Well, no, not a treatise, I just really like that word.

The Moondancers have in the last few weeks had a huge growth in our number of Novices. Are other orgs experiencing the same? Is the general population expanding, on average, or are these just alts from other players designed to take up our time and annoy us?

Spank you kindly for answering my questions.

I've been noticing an increase in the number of novices joining the Blacktalon, though only a few seem to stick around very long.

We just had 8 or so Novices all on at once before, it's a bit of a challenge for those of us who teach them all.

Not complaining, I think it's great.

Hmm... well, we aren't quite THAT popular. We sometimes have two novices on at once. Rarely, we'll have three. That's a lot for us! ... at least from my time there, it has been.

the ur'guard have had a few also, but most of them stick around long enough to get told what to read then they leave, we have about 4-5 that have stuck around.

Geomancers have also seen a increase in the amount of novices. A few decided to stick around, but many departed.

Maybe it has to do with the IRE portal site and we're just chasing them away or something?

Dunno, I do know that I chased away a novice who was from Aetolia >_> Well, chased to Glom, not from Lust - she didn't want to wait, and kept acting so impatient that I went slow with her, to try to teach her some measure of restraint. Then I lost internet for a minute, and she quit the guild and commune and tried to hex me Great novices, aren't they? Of the last eight or so I helped teach, maybe two showed promise and actually are sticking around =\\ We're getting a large influx of people who dont' really fit well into this game, I fear.

Maybe you can shoo some of them away and get them to join the Shadowdancers! -urge-

Nah, I think it's mostly because how different Lusternia is compared to any other IRE MUDs. Someone going from Aetolia to Imperian has a much smaller learning curve than someone going from Aetolia to Lusternia. I would say this is because of the new 'stat', Power, as well as all the interplanar stuff. Just my opinion though.

Did that to one Actually, she never intended to be a Moondancer - she misheard her friends that she came here to play with, and joined the Moondancers instead of the Shadowdancers by accident (dang you all for copying our name!). Then corrected the problem when I yelled at her for fratenizing with gulid and commune enemies

Heh. Suuure, you can have all of our rejects.

Though recent newbie graduation is somewhat high, it is not out of the extraordinary. However, IRE is going to (hopefully) soon begin a marketing campaign, in which case we may expect to see a greater influx of newbies in the somewhat near future (no, I don't know exact dates). Therefore, it may very well be that you will be seeing more and more 'true newbies' (i.e., those who haven't a clue on how text games work).

I can't stress to you enough how important it is to help these true newbies out. We want to make the newbie experience as fun and accessible for beginners as possible. Besides the newbie channel, the guilds are the first impression many will have of Lusternia. Thus, it is important to treat your novices well! If you want our playerbase to grow (and thus see expansions that need a larger playerbase), you'll doubly want to make sure the newbie experience is as welcoming as possible.

The admin has actually been brainstorming ways to give cities and communes a small but tangible benefit for attracting and retaining newbies. I'm still not sure what exactly that will be, but we'll keep you posted!

As one who often works with the Moondancer novices, the biggest problem I am finding with the 'true newbies' is that they do not come to this game expecting a roleplaying experience - they come expecting a hack and slash game where they can talk about lvls and xp and hp and bashing stuff. I have seen VERY few of these newbies catch on AND enjoy themselves, when I tried my hardest to make the game seem interesting despite it not being what they are looking for. I'm not sure how to solve this 'problem' if it is one - the main problem in my eyes is just that they are not finding what they expect to find.

For example, the first thing we require our novices to do is find our guildhall. The directions we give are in the form: "From the Mother, follow the winding path northward, until you reach the highway. From there, turn to the east, but take the first path north and into the forest..." What they want to see is: N, NW, NE, NE, N, NE, E, N - something they can understand without thinking too hard.

During initial teaching, I try to encourage them to figure out how to use their abilities on their own, without us telling them "First, NATURE TALISMAN, then NATURE ROOTING..." - Instead, I tell them that in order to use the skills of Nature, they use wield a natural focus, and that they should summon forth their Nature Talisman from within the folds of Nature's embrace, or some such, trying to get them to check the AB lists themselves to find out how the skills work on their own. In the past, many took to this wonderfully - most of the newer novices recently haven't. They either didn't understand what I was trying to say and became frustrated, or they just kept asking me what command they should enter.

