SWBFGamers

OK, here is my first second attempt at a draft for a mass email--please comment, fix grammar, give suggestions, etc.



Hi--this is Buckler aka Led from www.SWBFgamer.com

You are receiving this email since you have registered at our website,
which was formerly known as MPCgamers.com.

Star Wars: Battlefront is celebrating 10 years of gaming this December.

I wanted to make you aware of some new developments for the original
Star Wars: Battlefront (SWBF) for the PC player community.

Gamespy no longer works for us to play SWBF online anymore, but
we have a replacement master server called GameMaster.  With a simple file
replacement, we are playing SWBF online again.

The patch and installation instructions are available at www.SWBFgamers.com and
a youtube video is available for additional help.

A core group of players still plays each night, but we miss the old days when a lot
of people filled the SWBF servers.  We invite you to find your old game disk, patch
SWBF for new online play and join us for a weekend of gaming on December xx
to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of this great game.

We hope to see you on the front.

All the best,
Led

I would post to reddit too. /r/starwarsbattlefront

Quote from: Led on October 20, 2014, 03:38:52 PM
OK, here is my first attempt at a draft for a mass email--please comment, fix grammar, give suggestions, etc.

Here is a slightly changed version, which I think has a little better grammar. ;) I hope you don't mind...

[spoiler]Hi--this is Buckler aka Led from www.SWBFgamer.com

You are receiving this email since you have registered at our website,
which was formerly known as MPCgamers.com.

Star Wars: Battlefront is celebrating 10 years of gaming this December.

I wanted to make you aware of some new developments for the original
Star Wars: Battlefront (SWBF) for the PC player community.

Gamespy no longer works for us to be able to play SWBF online anymore, but
we have a replacement master server called GameMaster.  With a replacement
file that has the GameMaster patch, we are playing SWBF on-line again.

A core group of players still plays each night, but we miss the old days when a lot
of people filled the SWBF servers.  We invite you to find your old game disk, patch
SWBF for new on-line play with instructions from www.SWBFgamers.com and join
us for a weekend of gaming on December xx.

We hope to see you on the front.

All the best,
Led


[/spoiler]


Does that look any better? Its just a suggestion, if you don't like it that is fine.

Edit: Fixed some of my own errors... oops! - Edit 2: I stuck it in a spoiler to make it less obnoxious.

ok, I made some updates  :cheers:

more comments please

I fixed my post, as Led made me aware of some errors... :whistle:

Looks good Led, I would add that there will be stock (regular) servers, and mod map servers. I will also be hosting more zombie servers in December, so if anyone has map recommendations for this let me know. Zombies can easily be added to any stock map too.

Thanks for doing this Led. I like the look of the E-mail but to avoid any confusion I would change this paragraph;

Quote from: Led on October 20, 2014, 03:38:52 PM
Gamespy no longer works for us to play SWBF online anymore, but
we have a replacement master server called GameMaster.  With a simple file
replacement, we are playing SWBF online again.

To:

QuoteAlthough the official servers and Gamespy have been turned off there is now a simple one time patch, called Gamemaster which means you can play online again.

It might just be me but I think saying file replacement will put people off but anyone who plays games now knows what a patch is. :)

Overall just keep it simple and let them know there's a reason to come back with everyone playing at once, I would also send the E-mil out after the beginning of December otherwise it's easy for people to forget an E-mail from a month earlier.

OK, here is my third attempt at a draft for a mass email--please comment, fix grammar, give suggestions, etc.



Hi--this is Buckler aka Led from www.SWBFgamers.com

You are receiving this email since you have registered at our website,
which was formerly known as MPCgamers.com.

Star Wars: Battlefront is celebrating 10 years of gaming this December
and we want you back to celebrate with us.


Gamespy no longer works for us to play SWBF online anymore, but
we have a replacement master server called GameMaster.  With an easy to install
patch, we are playing SWBF online again.

The patch and installation instructions are available on the front page of
www.SWBFgamers.com and a youtube video is available for additional help.

