Before I start, please keep the flames down to a minimum. Thank you.


To start off, our influx of newbies is good. If you read your city or commune logs, chacnes are you see a lot of people stepping through the portal of fates as a member/citizen. The problem comes, those people get their basic training and then you never see them again. We have nothing keeping them around. Now granted, Newton is good. But it gets VERY VERY repetative after a while, and if you've nabbed both honors from it, and are still able to be in it, it can get boring after a while. This is loss right there. Combat is very simple in Newton, and can get very monotanus. Also, what is there after Newton? The 20-30 dead zone, filled up by usually pilgrims and scholars and for Celest, Supplicant quests, and other power bringing quests for the orgs. Not very interesting.

The problem is Low-end is not intersting, and therefore people don't wanna stay around if there is nothing interesting going on.

On the High-End spectrum we have Raids, low players can participate in raids but chances are it's suicide and not very fun. High-end we have Aetherships and now "Aether-Warships" that's interesting, it could perk a newbie into action, but it's very expensive, and a long way down. High-end we have the possibility of holding positions in Orgs. Interesting, but high end. All the really fun and cool stuff is High End.

High End Spectrum is fine. If we can get people there, we can keep them there. But the problem is getting people there. We need some interesting things for the low-end that will keep people interested, until they can get the high end stuff.

Now I acknowledge the village quests and such, but if you do the the Stewartsville thing wrong, you get killed. Where's the fun in that, now I know that it gives incentive to do it correctly, but I think getting killed isn't the best way...

To drive the point of interesting low-end home, I'm gonna take WoW as an example.

A few definitions before I get started for those of you who are not well-versed with WoW:
Instance: Short for Instanced dungeon, a dungeon that requires a group, and when you and your group enter the dungeon, you get your own "copy" of the dungeon, allowing for you and your group to do the quests, and kill the bosses without having to sit and wait in line while other groups kill them.

Raid Instance: A high-end instance which requires very large groups, (20-40 people) to complete the tasks. Because of the difficulty of these, these instances are saved by group, and reset every few days depending on the instance. By saved, you and your group can come back at a later date before the reset to take more of it. These are very difficult, the most recent one released, having just been fully cleared (All bosses killed) by the first raid ever only a few weeks ago. It was released about 2 months before it was cleared.

Battleground: PvP areas that have a set task and can be done by anyone, provided they meet minimum level requirements. When in a BG, you are in a particular instance of that BG. They are broken up in level brackets to ensure fairness (10-19, 20-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59 and 60).

When you start out with WoW, you start in your races specified home area there are many quests to do, things to slay, and moves to learn, and items to get. Also, there are running quest series that take you throughout the 1-10, and 10-20 areas of your race, as well as many things along the way. Usually, no later then level 20ish, you are given the expirience of your first instance dungeon. For the Orcs, Trolls and Taurens, it's Ragefire Chasam in Orgrimmar for the Undead, it's Shadowfang keep in Silverpine Forest. For Gnomes, Dwarves and Humans, it's the Deadmines in Westfall, and for the Night Elves, it's Blackfathom Depths in Ashenvale. These are relativly quick things. Getting to level 15, 20 is quite easy, and can be done with a week of decent playing. Instances are fun. You require a group to do them, they are challenging for that level, and require some stratagy.

Adding to the WoW, just recently at level 10, you could play Warsong Gulch Battleground, which is a capture the flag style PvP match. Now granted, the 10-19 bracket is a Twink fest (off topic and kinda moot point) but nonetheless, the option is there.

That's interesting low-end content that will propel a person to the mid-level content, which is more challenging instances, interesting quests some of which reveal storyline and plot, which will get you to High-end, which has challenging Raid Instances, fancy equipment, and a variety of things to do.

Now granted, Lusternia is NOT WoW, and WoW has much more enhanced things, however, things like dungeons that require groups, are an option and could help a lot, as they are bashing with a purpose and could be enhanced as such.


Now, I'm gonna open the floor to discussion and ideas. What are some things you all think would make low end more interesting, and able to keep people interested until High-End?


I know this is kinda long. Sorry for rambling a bit.



Damnit... Now that I've talked about WoW so much, I'm angry at the fact that I don't have time yet. Le sigh.