I also take the time during initial traning to interweave some of the history and lore of Lusternia into what I teach, such as when I urge young Moondancers never to bond with the spirits of Crow or Mother Night, and explain why (often comparing it to asking Daevos, the Warlord of Magnagora, for some food when I'm hungry. Just because I *can* do it does not mean I *should* do it, and asking for aid from our enemies when we don't need it is both silly and absurd). Despite trying to draw the interest of those who love immersion, this discourages those who are not interested in such heavy roleplaying, and just want to hit things.


I'm not saying it's bad we're getting more and more novices, I'm just saying that the methods I use to encourage immersion and welcome the kind of players I enjoy playing with discourages the more 'mainstream' people who are drawn by advertisments and marketing, and have a wrong impression about what to expect. Some do catch on, and that's cool - but so many others just.. don't, and lose interest, and leave.

In other words, we can tailor our intro for the hack'n'slash gamers too, if that is what you wish. It'll make me very sad though, and ruin much of what I love about Lusternia.

As applauding as your roleplay and reality is, this will most likely not work with true newbies. When I first stepped into a mud, I was afraid to even walk too much because I might get hopelessly lost.

I would advice you to be cautious in telling true newbies to do things and then not telling them the correct synthax, this is very likely to become very frustrating very quickly if you have absolutely no idea what you are doing. Personally, I would suggest not placing as high a focus on RP right at the beginning; make sure they speak correctly, but leave it at that.

Once they manage to obtain sufficient knowledge to survive the realms, introduce them to the roleplay community, be blunt where you have to, result to OOC where you have to, we call them newbies for a reason, it is a time to learn, not a time to continually bash your head into a wall trying to make people understand you really have no idea what you are doing. And if people outright refuse to go to OOC even in tells, they'll probably hit X in frustration and type www.aardwolf.com

Laneth, when he teaches the occaisonal Novice, does what Shorlen does, but I think it's also a good idea to tell them the how of the abilities through tells, and explain that if they need to ask an OOC question to do so using tells. I just find it works better for me that way and apart form it taking so long, the Novices seem to like it too.

Skein Spindle and Bobbins will be happy :evilgrin:

I personally don't think people shouldn't be allowed to refuse to go OOC in game in any way, though they should be sure to not be rude about it, and preferably forward the newbie to someone they know won't mind being OOC in tells. If they don't know anyone, the newbie channel and guides are there to help.

But aye, I think the Ebonguard are getting more novices than usually too.

I don't agree with the idea of spoonfeeding newbies the syntax for everything. And, maybe I've just had better luck than you, Shorlen, but the true newbies (or really good impersonators of being so) that I've taught generally still respond well to our style of teaching.

If you give them the exact syntax to do just what you want them to do, they don't learn how to discover answers for themselves. If they can't discover answers for themselves, they're lost (which could lead to frustration and quitting) if there's no one around able or willing to help them.

And if you also don't guide novices into at least some of the roleplay behavior/expectations for your guild, that leads to problems down the road. I want, as I said recently in another thread, good guildmembers, not ones who will associate with those they shouldn't, never participate in covens or talk to the guild, etc. We've had (note the past tense) those like that, and the situations did not really end well.

I don't teach by having aliases set up, but most of what I say each time is similar/the same. I start something like this:


say The first thing you'll have to do, if you haven't already, is make the commitment to study the skills of our guild

say These are the SKILLCHOICEs of Lowmagic, Nature, and Totems. You'll need to select all three


The all-capitalization should be familiar from the introduction, though I always sigh a bit when someone didn't go through it. I can think of perhaps a half dozen times when someone was still confused and asked how they could do what I'd asked. With that response, I sent a tell that when I put something in all capitals, it's a hint to type it. I can only thing of one person who I had to then, after saying that, tell them the exact thing to type. I'd say that's been a pretty good response, overall.

.........

And on the actual topic of influx of novices, there have seemed to be quite a lot recently. Then again, I've also been keeping track of ALL the Moondancer novices since I started as an undersecretary ... a few months ago, has it been? I missed a few weeks, and I've got several different lists by now, but I have somewhere around 300 names in perhaps as many months. Easily 1/2 to 2/3 of them went inactive (which I determined from checking their guild status every so often), but that's been happening all along, not just recently.

Not speaking specifically on Lusternia..but I've found just when someone is new, it's nice to try to get them the roleplay feel, but if they're stuck just do it OOCly. I mean I'm all up for roleplaying and everything, but sometimes it -is- necessary, and you can slowly teach them how to roleplay well too.

I like a balance between the two. I wouldn't want a novice sitting there not knowing what to do, but at the same time if they don't want to roleplay this isn't the game for them.