Does this forum have mass email capability?

[Hidamari]

I ran a forum a veeeerrrryyyy long time ago I remember this being a thing in the back end somewhere, though I never had to use it.

This game is losing members, and factions are dying, does this forum have the capability of mass emailing all members of the board?

A few months ago in august the "Jelly" Renegade community in Command & Conquer: Renegade finally died after like 10+ years of running servers for the game.

the owner of the servers and forum sent an email to every person on the board to announce a final date for when the servers would close permanently, (which was only a few days before) people started posting on the forum whom id not seen for 6+ years, and the final event was to capacity, the likes of which had never been seen in the game before. literally 100s of people turned up and the server only had enough room for 100 people, 50 per side.

He actually said "holy shit i should have done that months ago before we got into trouble"

If yes, may I suggest that feature is used on this forum as well, the Jelly renegade forum only had 3212 members, and loads of people turned up.

this forum has 19405 members, A good, solid advertisement emailed to every one of these accounts would mean even at 1% retention of returning players, you would immediately fill the server, of course a lot of the accounts are smurfs and RP accounts so that number isnt 100% reliable, and you also have to account for timezones and when players play, so perhaps a 2.5% retention would be desirable. But that is a huge resource that Im pretty certain isnt being used to the benefit of the server.

Thoughts on this from the staff would be appreciated,

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[Connor]

There is the ability to unchecked "Receive emails from Administrators" so it should be possible.

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[Remnant]

We do infact have a mass emailing system in the forums. - I admit we haven't used it, for the fact that we never really thought about it. That, and perhaps the lack of content to send out as a mass-email.

It hasn't been discussed on our end before, but figuring out a reasonable email to send to people (relevant, etc.) might be tricky.

Suggestions are always welcome. Can't promise we'll do any of them, but I can appreciate a good idea.

Ps: I just glanced at the mailing module now - I think it's broken. MyBB is spitting errors at me. Shouldn't be terrible to fix though.. If required.

[Sciamach]

I think I see another use for what Dii's getting at:

Y'know how when the domain controller exploded there were a metric crapton of indies/people that never came back once we got it back up?
Sending out a mass email at times like those from hereout might be a good idea, cos not everyone has the twitter link or skype, but just about everyone has a forum account.

Ps: I just glanced at the mailing module now - I think it's broken. MyBB is spitting errors at me. Shouldn't be terrible to fix though.. If required.

This just invoked the mental image of a small snake-like animal being roused from a 100 year sleep, only to hiss growl and spit at you for asking it to move 3 inches. Thanks, I needed to see that

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[ sci·am·ach ]
/sīˈamək/

A simple, angry man casually working his way through life on a personal quest to acquire copious amounts of street cred.

[jammi]

Could use it to announce new mod releases and after major events like DDoS attacks/RAID controller exploding/server being restored.

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News article library, feedback and content requests.

[Enkidu]

Agreed - I think it's useful.

Yes, it's a little bit spammy but if people don't like it, they'll filter it out using their email's filter settings.

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THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's Shipping Unions, retired from a life of piracy.)

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[Cearos Craeh]

Knowing those "Newsletter" things from various other games, "Addon will be released", "big update", "new items" and so on.
Well, may not send by a free community thingy, but to be hnest: does it matter?
Ofcourse publishers doing it by hoping to earn some money, may here it should be done to get some drive again.
May some will return..
Most people (of the retuners) will probably play a few hours or days and than will leave again, but some of these will be hooked again and play for some longer time - just fixed by a short, good looking reminder.
May send those on a kinda regulary base, like once a month or w/e, so may some people return by knowing things still happening here and it's not a 'one timer event'.
Think once a month is good for not being spammy, but also not to long tho show "hey, still got some action here".


Since FL itself was released back in '03 the chance is low to get new people into it, but there's a good chance of reactivating the "old" people.

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greetings Pilots and have a nice flight
Ce'Aros

[Remnant]

So on second thought, i'm unsure if we're able to send mass-mail to the userbase. I've fixed the system in myBB, however our API we used to send the mail only allows a certain number of mail per month. (A number we won't reach normally) - However a blast to everyone on the forums, exceeds that limit instantly.
We need to pay money for more support. Our server costs are high enough currently, for something small like that, I don't really think it's worth buying.

The mass-mail idea is a great one. It might be outside our capacities for the time being though.

[Connor]

There is the ability to unchecked "Receive emails from Administrators" so it should be possible.

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[Hidamari]

So on second thought, i'm unsure if we're able to send mass-mail to the userbase. I've fixed the system in myBB, however our API we used to send the mail only allows a certain number of mail per month. (A number we won't reach normally) - However a blast to everyone on the forums, exceeds that limit instantly.
We need to pay money for more support. Our server costs are high enough currently, for something small like that, I don't really think it's worth buying.

The mass-mail idea is a great one. It might be outside our capacities for the time being though.

How much does it cost, personally I do believe it is more than worth it to try and get more players into this game rather than just sitting around watching it decline.

and its not like youd need whatever additional services that are required to make this possible, forever.