Discussion Are Voting sites still "a must"

[hermesito]

Hi Community, 
I'm starting a server and as all of you know, you come to the point, when you have to decide, which voting websites are you going to use and  set up the whole voting system. But why? This is what i found out until now.

1° They are 100% depending on the servers and not the server on them. We drive traffic to these sites and pay huge amount of money for marketing. But for what? Just to be on the top of a fake list? 
2° all the top 10 server placement are fake. For example top.L2jbrasil.com you actually pay for the placement in the top 10. It is not organic. So the information on  these sites is not transparent. Same with the others...
3° The average use time of the most of the voting sites are 30-40 sec. So the players use it only to vote and get the reward, and not as a source of information.  
4°  Discord spam DMs and direct recommendation are x1000 more effective and cheater than advertising the Vote sites.

so the real question is: how many of you visit  a voting site to look for a server to play? Even posting your server in maxcheaters forum gets more views and attention... What do you think? 

[Harmony]

I don't even join servers discord channels, so no bot has ever reached me. I only see topsites

 

[Trance]

Old inactive players are checking the voting websites, especially HopZone.

 

The current active players - some do, some don't.

 

You can do some Google search using keywords and see which websites pop-up, so you know which voting websites worth.

Edited October 31, 2021 by Trance

[LordPanic]

After all this years as a player i got this conclusion:

Solo players: They do check the top sites to see which one fits their preferences. But it's one time thing.

CP's: They go more with the flow and reputation of a server.

Casual Clans: They prefer servers with reputation and high clan reward systems.

Serious Clans. They join servers only if their rival is there.

 

I believe top sites are unreliable and corrupted. Instead of giving you the best option for ur taste they force lead u to choose a server on whatever server they got deal with.

Edited October 31, 2021 by LordPanic

[Zake]

Well currently there are not many votesites that worth someone's registration. Maaaaybe hopzone/brasil but still discord is the way to go.

[Raws]

Vote sites are almost dead

Most populated servers dont use those toplists anymore as a traffic source.

 

 

Edited October 31, 2021 by Raws

[ZaNteR]

The last few years i have checked out more servers via facebook ads or word of mouth than going into a topsite. 
Unless we get a transparent topsite without unreasonable listing rules and pay 2 win then maybe things will become better.

[Zake]

2 minutes ago, ZaNteR said:

Unless we get a transparent topsite without unreasonable listing rules and pay 2 win then maybe things will become better.

They have to make a profit somehow xD

[ZaNteR]

On 10/31/2021 at 5:07 PM, Zake said:

They have to make a profit somehow xD

If they offer decent services and are transparent in their money making methods people will be more willing to spend money on them. Sites like hopzone and topzone have gone completely pay 2 win. In the surface you can still get your server listed for free (if they allow you to) but then, free servers are getting buried  by the paying ones on the front page.

 

Also have you noticed how they have made it more difficult to search by rates or version? All done so that you have to stay longer on the front page and click on the "premium" servers instead of finding a smaller and potentially more interesting server by searching. Its also why all server these days are the same mid-rate copy pasted crap.