Thread for New Landing Page Comments

[Firebrand]

I'm not fond of the background: too flashy, I would prefer more neutral colors.
The characters bar is a very good idea, but the statistics should be replaced by more lore.

And I agree with Milandra: the Virtirum logo should be displayed somewhere. Be proud of your company.

[Essra]

So far, I like it! Much better than the current page. Aside from the choice of heads for the background dragon... i really dislike that particular head model compared to the others. But that's sorta my opinion.

Well, i'd say the page doesn't look... DONE, by any means. but then, it's already been stated that it's not.

Edit: In the time it took for my very sleepy and distracted self to write this short post, some other people made some veery good points. almost all of which i agree with. XD.

[velveeta]

i must not be looking at the same page as everyone else, because i hate it and here is why

1) text is too dark - i can't read 50% of the words against the color filled background

2) i don't like the snowy white backgrounds on the races places and i don't like the layout of that section - a lot

3) the video should be at the top of the screen and should not autoplay (but the video itself is kewl beans in awesome sauce!)

4) the page looks and feels like it was made for a bigger screen - it has ugly link layout at the bottom of the page and i seem to have a lot of empty space that does not look intentional


there are a couple other things but i have to go get ready for skewl now!

[Snowflury]

Agree, nice work. Simple, to the point and shows off many of the games unique features.

[Dragonboy]

My opinion of the web page.
Pro’s:

• Mouse-over info about the races.
• The movie provides information about the game.

Con’s

• Background picture is way to colorful.
• Background picture has dragons who attack while flying (ingame not possible).
• The movie auto-plays
• The movie has a WA mob in it I never recall seeing ingame (That huge Robed Skeleton thing who is hitting a player), just before the text appears “The Battle Against the Withered Aegis has begun”.
• Buttons on the right side (I personally prefer the option buttons in a framed webpage to be on the Left side of the screen.
• Free-to-Play and Download both on the page. I would prefer something like Get started which will bring you to a new page which first gives you clearly written information about the types of subscribtions (Free-to-Play, Trail (14 days), Basic, Property Holders) in terms of restrictions. While below all that the buttons for the download can be found.
• Mouse-over info about the races should lose the stats, 4 biped schools to 100 and a dragon is way less strong anyway (stats wise not dps wise). It would be way better to add some lore about the race also with a reference to which Town is the home town of that race (when it exists of course).

All in all It is not a website I would enjoy visiting in its current state. I would even dare say that I like the old page better then the newer version.
Also the new page stands out to much in comparison to website as a whole so unless you are planning on doing a complete revamp of the website http://www.istaria.com/ including the community part I would start by taking the old page, deleting all below the Home, About Istaria, Faq, Downloads, Community Site, Support Site, Accounts and start rebuilding from there.

My idea about the website.
1. A short word of welcome to the people who have reached your website and some information about what you have to offer something along the lines of. “Welcome to the world of Istaria. The land were Dragons work together with the other living races in the never ending fight against the Withered Aegis and its growing army of the undead”
2. The movie is cool to see, might need an update, but a not auto-starting movie is cool to have.
3. Some account information about the different Subscriptions this game has to offer with clear information about each of them. Something along the lines of:
Free-to-Play: Allows you to play with 1 character of the Human race to explore and have fun in Istaria with full access to equipment and quests. Please know that buying a plot or lair is not allowed.
Trail (14 days): Allows you to play with up to 7 characters regardless of race to explore and have fun in Istaria with full access to equipment and quests for the duration of 14 days. Please know that buying a plot or lair is not allowed.
Basic: Allows you to play with up to 7 characters regardless of race to explore and have fun in Istaria with full access to equipment and quests. Please know that buying a plot or lair is not allowed.
Property Holders: Allows you to play with up to 7 characters regardless of race to explore and have fun in Istaria with full access to equipment and quests. This subscription also allows you to buy a Plot or Dragon’s Lair at the moment you have gathered enough ingame coin
4. The line-up of race that you created on the new page only remove stats and add some racial lore.


It is not perfect, but just an idea.

[Gengel]

Larger

Some lunch-time playing

Key changes:
Toned done the background,
1024x768 reference outline,
Added crafting/home button,
Added Account, Support, Search link-ideas,
Added VI logo,
Added TWITTER icon, (wouldn't live action tweets be great?!)
Made Istaria logo prominent.

~<Gengel>~

[Freelancer]

I agree with what has been said before already and also say that I hate it when videos auto play!!

