On Tuesday we witnessed the long awaited return of the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page which has been missing from the game since the start of the round in February. Whilst the page itself reassured us that it would be back soon it seems to have taken a while for this feature to return. Why is it so important though? What does it really do? Well for new players this is an absolutely invaluable source of information. With all the links, activities, not to mention the abbreviations (OC, EE, WE, EQE, CP, PP, UG, HDO) Bootleggers can be a little intimidating at the first glance. We have seen more of these basic questions find their way into the forum which the FAQ can now deal with instead of being the trolls new play thing.
Why has it taken so long though? Compared to features like the new Bust Party tools the FAQ seems much easier to fix. We tracked down our resident code enabled Moderator Sky. We put the question to him and he replied "It wasn't a case of fixing it, it was a case of modernising it for the new features. As for the length of time, I can't speak for certain but my understanding is that certain other things took priority or got in the way of it". We are informed by Aldarion that it was BSF2000 who replaced the FAQ. We went on to ask Sky if he felt that this would attract more new players to keep playing the game. "That's certainly the hope. Before, new players not sure of where to get started could only choose from the Help Desk and the Game Forum for help. Both of these places are quite intimidating as they require communication with other players, which isn't always what new players want. The FAQ allows people to find answers for themselves, so will hopefully encourage new players to stick around." Obviously everyone has seen the amount of activity on the game decrease but hopefully this is another move to help promote the game. Our final question to Sky was whether we could expect more of these new player friendly changes in the future. He replied "We're throwing some ideas around. Really the best approach will be to fix the fundamentals before trying to encourage new players who are more likely to stick around if there's a vibrant game to play". With this we thanked Sky for his time and moved on.
It seems that Bootleggers is slowly but surely stepping back on the road to recovery. With the bust party updates, State and Nation Don fix and now the newly implemented FAQ there are very positive updates which are coming to enable the game to progress back to where it was at least in regards to active player count. We at the Buzz fully support these changes and welcome those updates to come in the future, most notably that of the crew and kill system. Once these integral parts are fixed and those crucial features such as the FAQ are implemented we should see a real growth in the Bootleggers user base.
