The number one advocate for this game is you, the player! Believe me when I say that people are very resistant when the developer of a browser game tries to promote their game, whether it's on reddit or a forum, people assume you're some kind of snake oil salesman. But if it's coming from a respected, long-time community member, it will be perceived very differently. This is exactly why the Nevergrind post on Rerolled performed so well. I guarantee if I started the same exact post with the same content, I probably would have been called a spammer. So here's how it will work:

Create a high-quality, detailed post/thread/thing on a website exulting the glory of Nevergrind. Pharmakos's post on Rerolled is a great example. Make sure you direct them to https://nevergrind.com/, not the http:// version. Local mode exists, but I don't really promote it anymore.

Depending on how many referrals the post drives in a month, I will reward you for spreading the gospel based on three different tiers:

Gold Reward | 750+ referrals
- Receive a custom legendary weapon.

Silver Reward | 300+ referrals
- Receive custom legendary armor.

Bronze Reward | 100+ referrals
- Receive Maelfyn's Infinite Loop, a powerful unique ring with a level requirement of level 24.

Note: I reserve the right to adjust these referral thresholds since I'm not sure if these numbers are too low. If also reserve the right to judge the referrals as "low quality" or otherwise fraudulent.

Note 2: If it's a large community, I can setup a promo code specifically for them to get some free crystals upon signup. Just PM me and let me know what you have planned.

Protips:

- This is most likely to work if you are a respected member of the community.
- Post in appropriate, relative forums.
- Sharing images, gifs, videos are usually good ideas.

FAQs:

Why are you doing this?

I believe that the best advocate of Nevergrind is the player. You have been playing this game longer than most people play AAA titles that cost $60 at Gamestop. Why not share the game and rave about season 1 and all the great changes in store?! I believe in how fun this game is and I think if enough people played it, it could become quite popular.

How can you possibly know how many referrals my post drove to your website?

I will use google analytics to determine how many referrals your post triggered. There's some dark magic involved, but I will be as fair as possible when determining which reward you earned. In some cases I may even reward a higher tier if the post drove consistent, long-term traffic.

What if I post at 4p.m. and the referrals get split over two different days?

Again, I'll try to be as fair as possible and attempt to determine how many referrals you created.

Isn't this advertise to win?

Um, I guess so? I think it's a pretty reasonable system. The Kickstarter would have failed if Pharmakos never posted about it on Rerolled. Empires don't build themselves.

I'll see what I can do. I've been considering doing some livestreaming of the game to get some interest. Main problem is I really don't have any followers.

Adjusted the referral numbers after doing some marketing calculations. 8)

How is the referral system going to work as far as knowing exactly who the referrals came from? Should I message you links to posts I made on other forums?

Also, should we have an option of designing a legendary that eventually gets added to the drop table so everyone could possibly obtain it instead of being handed one? I would personally decline such an item out of fairness, but it would be cool to still have the honor of designing a piece of equipment. So the incentive is still there for referrals.

Someone posted a link to this game on Path of Exile forums, which is how I heard about it.


***Edit, I made a referral post on 4 different websites, and PM'd you the links.

I tend to be very on top of these sort of things. I check my referrals every day multiple times. If someone posts about Nevergrind, I will know in less than a few hours. But it doesn't hurt to PM me to make my life easier.

You can always try to get one of the popular streamers like Kripparrian who have a huge following to play this game. Path of Exile sort of took off after Kripp started playing it. Could be worth a shot. The only thing is, you might have to pay him. He was a top player in D3 for awhile, and was the first person in the world to beat hardcore inferno. And this is back when D3 inferno was freaking brutal.

Nah, Kripp is way into Hearthstone. I'm subbed to him, so I think I have a sense of what he'd do. I think there's about a 0% chance he'd do that. He only plays AAA games.

I don't there is a shot he'll do it either, but he did get heavy into Path of Exile before it was widely known. Although it was picking up a lot of traction when he did go in.

I don't understand how Kripp can play so much Hearthstone. It's not even that complicated of a game.

There is some depth to the game and his viewer numbers almost doubled when he 'moved' from diablo3/POE to hearthstone. After 1-2 games of HS I get bored so I don't see the attraction. Lirik might be more inclined to play a non-AAA title and any game he plays blows up.

I found that luck overruled strategy in Hearthstone, and that's when I lost interest.

Btw, since we're on topic, I have considered making a Nevergrind card game. Instead of "Play Nevergrind" you'd click "Play Cards" or whatever and then you'd play a Hearthstone type of card game that has Nevergrind-themed cards in it. You could even get rewards from the card game like special items or something. Or you could find rare cards while actually playing Nevergrind. I thought that would be cool. I'd have to get a slighly larger audience to get 1v1 games going on a consistent basis though.

If anyone is registered on any of these forums, and wants to get some dialogue going about the game, it might attract more attention to the topics. Topics with zero replies often get ignored, and topics with replies get viewed more. Realistic scenario, we get a few hundred views per topic with a % of them making an account and trying the game out and coming back to offer positive input.

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/ ... based-rpg/

http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/of ... -based-rpg

Nexus forums and Minecraft forums are pretty large communities. Its up to Maelfyn if he thinks one of them or both are worth offering some kind of promotion on.

Cool, there are actually a lot of promo codes for the game. Minecraft, bacon, nexus, or whatever you want. Setting a promo code is dead simple. I'll try to stay out of the threads because in the past I have been accused of shadow marketing.

I will subscribe to the threads and follow it via email.

If anyone asks me, I'll be perfectly honest and say you're offering referral rewards like designing a unique item, and I might even link them to this topic. Nobody can accuse someone who's transparent of shadow marketing.

I'm thinking it might be a better strategy to post a link in an already existing topic without looking like you're trying to sell the game. Just throw a hint out there "Oh yeah I've been playing nevergrind, and its pretty cool", etc and include the link. I'll try that approach to see if it works any better.

I would like to post that game on some communities but a lot of them see a "register" button and instantly close the site, because something where you have to sign up for is super evil

So it would be great, if the "local" mode via http would be enabled again, so they can test the game and when they see it's great, they can register.

Yeah, I think it's a matter of building credibility over time. Frankly the benefits of being server mode only have out-weighted the costs. I'm glad I did it.

So the local mode will never come back ?

would be tricky to implement, but what if you allowed people to start in server mode without registering.... and then if they don't register before closing the browser window their progress is deleted?

First character is free anyway isn't it? Let them start playing and remind them to create an account to save any progress.

Probably a bit difficult to implement but a potential solution.

Ya, it would be some work.