Something that I did notice...

That dragon is flying whilst breathing fire...

Just saying


Looks a thousand times better though. However the graphic in the middle at the top. Yep the blue one. That really needs to be a different color. More along the lines of the ones around it. Sticks out like a sore thumb.

Also noticed that you declare most of you styles in the page. Wouldn't a style sheet be better?

[Nambroth]

Just a few thoughts from someone who is very visually oriented:

If I didn't know about this game and came to this as a splash/intro page, I'd probably close it before it could tell me anything about the game. I hate videos or music that autoplay, and the background combined with the actual information on the page is extremely overwhelming.

Areas of the highest saturation and highest contrast are the first thing that an average person's eye goes to. Use this to your advantage, and not to blast their face off with color.

I'm not sure why the ugliest and least-favored dragon head of them all was used in the splash artwork, but that's sort of a nitpicky gripe.

There is just a huge montage of visual STUFF being thrown at the viewer in the background image. I just... I can't get past it. As art, it's nice. As a background for a website... it's horrid.

Also, "Free to Play" is a bit misleading. A simple rewording of this would be completely acceptable I think.

I do like the actual content of the page; the races at the bottom with mouseover, and the clean links. This is good.

Do you folks need help with some background art...??

[Unicorn's Lady]

Oh I hope this is a very very rough draft!

I know that a lot of work has already been put into it, but I'm sorry Amarie, if I was surfing the web to find a new game to play I'd leave the new webpage (as it is right now) so fast you'd get dizzy and get a nosebleed from the speed I left the site.
It does not look anything like a real company's webpage, it looks like someone's first attempt at a webpage from 6 or more years ago. Even my poor attempt at a guild website years ago looks better http://azuretwilight.bravehost.com and that's not saying much.

The top of the webpage is garish. http://picasaweb.google.com/Unicorns...62228577176098
You don't need all those little pics behind the title. And in spite of what a section of the U.S. government says, old fashioned typewriter typeface (New Times Roman font) is not easier to read. You also have various text written over the Istaria logo. The background picture of the two battling dragons chasing each other across the clorine gas cloud sky and accidently frying an undead is too bright. You can't see most of the little black text. You need to mute it in some fashion so it stays in the background and therefore the text is more legible. http://picasaweb.google.com/Unicorns...62767851363010
The picture itself is ok, but it needs the stars cleaned up out of it and it suggests PvP and that Istarian dragons can breathe fire while flying.

Into the deepest darkness....
Originally I thought this was all there was to the webpage because if you went further down at all it just was black. http://picasaweb.google.com/Unicorns...62948451959314
It took my son highlighting the webpage to show me that there was actually text! And that there was approximently 6 1/2 screenshots worth of text to scroll down.
http://picasaweb.google.com/Unicorns...64164216986514
http://picasaweb.google.com/Unicorns...65859708073106
http://picasaweb.google.com/Unicorns...66577935845906
http://picasaweb.google.com/Unicorns...66845610914818
http://picasaweb.google.com/Unicorns...67206945412866
http://picasaweb.google.com/Unicorns...67510243639394
http://picasaweb.google.com/Unicorns...67923443864002

Way too much to scroll through!!!

We finally get past the blackness and we get some racial pictures. Not too bad, but why are the characters aligned to the right? I also would of liked to see their backgrounds just a tiny bit more. http://picasaweb.google.com/Unicorns...69448387392354

Yea!! We've reached the bottom of the page! http://picasaweb.google.com/Unicorns...69928957458402
Ah-ha! That's where the music was coming from that I couldn't turn off! We have a video! A video is nice, but having to scroll through so much to find it is a major turn-off.
And we have links! With a Download link!! Great!!! Except for the fact that again you have to scroll through way too much to find them.
Hmmm....more little pictures. The labelling is nice, but when you scroll over them, all the larger racial pictures disappear and don't return except for the one that corresponds to the correct little racial pic. All the black on black text now won't highlight too.