I think they've actually done a pretty good job with the low-end.

The thing is...Lusternia really is not WoW. I don't know if you were suggesting all those things be added, but I don't really think they would work here. A MUD is always going to have less people than a game like World of Warcraft, because thats just...how it is. I hate to say it like this, but I feel as though Lusternia's intro sort of weeds out the people who would ruin the game (ie: people who just want to kill everyone, are immature, etc.). Lusternia is also much more focused on roleplay than WoW, and a lot of what keeps a newbie around is the people in their city/commune and guild. And what sort of interaction they are offered.

I think more can be done to keep more of the newbies we've been attracting, but I don't think it's really an issue of what the game itself has to offer, but more like what the organizations in the game have to offer.

Veo! Come back to us!

The actual problems that are pushing newbies away are as follows:

Highly complicated combat system that requires a CS degree to stand a chance. This is more true of Lusternia than Achaea, given the complicated nature of deepwounds, the prevelence of aeon, and the absurd number of masked and semi-masked afflictions compared to other IRE games. Imperian, the second most complicated of the four (which is about half as complicated from what I've seen of logs), has a common system available to everyone that anyone can use regardless of client.

The necessity of buying credits. We have about twice as many skillsets as other IRE games with about half as many skills in them, requiring players to pay more for less, and preventing players from standing a chance on just what they earn ingame unless they are insanely dedicated, which new players aren't.

The emphasis on group combat with a combat system optimized for one vs one combat. This results in very spammy fights in which newbies are horribly overwhelmed, a peer pressure for newbies to get involved in such large fights, and horribly unbalanced combats where one side just dies in seconds, and that just doesn't draw people in.

We have a distinct lack of bashing areas, and people who jump to defend just about all of them, since all bashing areas have to have a rich and detailed history behind them.

We have a player culture that encourages random jumpings, especially while off plane, and especially while bashing.

What do we honestly have that makes us unique from the other IRE games? As far as I can tell, we lose most of our would-be players to those other IRE games above all other places, since Lusternia is just flawed in so many fundamental ways. I still like it better than the others, but it is by far the least newbie-friendly.

Oh yeah, and lastly, the reason our playerbase is so low is that people are HARSHLY penalized for taking a break by coming back to find they have no items and no means to gather money to buy new ones.

I doubt we're to Imperian's point on this one, but piling on loads of reading and work all at the beginning tends to drive people away as well. Even though its a timed thing, almost every guild has some sort of test to advance with and a lot of people try to work for that rather than wait the time out.

Another thing, at least from what I've seen, is the lack of real mentors. People who actually go out of their way to teach the newbs how to survive in lusternia.

It's a chicken and egg problem. Most nwebies don't stay long enough to get a mentor, and most people who could mentor don't feel compelled to do so because they know their proteges will leave soon.

After just being told to leave Spectre Isle, instances of any sort are sounding great right now. I know it doesn't really fit in with a MUD, but it's wishful thinking - I just want to bash away at some spectres and now I can't, so I went back to sitting at Master Ravenwood and being bored.

Regarding instances, don't even think about it. It's probably the dumbest possible thing you could do to Lusternia, short of making all Aslaran characters compulsory Shanthine members. If you want to play World of Warcrack, you go play World of Warcrack.

That's very true, it's very emotionally draining to pour so much into a novice who up and leaves and you never see them again, when you're doing it for the third dozenth time or so in a week or two you put a lot less care into it.

I think something that would help massively concerning the difficulty in breaking into combat would be for someone to release their system for free usage by anyone.

I realize that system's entail a lot of hard work and thus few are willing to do this. As well, re-vamping a system for easy installation, use and customization would be quite tedious. But it's an idea that I've thought about occasionally.

However, I think even then the system would have to be toned down, depending on ability of the user. Can't have newbies everywhere healing as well as say, Geb. That'd be ridiculous.

edit: deleted double post content

My opinion:

Newton Caverns are lame. Good gold and XP, but lame. Compare to Minia in Achaea: a lot of DIFFERENT creatures to kill, they don't die in one hit and some are actually rather powerful, so the newbie feels excited (I did when I was there for the first time). There's a lot of quests - they're easy to do, not complicated and don't offer huge rewards, but they are. And I really liked the theme.

