It occurs to me that even though the game is under active development, you can't really tell that from its home page. I'm looking for ideas on how to make the game give a better first impression for visitors who are seeing the home page for the first time. What should be on the home page? What stuff is obviously broken that a new player might notice?

https://i.imgur.com/gCLMINs.png

Replace all that circled text with a cool picture of a tank.

I'm serious by the way. People don't want to be greeted with that much text. Maybe throw in a banner saying "Last updated: 5/4/2021. New season coming Summer 2021!" or something.

Hire a graphic designer on fiver to sketch you a few figma mock ups.

Like button.

I made these a couple years ago since it uses current CSS and would be minimal effort. I personally like the second one more since it demos the game for ya if you had a better video. That vid is just a place holder. I agree the wall of text is too much, font is too small, and the website should have a coherent design. Right now the site has 2 separate ones.

http://li.servegame.com:8080/main.html
http://li.servegame.com:8080/main2.html

https://www.earthempires.com/...ange-mor-881?t=1523936067

clicking on the blog post when not logged in i get this, which isnt a good sign, and then nothing actually loads

Warning: Potential Security Risk Ahead

Firefox detected a potential security threat and did not continue to blog.earthempires.com. If you visit this site, attackers could try to steal information like your passwords, emails, or credit card details.

What can you do about it?

The issue is most likely with the website, and there is nothing you can do to resolve it. You can notify the website’s administrator about the problem.

Learn more…

Websites prove their identity via certificates. Firefox does not trust this site because it uses a certificate that is not valid for blog.earthempires.com. The certificate is only valid for the following names: alphaui.earthempires.com, earthempires.com, earthempires.evolution2025.com, earthempires.haagsma.ca, ee.haagsma.ca, m.earthempires.com, mobile.earthempires.com, pang.earthempires.com, phpfluff.ee.haagsma.ca, qz.earthempires.com, slagpit.earthempires.com, http://www.earthempires.com, zarcon.earthempires.com

Error code: SSL_ERROR_BAD_CERT_DOMAIN

View Certificate


the forum post selection, first one links to the same error, but not the actual post, and second one the link has disappeared, so obviously you want something else there instead

maybe a link to profiles on the front page, perhaps a link to the new ui, and buttons to switch back and forwards, as well as mobile and desktop

im not sure if theres enough information when you make a new account that you need to message a forum moderator to get permission to post on the forums, which is super clunky

maybe its just to start threads not post in threads i forget

in the choosing a game section perhaps some emphasis on express for learning in a 'make mistaakes and learn from them quickly' sense

but the changes you plan for tournament do make that a good new player environment

also i never realised you get to choose a country title, and dont see the option to change that somewhere else:

Commander
President
Prime Minister

maybe an option to choose that as well as an option to have it change based on your government dynamically

That's nice but to me its lacking something visually. On every project that I paid for a graphic/ux designer to mock up a few options for me (cost around $100) I have never regret it!

Part of the appeal is the old school appearance. The game is a relic from the early days of online gaming so should retain that look. Try and get some press / news stories / someone to make a documentary on the game to spread the word, some people who maybe don't know this game would dig playing it as some sort of hipster retro experience if they knew about it

Everything broken fixed as enshula said. IRC needs to be fixed. The help pages and blog post needs new certificates and any meaningful updates ever. The input for a couple boxes needs to quit assuming I'm entering a credit card number and warning me not to give you it.

If you follow any of the links on that wall of text it all leads to broken pages with unrenewed certificates. Clicking chat leads to a broken IRC server with no channel services. If I didnt know any better I'd guess it was an abandoned game based on how much stuff that used to work is broken because no one ever renews the certificates.

You gotta get to that "well all this stuff is broken and warning me that it's falling apart but I'm gonna click play now anyways" mindset to even walk in the front door

Wiki link is another issue.
I believe even when you get there, you cannot add or edit it.

Welcome back Dee!

And you're welcome! (Fantasy Baseball)

I have to agree with most people here that some graphics would make a huge difference. Too much text is a turn off. You don't need to have any fancy, even some basic graphics that underscore the aspect of the game would go a long way.
And yeah, fix the links!

Ya replace some of the text/shorten up the messages and add an image of a city or something with a tank, jet, and couple troops.

Keep the Welcome to EE message, and move all the spy-op and bonus system messages to the right hand side and add an image under the Welcome to EE message.

Here's what I currently have, although it doesn't look quite right: https://slagpit.earthempires.com/

I think that it's too much text. Someone had the idea to add a live public market feed to the front page instead. Could do live prices as well. Any opinions?

Live prices on the 6 servers in rotation, with perhaps a small trend arrow for each item. Make em rotate every 20s to next server and let the user rotate em freely?

Market feed will be too hard to get a read on what it means.

do it stock market ticker style :)

I changed it to have live public market prices. I'm open to adding some visual elements if they are easy to do.

It looks the same to me.

To me it looks out of place. The main page should be the same CSS the rest of the site uses (forums and server page) and include just information on why to play to sell someone to creating an account. I really do think game play footage / light tutorial would be best and just shorten the original text.

Never mind I see now. Looking on mobile

It would help if you reached out to a designer. It's lacking. Not something that would impress me if I first stumbled upon it.

Yeah,

That's just way too much numbers and text. You need to appeal to the exciting part of it, and let's be honest, the market ain't it until you get into the game.
I feel you need to focus on two things: the empire building and the war aspect...graphically is by far the best approach for this. Think of jets versus turrets, troops attacking tanks, spies stealing or blowing up stuff, and then maybe maps showing your land increasing; something that when you just breeze by the website you do a second take and look more.
At the end of the day, it's a pretty cool game and the more people that play it (and therefore the less need for bots) the better; I recall back in the late'90's there was close to a thousand players, no bots, and NO country had above 20K land unless it was war (because you got a serious retal when you attacked). Fun times and I still feel there are plenty of people that would be interested if exposed to it.

My 2 cents

Dadgha

Yeah I know that it looks bad. It's not live yet for a reason. I wanted to get all of the raw data there and actually working.