Let's see how some of the other games' official webpages look to see what they are doing right and wrong.

http://everquest2.com
Not too bad. A bit long on scrolling down due to too many news items listed. Could of just used the headlines of the articles instead. Nice big Play Now button near the top. Links to other sections of the webpage easily found at the top, although could of used a slightly larger font or maybe the color yellow to be a bit more noticable.

http://www.champions-online.com
Not too bad. You don't have to scroll much to see the whole first page of the site. Again, nice big Champions Online Play NOW button near the top. Links to the other sections of the webpage are easily found at the top and are very visable. Some nice recent new articles available and an interesting set of videos & articles scrolling quietly.

http://www.guildwars.com
Not too bad. Barely any scrolling needed to see the whole first page of the site. The Try Guild Wars FOR FREE button isn't positioned as well since it is in the lower half of the page, but it is fairly large and towards the center. Links to the other sections of the webpage are easily found at the top, although the font could of been larger. Recent news headlines are good. The link to the GW Wiki in the upper left corner is an interesting touch although I would of put it and the GW Players link in their Hot Links section.

http://www.ddo.com
Not too bad, although a doubleclick ad is a bit tacky. At least the ad block is down towards the bottom of the first webpage. You don't have to scroll much to see the whole first page of the site. The Ready To Jump Into The Action? Play Free Now! button could of been a bit bigger, but at least it is boldly colored and therefore attracts the eye. Links to the other sections of the webpage although having a fairly decent font size and bold coloring are lost abit in the busy-ness of the page due to being under a large set of scrolling pics. It would of been better to of put it up at the very top where the secondary bar of links have been put. Having a set of screenshots & videos to look at is good, but I would of put them above the large news section.

http://www.puzzlepirates.com
Pretty good. No scrolling needed. The PLAY NOW! button is large and obvious. Links to the other sections of the webpage are at the top of the page and are fairly obvious, although they could of been a brighter color to attract. A link to screenshots would of been nice although you do get a fair number of pictures if you do follow the site's links. The link A Guide for parents is a nice touch.

http://www.lotro.com
Not too bad. Barely any scrolling needed to see the whole first page of the site. The Sign Up For LOTRO Today! box is a bit confusing since there is also just above it in the Links the Play For Free link. But it is certainly big enough! Links to the other sections of the webpage are at the top of the page and are obvious. The video immediately playing is a bit irritating, but at least it is at the top of the page and the pause bottom on it is clickable. The Latest News box is nice, I like the scroll bar so the box doesn't take up a lot of room, but I wish it had more than just how much various game sites like what LOTRO is doing.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en
Not too bad. A bit long on scrolling down due to too many news items listed. Could of just used the headlines of the articles instead. Nice big FREE TRIAL button near the top of the page. Links to the rest of the website are at the top and obvious. News box is too long. It needs to be just headlines.

http://www.wurmonline.com
Not too bad. A bit too long on scrolling due to an article about the changes in Wurm. The Click here To Play Now! button could be bigger, but it has bold coloring and is near the top of the first page, so it is fairly obvious. Links to other parts of the website & other important places is fairly obvious at the top of the page, although the font could of been a bit bigger. A menu down the left side of the page also helps. (I know, old school, but some folk don't understand dropdown menus.)

http://vindictus.nexon.net
Fair. This is a bit busy and you have to do some scrolling to get to the bottom of the first page. The Download VINDICTUS & Free SIGNUP buttons are obvious though and the links to other parts of the website are too. The video is obvious at the top of the page, but again it you have to hit the pause button if you don't want it to automatically play. Again, general doubleclick type ads is tacky. (My gut feeling about them is the game has to have supplemental advertising just to try to keep afloat or they are being just super greedy.)

Ok, with looking at other sites, here are some basics.

1. Make the PLAY FREE! DOWNLOAD HERE! button/buttons big, bold, and near the top of the page.
2. Don't make the background picture the only thing a person sees first. It is suppose to be in the background! The viewer will want easily comprehended info more than pretty eyecandy. Eyecandy is important, but if the viewer can't find what they want in just a couple of eyeblinks they most likely will move on.
3. Don't make the viewer scroll down forever. We bore extremely quickly. If you have a lot of info, put the access to it in various other pages and link them via a menu.
4. Make your menu links/dropdown menus obvious and at the top of the page.
5. News headlines are good, but only if you keep up with them. If you do a News section, then please, please, please add in new stuff often, even if it is just a new screenshot or guild announcement. Fossilized news sections scream dead game! It is better not to have a news section on the official site compared to one that doesn't get updated regularly.
6. Screenshots and videos are good as an extra teaser. (Personally, videos that automatically play are irritating.)

The old page wasn't too bad. The GET THE FREE TRIAL NOW button was certainly big enough and it was on the upper part of the page. It needs to be updated with Free To Play! & Download Here! statements. Or do fake sectioning of the pic so it looks like you have three buttons. One saying 14 Day Trial!; the next Download Here!; and the last saying PLAY FOREVER FREE!.