Newton: just boring caverns. They have lore and history in them, but it's still just a stupid boring cavern. Lolliprin's slightly better. Fighting is tedious instead of fun - everything dies in one hit (unless you're a warrior newbie, then they die in two combos), you only have to watch mana. Quests? Sell gnomes/finks/pigs, and try to open the golden or iron portal. The rest is complicated, and the hints are so vague that a real newbie can't really solve them without outside help.

My solution:

Remake Newton or add a new newbie area. Make it fun and full of things to do, so more newbies will stay. Make it more challenging, so newbies won't have a shock when they leave it and have to kill cows/rockeaters that can actually hurt them.

EDIT: Lolliprin's a good example. Newton and Smoke Mountain battleground are not. Give the newbies a big Lolliprin look-a-like, only tougher!

See, I think Newton is fine - though I do agree that maybe the critters could use a little buffing up so the newbies can have a little fun killing them.

I agree with Cuber. It's kind of boring to hunt in Newton's, and Lolliprin and Smoke Mt. and the Top. It's a bit of repition with only one or two variations. Maybe introductiong another newbie area with a more diverse population? I prefered being a newbie in Imperian because I had multiple things to do as a newbie. Hunting rats, catching butterflies, killing goblins or villagers or fanatics.

See, I would do that, but my system is 1- hard to use, 2- confusing to undestand, 3- badly written, and 4- doesn't handle many things, like sap, which I can generally avoid by not fighting druids very often, being a druid with sap myself and all

You can kill rats, gnomes, and finks here! Not to mention ants, build weapons of mass destruction for the finks, etc...

Seriously, though, you have to make sure the newbies aren't bored. If Newton Caverns is completely bashed out? That's basically condemning your newbies, ESPECIALLY in Lusternia, to utter boredom as they run around trying to find new things to do. Make the repop rate on finks/gnomes less: so that way newbies can kill them more often, but have less of a chance to harvest them all, turn them in for gold, and deprive other newbies of the opportunity to get them. Oh, and make all the gold-givers REALLY strong: so that anything short of 3-4 newbies probably wouldn't be able to kill them. Nothing is more frustrating than to bash for 15 minutes, then come back and find your quest-giver dead. It might be hilarious to us to hear someone scream in agony at the Pixie Queen being killed, but for a newbie, it's a kick in the pants. Toughening the denizens up would probably help too.

Oh- and give the other orgs bashing grounds as nice as Spectre Isle. I can say without question that was the most fun part of levelling up as a Magnagoran. I know it's hard for Divine to come up with moral reasons Celest can bash something AND give Mags no excuse to defend it, but I think they could use it. (even if they did blow up our Necromentate. )

hrmm one misconception about getting a free system or even buying one is that you will be able to cure and fight as well as the fighter who gave it to you/ you bought it from which just isnt true, systems work for the person that made them in a specific way that they like and understand and its never the same for someone its been given to so although i guess it would make it easier for the new players it still wouldnt allow them to bash on everyone like many new plyers seem to want to do

I would too, but:
a) I'm lazy.
B ) Don't have much free time to play, let alone code for lusternia.
c) I spend too much time staring at a computer screen at work anyhow.
d) My system is highly customized for myself and would take too long to re-vamp.
e) See a)

Along the same lines.. I think Lusternia needs to take a que from Imperian as far as mortal building projects go. make a new area for lvl groups so we can start increasing places to freggin bash. like.. REALLY bash. Not just 10 or 20 mobs >: (

Since they did this in imperian I've sen the newbies staying around more. They made a new 1-20lvl area for every city/commune. (as well as 30-40 50-60 70-80 and 90-100 -- *hides from anyone who dislikes necropolis*)

While theres things WE as players who run guilds and cities could do, there are things the Divine could do to improve the situation too. (and this way not only newbs would get some new junk )



Heh heh

Ditto, cept D since I havent really gotten through half of mine yet. I'll be releasing the healing part for free or low gold amounts when its working perfectly... though.. due to A and E... it may not happen for a year lol

The bigger problem with my system is that it's for zMUD, and zMUD isn't free, so true newbies are unlikely to have it. The people who already have copies of zMUD are likely people who know how to code or people who play other IRE games.