We invite you to find your old game disk, patch SWBF for new online play and
join us for a weekend of gaming on December 26-28
to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of this great game.

We hope to see you on the front.

All the best,
Led

Alright, read it over and let me know what date to set.   :cheers:

When it looks good, I will hit the send button and prepare my inbox for 1000 bounced emails!   ;)

The first link is missing an s. For dates, the weekend of Dec 26-28 seems best.

I agree with gdh that the email should either be sent in early Dec, or have a reminder email sent around that time, as people may forget about it.

Thanks

OK, fixed  , thanks.

I will hold off until the start of December for the mass email, but I will try a test with maybe the master modder group or something.

Looks good led  :)

Quote from: Joseph on October 19, 2014, 01:46:33 PM
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=174147.0

turns out that is for SMF 1.2 not ours...I will look into it

http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/SMF2.0:News_and_newsletters#Newsletters

OK, the test message went OK. 

Do we have a date for the event? 

Do we have a date when the email should be sent out?

:cheers:

Quote from: Led on November 23, 2014, 08:06:20 AM
OK, the test message went OK. 

Do we have a date for the event? 

Do we have a date when the email should be sent out?

:cheers:

What about the 23rd ?

I think saturday, Dec. 27 would be best since after xmas is much less hectic than before, and people will be off work/school for sure.

Maybe send it out around thanksgiving?

I was thinking the days to play would be Christmas day to new year or even from 23rd like Anyder suggested, we can always post more specific times in a thread like this. 1st week of December sounds best to send out messages, it gives people time to prepare and is close enough they won't forget.

We should probably start a new thread with full details similar to the first post here; http://www.swbfgamers.com/index.php?topic=7239.0 and put a link in the E-mail and on the main page. We can keep planning here and have the new thread for players to ask question about the event. Is it possible to get the gameranger autoinstaller without registering anywhere?

Edit: 3 different dates already suggested. :) I think we should concentrate on a few days, Saturday is good as I originally planned Saturdays every month to line up with Christmas so people might come back for further Saturday games and Joseph makes a good point that it's less hectic but we could have from Christmas day on with  a big battle that day so people get a few opportunities over the holidays.

Since it's getting close to November now I'll put a post about the anniversary games that explains everything for old and new players and anyone who wants to can link to when advertising.

Quote from: {PLA}gdh92 on November 27, 2014, 09:41:06 AM
Since it's getting close to November now I'll put a post about the anniversary games that explains everything for old and new players and anyone who wants to can link to when advertising.

gdh, were you in Doc Brown's DeLorean again? :P

Haha.
I need to concentrate more. I was thinking end of November :)

How does this look for a post? : http://www.swbfgamers.com/index.php?topic=8574.0

Maybe someone could do a poster to brighten it up a bit...

For advertising these are the ideas I have:
SWBFgamers - via E-mail thanks to Led and hopefully the main page so visitors can see this quickly
Reddit: There are at least 3 battlefront reddits r/swbf, and r/starwarsbattlefront and r/battlefront
Clan sites - Ideally we should post in as many guestbooks as possible
Gaming websites - Submit articles, e-mail in to 'letters page' etc
You Tube - in relevant comment sections and possibly through videos

If anyone has ideas or wants to help just say which area you can do. Please make sure we finalise details so we don't all end up posting conflicting info and don't spam comments or guestbooks. I know it's tempting to post multiple times in every comment section but we want to inform people not annoy them. :)

I'll do the reddits. Mirky has a nice compilation of clan GBs on his site that someone could go off of.

Yeah quite the list, it still really needs a lot of work though. :)

Thanks. If there is a reasonably comprehensive list a few of us could take a few letters each from it and do them.

Letters? It is not in any order, and there is bound to be broken links, etc. Here, you can see for yourself:

http://mirky.webs.com/clans-of-swbf

It truly is a mess, but I can work on it over the next few days.

The old Darksith guys (linked on Mirky's site) still have an SWBF division (however it may be inactive now...)