The screenshot section is fine, but unless you are going to update often, lose the Current Event, News, and In The Press sections. Right now they are so fossilized it screams dead game.
Instead, maybe rotating pictures of the various races with a corner banner saying, 11 Playable RACES!. And another of clickthrough pictures of groups of players and various players crafting or building housing with a corner banner saying, Family Friendly! No PvP Servers!. (We can't quite say no PvP since we do have the arena area.) And a third set of rotating pictures showing hatchlings, adults, and ancient dragons with the corner banner, BE THE DRAGON! LEARN TO FLY!. Just don't make them all automatically rotating or it becomes too flashy and distract rather than attracts. (Too minimalistic is deadly, but too busy is almost as bad.)
Or more videos!


I hope my writing hasn't dismayed you. It is just that first impressions really do matter when there is so many gaming choices clamoring for our attention. And I want Istaria's official site to look so delicious and professional that it wins the viewer over immediately causing them to click the Download Now! button.


Unicorn's Lady

[Raptress]

Your post confuses me greatly, Unicorn's Lady. The page you have screencaps of is completely and totally different from what I see when I go to the "new landing page." O_o

Edit: Actually now that I look at the mouse-over races bar again.. My guess is that that is the page, but it's just not.. formatting correctly. All that information that trails into the blackness and the pictures at the bottom of the page look to be what were supposed to show up on the mouse-over race bar. Browser compatibility issues, maybe?

[Herman Widget]

I'm using Internet Explorer 8 (provided by Comcast) and the New Landing Page looks really, really bad.


Black letters on black background. Letters on top of letters. It's about 16 screens long and is a real mess.


However, when I use FireFox, the screen is one page and all the buttons work. The roll-overs bring up the right pics. All and all, very pretty.


So... Who do we tell that the site doesn't work with IE8?


Herman Widget (Disco Gnome)

[Dragonboy]

Just as general information since I already gave my opinion...
I have tried the website in the 4 browsers that I currently have available to me.
Internet Explorer 6 - Doesnt work properly like the picture Unicorn Lady provided.
Firefox, Chrome (Google) and Safari (Apple) work like they should.

I can understand that forcing people to use a different browser then IE is a very very good thing, but I doubt it will bring istaria new players when they come to the IE version of the website.

[Unicorn's Lady]

*Looks at the deviantArt link to Gengel's picture.*

Oh-ho! So that's how it is suppose to look!! Herman might of figured out why I'm seeing it so crude & different. I use Internet Explorer.

The picture on deviantArt looks much, much better! It looks like you don't have to scroll down to get any of the info. Wonderful!

What I'd change would be to opaque the box. Because the background picture, as it is right now, is just distracting to the eye when you are trying to have the viewer concentrate on your info. Maybe a medium grey would be a good color for the box. It contrasts tastefully with yellows & golds.

Next, move the DOWNLOAD button to the top of the button list above the COMMUNITY button and make its font a bit bigger. I know it is already obvious, but it is amazing how dense, we the viewer, can be. Plan things out like a two year old was trying to use the website.

You might also want to enlarge the My Account/Support/Search box a bit, but you'll just have to see how it balances after you move the DOWNLOAD button.

Last, but definately not least, move the dragons out to either side of the box and most likely lose the undead. You can't really see them as they are now and you definately won't see them after the box is opaque.

Here's links to some of the other games that show what I'm trying to describe for the background and the information box.
http://www.guildwars.com
http://www.lotro.com
http://us.battle.net/wow/en
http://www.wurmonline.com
http://vindictus.nexon.net (although their background is pretty ho-hum)

Thank you Gengel for putting up a picture of the Landing Page on DA!!

Unicorn's Lady

[Chasing]

I had a look at the websites you listed as examples Unicorns Lady.

To me (probably as I'm too picky) I don't see them as perfect. However I do agree that there are bits and pieces that you could pull out (concept wise as you have indicated).

I liked the Puzzle Pirates one best because of the colour schemes used. Althought it doesnt get all the messages across that should be being given, it portrays the page quite well (green is a useful colour for the buttons as its seen as a positive/go colour). A lot of the others were far too dark and too cluttered.

The other side of the websites that you listed is that some of them are major brands (like Wow, Everquest etc) and they don't really need to sell their pages as much as smaller 'niche' games need to (the brands and hype effectively sell them themselves - go look at the guild wars 2 page its awful but its a massively hyped up game).

