Runescape also. The Salme dev's have made it better. We'll see what the future holds.

[Thor]

Still, Haven has at least 6x player numbers, and it's got open PvP and permadeath too.

But even with that, Haven don't really have that impressive amount of players in it compared to most mmo's.

[RuneNL]

Rune the map size is perfectly fine. It's honestly WAY to big for the current population.

Current population, you said it mate.

[alloin]

The only advertisement Salem had was through Paradox' website & mailing list
and some failed beta-key giveaways on MMORPG.COM (wrong audience imo; mmorpg.com people are frustrated old WoW-farts).

Some quotes from one of the devs or moderators didn't really help in the past aswell.

On the other hand, Salem is far from polished, new players don't like the custom-client aspect while the original client lacks a bunch of nice features, gluttony & purity grinding is too complicated for new players,...

An achievement system would also be a nice feature to keep people playing mindlessly (some people like fancy titles or outfits for farming 5000 crickets etc..)

[Jalpha]

I think this is the wrong point in Salems development to introduce a bunch of new players.