Why is Foruminis so much more popular than here?


  • I thin you are mixing the cause from the effect.  Perhaps it comes up firrst BECAUSE it is more active.  Google spends millions of dollras each year to make sure their alogorithms acheive just that result…that more popular and relevent sites are rated higher.

    It does become a self-fullfilling prophecy, and it would take a concerted effort to change at this point.  And I don’t see a minis advocate floating around here that is willing to build content etc to more the needle in the direction of A&A.org.


  • While I would say that is generally true, there are far more active A&A Minis forums much lower on the list.

    Low activity may partly be a cause of being lower on the listing, but at the same time the vast majority of people will click on the first link they’re given without ever looking further down.

    And as I said, it’s only ONE reason.  I’m sure there are others.  Especially, as you mentioned Motdc, the mixed playstyles (board vs minis/tabletop) on this site with the board games being quite prevalent.  That alone would tend to push some of the purely minis players away.

  • Founder TripleA Admin

    Yeah, SEO is something that I need to work on. The homepage for axisandallies.org recently lost page rank and I need to fix that but it has not affected search traffic yet.

    @Rorschach:

    One rather simple reason would be that ForuMINI comes up first in Google search when you look for “axis and allies miniatures forum”, with A&A.org being 4th on the list.


  • @Motdc:

    That’s a good questions.  I think this site is for A&A players who then tried out minis.  They were fun, they are fun, but as an old-school strategy and board gamer, it was hard to sustain the cost of a “collectable” game.  Perhaps the crowd at Foruminis is the oppsoite.  It might be those who cut their teeth on Magic the Gathering and are used to the collecting model.  And certainly if minis was the first exposure to A&A, they may feel overwhelmed by this site.  The two branches of the game share a name, but they are not really the same game in any other way.

    This would be my guess as well. I keep this section closed only opening it occasionally. I quickly lost interest in minis both from not wanting to keep sinking loot into a collectable game and it wasn’t all that fun. The board games are much more to my liking.

    I’d also suggest that minis debuted with more company sponsored net support and the minis as first exposure to A&A crowd didn’t really make it here in the first place.

  • Founder TripleA Admin

    But then how with the A&A Minis crowd make it to Foruminis?


  • @djensen:

    But then how with the A&A Minis crowd make it to Foruminis?

    They ended the Avalon Hill forums. I’d guess that sent the crowd looking for a new place. I’m just throwing stuff out there. I have no idea really.  :-)

  • Founder TripleA Admin

    Well, the true question is, how do we get minis people back to Axis & Allies.org?


  • @djensen:

    Well, the true question is, how do we get minis people back to Axis & Allies.org?

    Prehaps by offering some sort of database with all of the units that might be sorted and searched in various ways with photos of the units and stat cards.

    Or by offering maps and scenarios and articles and stuff like that. The usual, I guess.

  • '18 Customizer

    @frimmel:

    @djensen:

    Well, the true question is, how do we get minis people back to Axis & Allies.org?

    Prehaps by offering some sort of database with all of the units that might be sorted and searched in various ways with photos of the units and stat cards.

    Or by offering maps and scenarios and articles and stuff like that. The usual, I guess.

    Yes, you need all that stuff and more. But most of all you need enthusiasm!

    And the blocking of links has got to of been a factor in your decline. Ive never belonged to a forum that restricted links before. It makes it real hard for people to share their ideas, creations and exchange information. Spam should no effect the way you run your community. Add a simple anti-spam question (like - What war do these games emulate?)to your registration and reinstate your links option. 99% of the spammers out there are robots that can be fooled easily and they rest don’t have time to spam you every day.

  • Founder TripleA Admin

    Just post a few more times and links won’t be blocked.

    We had some really bad link spam for a while and it mostly dried up with we blocked links for first time posters.

  • '18 Customizer

    Up to 12 posts and still no links.

    Spam comes in waves anyways. You get indexed one day and the IP’s are sold to spammers and you have 2-3 days of attacks and then it dies down for a while. However, the higher on the search list your are the more often you get indexed. :wink:

  • Founder TripleA Admin

    Vanilla has integration with IP blacklists, I can’t wait to have that feature.

