Logins and players and statistics, oh my!

I just pulled some stats for the last few days and did some crunching on them. I need to do this more often so I keep in mind where the easy gains are to be had, and how to be more productive with my limited time.

These numbers are with a pretty pessimistic stripping to eliminate existing players, and to try to only take into account totally new players.

182 + 19 = 201 total newbies

19 (9.5%) of incoming connections resulted in a saved newbie. Of the unsaved players:

182 unsaved players
29 (16%) made it to entering a name
24 (13%) made it to login

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People using the dclient did a bit better:

36 + 12 = 48 newbies using the dclient

12 (25%) of incoming dclient connections resulted in a saved newbie, instead of 9.5% from other clients. Of the unsaved players:

36 unsaved players using the dclient
13 (36%) made it to entering a name
13 (36%) made it to login


It doesn't take a rocket scientist to gather from the above that improving the login screens and mechanisms could easily double the number of new players in the game. I've been meaning to rip up the intro screens anyway and reorganize things, and now I have a bit more incentive.

Samon's idea of getting the client improved and more widely distributed is also a good one.