How your app can be more like FarmVille

I never tried FarmVille, but played WoW for some time.

These time wasting games are good for us in a way.

When you waste time watching TV, there is no feedback. You have no idea how much time you wasted.

When you play Wow (or anything), there is level, achievements, quests, pvp.

One day you realize you are good at this game. For me that was the day I quit it for I realized I could have put that effort into something useful and still have fun.

I found the "What I Learned From FarmVille - So You Don’t Have To Play It" link from a while ago very interesting:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MDqR1MJHfa98ragj2NBp7JME...

Similarly though: just because you CAN do these things, doesn't mean you should.

This is very useful, I don't play farmville but I do run an online football game http://deeproute.com

We get about 10 signups a day, and very very low rate of people saying. But the people who do stay, play for years.

I think the lessons from this based on farmville can help me increase the retention rate of users who sign up, but don't seem to "get" it

At first I thought all these things were common sense, but then I realized they're probably just second nature to me because I spent so much time playing WoW =/

Give them achievements to show off, then make sure there's always one more thing to do/item to get, and some people will play forever...