Free Allegiance Forums

This post may sound negative, but don't be off put, I'm just pointing out everything I think is bad so you can fix it.

I clicked on the scrolling images, but they didn't get bigger and to a certain extent make it look like a low res browser game (especially combined with the domain name). Mouse over should probably stop them scrolling.

I couldn't find the "videos" or "screen shots" sections in the top bar or the side bar below the weird half fold with the spinney icons that look like they are from a 13 year old website.

The top half of the page is a pretty info less splash screen and the bottom half has information - it seems a little weird. The call to action button isn't very obvious. The whole of header_home I find to be very pretty space consuming noise. For some reason I just don't pickup on the important information contained in that section, perhaps it's because "FREE SPACE COMBAT GAME ONLINE MULTIPLAYER FPS/RTS" aren't really full sentences. Perhaps "Allegiance is a completely free space combat game that combines FPS and RTS game play".
Originally developed by Microsoft it is now opensource and actively updated" would be picked up better. Have the IGN quote off to the side somewhere, it's the first thing I look at on that page and I don't read it because it's a quote and doesn't tell me what the website is about (probably another contributing factor to me being thrown off and not absorbing the information properly.

Speaking of Microsoft, it probably should be mentioned that they made it originally and this isn't some crappy barley v0.3a opensource project.

Is a 13 year old web 1.0 website really the best place to start from a design perspective?

The game info link took me to a page called /allegiance/ rather than /gameinfo/ or /aboutallegiance/ - seemed weird since the home page is about allegiance, it's child pages should be named after their sub topic rather than the parent topic.

Do we need new forums? These ones have really nice software and actual users and aren't barren wastelands - having a low players online count and empty forums doesn't look good. I think I actually agree with Mastametz . FAO has a better url for a free game called allegiance, but your site has a better one for what people search for, but is so generic I don't think it's a good name for the actual home of allegiance. As an mini introduction site it would work well though.

Get some big pretty high res screenshots in a screenshots section, videos in a videos section.

Just clicked on the download button. Good god! 7 installation steps! Ok, it's not really but it looks that way. The first step tells the user to go back to where they were looking earlier. So many steps and so much little text.

[Download Allegiance] <--look it's a pretty button, and it's big!
[Create a Callsign]
Run the installer - honestly I think most people don't need to be told this last step, and if they do they probably aren't cut out for allegiance. Then after those two nice simple steps have a

Before you start
Checkout the Common Mistakes and the Allegiance Flight School - this is no simple shooter.
Also be sure to play the training missions before you try online play and remember to customize your controls.

HJ_KG wrote:QUOTE (HJ_KG @ Oct 1 2012, 12:45 PM) Oh, sorry I guess I spaced out.

The solution to all the domain name bitching: let's rename the game!

I have no opinion on this matter.

The domain name really should not be a huge deal. I don't particularly like freespacecombatgame.com, but it should not prevent too many people from clicking through as long as the webpage title and description look fine. It is better than not showing up at all. The biggest downside IMO of the generic domain is that I would think it is a browser based or otherwise casual game and not the highly complex, online multiplayer game that Allegiance is. I need to update the meta description to better show this.

To increase the game's credibility I am making sure that I mention it was made by Microsoft frequently and putting review quotes from well known sources (such as IGN and CNET).

If you want to get into more detail about why a keyword based domain name helps...

Links to your website is the most important SEO factor. But the most valuable links tell Google the topic of the linked page. If you do not have control over that webpage, you often get stuck with a link that says [domain].com instead of the clickable (anchor) text for the link being [keyword keyword keyword]. If they keywords are part of the domain, this is something you do not have to worry about.

Again in response to most other issues, the content is rushed and very much a work in progress.

So I guess web sites are like women's dresses now. More than two years old and they are out of style.

I have no opinion on this matter.

I guess it will be sort of trial and error.

While the domain name is a bit debatable, it is something that can be easily solved in the future. Maybe the current name will bring a lot of traffic, maybe a little, but in the meantime it will always provide a positive influx of players.

I would say that the hard work is designing the new web page, and that has had an amazing progress.

I am a bit ignorant in many internet issues, but, are you keeping some kind of track of how many hits this new page is having, most clicked links, downloads, etc???

Of course, for the time being the results will be a bit biased by the forum members snooping around, but it could be an interesting piece of information.

EDIT:

Ok, another thing that came to my mind. You will notice that most company/institutional web pages have an "About" section (on top menu mostly, sometimes on bottom), with a brief summary of the company history, current structure, ideals, future projects, and a lot of warm blabla. Have you considered adding a similar section?

Nice work AEM,

Only one major thing I didn't like were the animated throbbers, those really look dated.

Do you have google analytics on it, so we can watch the performance?