One you missed that might be worth looking at is the Wizard101 pages.

https://www.wizard101.com/

Also I spotted something a bit cheeky but not technically illegal/black hat (unless Istaria is a registered trademark then it is)

http://ki.wizard101.com/top-mmorpgs/istaria

The landing pages for Wizard101 are actually setup to use organic keywords to catch ppl searching for other games, but infact just advertise Wizard101. Also the colour scheme is nice and neutral and simple but pretty effective.

Which makes me think about what the images on the Istaria page should be. Istaria is PvE and I think mostly mature players (IE not 10 year old kids running around owning ppl and kill stealing). Maybe the images should be tailored more to a family and/or older players. A possible marketing method...

Another selling point not mentioned (i think - apologises if someone has already mentioned this) is the Community. This is one of the major strengths. Just having a button to the community forums isnt enough. If you go and look at the MMO sites (like MMORPG.com) and read some of the posts in the active threads and on the published articles, you can see a lot of the complaints players have is the community. Market Istaria as a 'safe', 'helpful' etc community and you may have another unique selling point. (Could use the F2P option to reinforce this "Play Istaria for a week and see the difference" and so on).

Again same as Community you have Role Play. No good game to Role play in is another complaint that ppl make on a regular basis (referring to MMORPG.com again). "Spend a week on Order our dedicated role play world, limited by your imagination" etc.

Oh one more point, please get rid of the yellow buttons. Yellow is a 'danger' colour in most cultures (think of wasps and bees).

[Spirit]

Like the background, the race list at the bottom... I can't seem to see any video.

I totally, Totally, hate those buttons on the right though... Not sure whether it's the style... but I'd probably do 5 smaller buttons at the top of the screen underneath the logo, kinda like the forum does.

Looking mostly good though!

Rakku

[Abbie]

In FAQ under Monsters and under "What kind of rewards are available from" it say: "A variety of rewards are available when you slay monsters in Horizons" shouldnt that be Istaria and not Horizons?

Best Regards

[Reckless]

While I like the Community,Crafting, and Character set-up at the bottom, the other links towards the top for home, faq, etc...just look all sorts of misplaced. I also agree with the sentiment that the background needs to be muted some. I feel like my attention is being fought for by all the things happening on the page making me unable to really focus on the important items.

And just as a side note, I was curious as to why the 'bulldog head' style dragon was chosen seeing as how it's the least favored among the player base?

[Spirit]

Right the video works for me now... guess it was just my pc being weird on some hotel wireless lan.

I think the Characters sub-screen is the one I like most (in terms of overall look and functionality). I like the idea of the background on that page, but something doesn't click with the layout. I do agree with other posters that the background on the main screen, and the main screen generally, is just too heavy.

I wish I had more experience in this area, as I'd love to help.

Rakku

[Daedelus]

Definitely a step in the right direction, I would say. Here are a few comments that I had as I looked around:

1. Blocky, "Antiquated" look to the pages

One thing that I think could be done to make the style of the page more "current" would be to go with images that have rounded corners, instead of the rectangle blocks that are on the page now.

The only downside to using rounded corners and transparent gif/png files is that IE6 doesn't display them, so you'd either have to check for IE6 and load alternate images, or just acknowledge that it won't look the same.

2. Download/Free to Play currently only on home page

I think the Download link should appear on all pages. Regardless of what the button is called, or whether there's two (Download and Free to Play, or just "Free to Play", or "Free Trial", etc), the button should be on all pages on the site, so that from anywhere, I can just click a button and start downloading.

3. More Text

All pages need more text on them, both for SEO purposes and to provide more lore/marketing material for potential consumers to absorb. For example, the "Screenshots" page has nothing on it but the screenshots. Definitely could use some introductory text that further sells the game to the viewer.

As far as SEO goes, I've heard that the optimum is 300-500 words per page that are focused around the keywords in the meta information.

4. Custom styles for the scrollbars

I would style the scrollbars so they more closely match the rest of the page. Right now they stand out considerably. Even if the color scheme of the entire page changes based on the rest of the suggestions here, I'd still change the style of the scrollbars.

[velveeta]

just looked at the page again after about a month and i must say i love it now!
the layout is unique but readable, i like the text and link fields, and i love that the vid doesn't auto play but is still attractive enough to get peeps to play it.

this one i like! it's a keeper!