A Shift in the Breeze for EverQuest

The problem with advertising is that it isn’t magic.  It won’t make people who were not otherwise inclined buy your product… except maybe your grandparents when they see something and think you’ll like it.  We know how that works out.

So spending money on blanket advertising for a niche product… like an MMORPG… is generally a waste of money.  Your ad budget is more wisely spent trying to target people who might otherwise be inclined to be interested in your product.

For video games that used to mean full page ads in gaming magazines… though it was always better, and cheaper, to get the magazine to advertise your game for free on its cover.

Firiona Vie in all her mounted glory

Certainly, that cover was probably a lot more effective than some of SOE’s own attempts.

What exactly was the message here?

These days video game magazines are pretty much online or a distant memory.

Advertising online started off as very much a mirror of print advertising, and was done just as badly by SOE at times.

Tell me why you think these colors are cool, NOW!

That was actually an SOE ad, the details of which are at the link above.

And that sort of blunt force ad is still a thing, but since the SOE days ended and the Daybreak era began, I hadn’t seen much advertising for their games.

So I was a bit surprised to see some promoted tweets on Twitter about the new Mischief server for EverQuest.

In my feed

I mean, my experience over the years has been that you have to be pretty proactive to figure out if anything new is going on with any of the Daybreak games.

But then I remembered that we are no longer in the Daybreak era.  Enad Global 7 has taken over the reigns and I guess their team is a little more open towards advertising.

I am actually kind of happy to see their stuff getting promoted into my feed.  It is certainly closer to my interests than a lot of the stuff that appears as promoted content.  And, if anybody is in the right target demographic, it is certainly me.

I don’t know if this will be a big win for them, but it is nice to see some effort being put in after so much time of no effort or bizarrely directed effort.