Knowing that I have had much experience with them, I'll go up and present them with our announcement.
Their new site is http://www.darksith.enjin.com/
No longer on Shivtr

DarkSith Info updated. ;)

Well it looks like DS has decided to completely reject that we do indeed have an active user base and thus I'm being bombarded with hate mail from them, because SWBF isn't a modern game.

Good news is we don't have to deal with their sorry :censored:... I never liked 'em anyway. Only Mike, Ross, and Kevin were the cool people of that group. The rest of them think they are all big shots because they are a so-called Sith group.

Either way, they aren't friendly.

You can scratch DS off the list.

Quote from: Ultimo on November 27, 2014, 07:15:42 PM
Well it looks like DS has decided to completely reject that we do indeed have an active user base and thus I'm being bombarded with hate mail from them, because SWBF isn't a modern game.

Good news is we don't have to deal with their sorry :censored:... I never liked 'em anyway. Only Mike, Ross, and Kevin were the cool people of that group. The rest of them think they are all big shots because they are a so-called Sith group.

Either way, they aren't friendly.

You can scratch DS off the list.

Actually, Ross left DS already. Mike and Kevin? Who knows what's happened to them.

Quote from: Gold Man on November 27, 2014, 07:59:41 PM
Actually, Ross left DS already. Mike and Kevin? Who knows what's happened to them.

Yeah Ross left DS. Thank goodness he did! He's actually playing PLA's CC server right now. Last I was speaking with Kevin, he was getting deep into some other Minecraft community. We played together and he got me some awesome stuff on the server he was an admin to. He dissappeared though, haven't seen him in a LONG time. Mike on the other hand shows up every so often playing SWBF1... infact I think I saw him online yesterday in PLA's CC server.

So really Ross and Mike are still around, but that still leaves Kevin... and speaking of which, we haven't seen Dark in awhile either. Dark also played MC with Kevin and I...

Quote from: Ultimo on November 27, 2014, 08:08:22 PM
Yeah Ross left DS. Thank goodness he did! He's actually playing PLA's CC server right now. Last I was speaking with Kevin, he was getting deep into some other Minecraft community. We played together and he got me some awesome stuff on the server he was an admin to. He dissappeared though, haven't seen him in a LONG time. Mike on the other hand shows up every so often playing SWBF1... infact I think I saw him online yesterday in PLA's CC server.

So really Ross and Mike are still around, but that still leaves Kevin... and speaking of which, we haven't seen Dark in awhile either. Dark also played MC with Kevin and I...

Dark is who knows where. Kevin I believe frequents SW:TOR heavily these days still, unless he's been gone. Either way, Kevin's probably long gone.

I actually just played a bit of SWBF tonight, saw Kiwi, Will, Shazam, BabyEater, Ross, and others. T'was nice to see them again. I might attend that event on Saturday this week, who knows? :)

If you guys are talking about the Kevin I think you are talking about, he is relatively active on Xfire playing The Old Republic.  I don't talk to him often, but he's there.

I can send out email blasts, but that only accounts for the BOBclan site and the SNP clan site and a couple others.  I can get in touch with some of the old 1.0 members who hide in the shadows though.  If there's any other places I can tell, then let me know.

Thanks Led, I just got my message about the event.  :cheers:

Yea this is a cool idea! I'll try my best to participate

I've gotten a bit of attention, (However not a lot) from IGN, because I decided to post about the event.
http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/star-wars-battlefront-10th-anniversary-celebration.454322450/

Good News though, I emailed IGN staff and they said they may be willing to make an official announcement about SWBF's 10yr and also announce that SWBFGamers.com is hosting a celebration. It could be pretty big for us! :tu:

Nice work. I'm still waiting to see if I get an article published but my computer's being upgraded at the moment so I can't do much else.

GDH would u like me to host a euro & american server for this month ?

Yes, if you could. Hopefully we fill a few servers with a good number of players and I'm sure some people will appreciate a euro server.

PM Me the server info ;)