I'm At A Loss- Please Help Advise

Greetings!

My forum, http://www.torbb.com is a fan forum centered around an upcoming MMO, Star Wars: the Old Republic.

Our activity was brilliant at first, when the game was first announced. Lately, though, it is almost completely dead. I have no idea what I'm doing wrong.

A few facts:

• The site is almost 2 years old- with great SEO. We're very well ranked with Google for choice keywords.
• Decent sized member base and emailing list
• Arcade and other goodies installed
• Good server speed
• Lots of content and game news
• Very little *original* content

I know the game itself, while I may be amazed by it, is still not insanely popular yet. I have faith it will be, though.

Even still, our off-topic forums should help fill the activity void, but they aren't.

I have no cash to spend for advertising or prizes. I'm at a total loss for ideas on what to do to spike activity. I don't even care about getting new members- I just want the ones I have now to post.

Any suggestions?

 

Hey, why not try starting fun topics related to Star Wars such as the 100 greatest Star Wars characters or events, things which your members could all join in on and help determine the outcome of. Also why not try sending weekly board mails out to your members to try and keep them in the loop with what is happening on your forum and what new star wars related topics, posts and news are on the forum.

 

Why not pay content writers to post interesting things on your forum that will make other users regyularly viist the forum and take part in teh discussions. Everyone looks out for more and more activity.

 

I suppose that Johnatan is right here.. recommend you to do a google search on their domain and find as much as possible sings of reliability of the company.

 

I liked you site. It as a personal design, well balanced information, images and features.

However, your forum will die at the current pace and no miracle post-writing services will help. No awards sent out to members will save the day.

This is sad because you did a very good work but failed to diversify enough to escape this loop-hole of dependency to a single game. Forget this idea about paying some unknown guys that know nothing about your community to post on your forum, the fact is that you are centered around a game that is fading out from popularity.


My (easy) suggestion is that you just move onto the next endeavor, find the next hot titles coming out and start all over again.
------------

My (difficult) suggestion is that you stand foot to your ground and fight. Add something fresh, for example a MMORPG based on the TOR game. Hire a developer to prepare your platform for the game if you are unable of doing it by yourself.

Mention the new TOR game to your members. If they like the game, they will play and come back more often to your site. With some luck, they might bring friends if you do a good work at it.

Read, learn and study your approach.

Good luck.

 

The game designer on this one has their own message board/forum through EA that has the game writers involved in it and 24/7 paid moderation through EA Games. (I applied for the job, that's how I know.) Good luck! You may be able to draw people out of that board that are unhappy with the level of moderation though.

 

Advertisments might help.