  • '18 Customizer

    @djensen:

    Vanilla has integration with IP blacklists, I can’t wait to have that feature.

    make sure you add this also. Its just too sweet!

    http://english-40373053768.spampoison.com/


  • One thing I noticed is all of the play-by-forum games were delted.  Perhaps its a self-cleaning system where old posts are deleted, but that content was gold in showing how to play-by-forum w/ minis.

  • Moderator

    @frimmel:

    @djensen:

    But then how with the A&A Minis crowd make it to Foruminis?

    They ended the Avalon Hill forums. I’d guess that sent the crowd looking for a new place. I’m just throwing stuff out there. I have no idea really.  :-)

    Thats exactly what happened.  when word got out the wizards was going to shut down there forums, some one started a new website and encouraged folks to join. I was one of them myself.  Also it is alot easier to play a minis game online then a whole A&A board game.

    Also i feel that the Moderators over there are more open to new ideas and and listen to what their foruminians want from their web site.  They hold contests fairly often and tournaments and of course the forumini Olympics every 1.5 years or so.
    The olympics is a great Idea, they have artistic compititions(mini painting), Land Minis tournaments, Sea Mini Tournaments, New unit contests.

    Unfortunatly this web site mostly revolves around the Board games so it only appeals to the Board game Fans.  If All I played was War at Sea, i would have no reason to come to this site at all. It offers nothing really for the mini market.

    Another reason was that the Forumini was in close support with Rich Baker the Head designer of the mini games, he listened to what the game fans had to say and you could see that in the new sets as they come out. the players felt that if something was unbalanced or needed the creators listened to their pleas and the new sets reflected those thoughts.

    Another great thing about the forumini is their Marketplace or traders forum. It is well maintained and the bad traders are kept careful watch.  I feel no threat of not getting a trade completed.  It is a very close knit community with many moderators and 4-5 Admins.  I know I asked to be a Mod here a long while ago and was told to wait for everything to calm down (aa40 and aap40 were releasing soon) and I have yet to hear anything. Even Imp. sent me a note telling me about it. But Nothing ever happened.  I am currently trying to manipulate the triplea game engine so i can use it on the forums to make War at Sea games easy to play in a forum.  Java code sucks :wink:

    I feel that the AxisandalliesforuMINI is a more open un biased website and everyone is listened to.  They take New Players under their wings and Teach them how to play by forum either land or Sea mini games, and soon the New Air mini game. Are you even set up to start that?  Hell they have people that will make a cool signature for you. You took away sigs here. they have there little cliques like the IJNCVLF, Club Med. etc…

    In short, this website, which i love, focuses to much on just the board games.
    Their is alot more to the A&A franchise then just Revised. (imho sucks)


  • Thats is very interesting feedback.

    I used to stop by Foruminis way back when, while all three sites (this one, WotC, and Foruminis) were alive an active with minins.  At the time it didn’t feel as professional or polished.  I had thought the play-by-forum support was a bit rough around the edges, requiring one to capture jpegs and post them, where as here the website accommodated posting .mvf game files and lots of games were being played (though you can’t tell now because they all got deleted).  I can’t comment on what Foruminis is like now, it might be different.

    I still feel it was mostly the target audience was different, which you stated kind of was well.  I personally started with A&A, then played minis, and returned here to post about it.  But those starting at the WotC forum playing other games probably went to Foruminis because this site, and the board game, were not familiar.


  • By the way, are you all using tools yet for your play-by-post or still just doing jpeg dumps?  MapView works great for PBEM and PBF plugplug*  :-D

  • Moderator

    I have not played in a while, but yeah, they were using a comunity photo bucket account for maps  and just typing in unit names into the squares. Not the mosteasy way to do it, but made the game easily understandable, since you only had to make a new map after each players sea movement or movement during land games. Then used the built in die roller to do combat.  Once you made 1 map and played on it, susiquient maps were easier to make.  I also made a bunch of Generic (big+small) maps to use for online play. They were used to great effect in pick up games and in League play. which was pretty successful

  • Founder TripleA Admin

    Does Map View only work on Windows?

    @Motdc:

    By the way, are you all using tools yet for your play-by-post or still just doing jpeg dumps?  MapView works great for PBEM and PBF plugplug*  :-D


  • Yes it is a Windows based application.

    Note that the attached screen shot is 199KB, while the attached game file which has every single turn, 5 phases per turn, is only 41 KB.

    screenshot.jpg
    Mot_VS_Cobalt_Luksusowa.mvf

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