I think we get a group of people together, who've never even seen a MUD before, have them test play, and record experiences. I had a friend that just recently tried to play, and she quit real quick from confusion. We've forgotten what it is to be a newbie, so maybe we pull in some real newbies, and find where the problem is.

I still think my list was fairly comprehensive Though I forgot to add "Confusing terminology with no easy to find dictionary."

Maybe there could be some kind of (optional) survey during or after the newbie tour, to see what the opinions of the actual newbies themselves are? Like how new they are to MUDs, how they liked the tour, etc. Or even maybe... after 24 hours a survey option could be made available to them, to judge approximately how well they've enjoyed the game so far.

edit: oh wow I can't type at all today...

You really need to be a special sort of person to play and enjoy muds ( at least thats what I tell myself ). Like Veo said, there will always be way less people playing MUDS than games like WoW. Lusternia and muds are thought-intensive, unlike WoW ( dont even get me started on that shithole of a zergling ). People just can't handle it. They cant handle all the information, the speed at which it comes, what is possible in the game, what isn't. It's too much for most noobies to take in.

If I hadn't had a friend to help em out during my noob stage on lusternia, I likely wouldn't have stayed. Coming as a player who never mud'ed before, it was incredibly confusing. I think I spent a day or two trying to figure out how to friggin attack. For one, it is pretty neat to simply be thrown into a world where you have no clue what's going on. But, too much of the noobie experience is reading old, sometimes outdated help/ghelp/chelp files, and not enough actualy instruction in what to do. Perhaps a more extensive tutorial would help...

Well, yeah, I'd never have kept MUDding if it wasn't for the hot (real) girl. Long story.

And Shorlen, remember, that's from your point of view, as a MUDder. I'd be interested to see it from someone who doesn't play.

Must be some good friend! I tried to introduce some of my friends to Lusternia ( WoW players :< )... They couldn't handle it. They needed the GUI. I was like, but your mind is the GUI!!! I was as helpful as a person could be, but they just couldnt do it. They didnt want to even give it a try because it was so damned confusing. Thats why I believe it will never be possible to hook just anyone to the game, it takes special muffins, I'm telling you.

Best friends to try and get to play are readers & writers (duh) And those are the only people I've successfully gotten to play >.<

True.

I think that'd be a great idea! But not right after the tour cause they still haven't really experienced anything. I think maybe it'd be good for them to be able to provide feedback after having played a bit - like 5 hours, or when they graduate or something. Maybe let them have a small lesson bonus or something if they complete it so it won't just be ignored. Ask them how they enjoyed the tour, the Newtons, who taught them their guild skills, were they helpful - if no one did, were they pointed to a helpful file on what to learn and why, has your guild helped you when you had problems or questions, rate your experience, how can we improve, everything Shou suggested, and so on.

I'm working on one for TF right now. Written well so far, but it's going to take some more time. Then I have to document it. It'll be a while yet, but it's coming. Wish I had more time. That being said, once I get the curing system done, I'm going to document everything and release it in the hopes that other people would be able to contribute to the system. I'm hoping I can crank it out by Thanksgiving or Chirstmas.

EDIT: I can't spell.

TF isn't really what I would call a true newbie-friendly client, unless that newbie happened to be a CS geek...

I completely agree, I'm a noob to MUDs myself, I created a character to try this out since it looked fun and I got trained and played for about 4hours total then I didn't have time to play for 2 days because of work and school. I came back today to find out my character had been deleted! I'm not really interested in going out and restarting all over again just to have my character deleted when I can't play due to real life issues. I think that the hours put into a character should directly effect the time before it is deleted or stripped. E.G. 1 hour = 1 day or something simaler. I'm a big fan of the old skewl text and still picture adventures. Its a little more difficult to start out as a newb in a new game when you have no visual representation of things to help you, other than your imagination (two plus two is NOT a clown with a flamethrower.)

And for those of you who might have met me in my short venture into lusternia I was RPing as Amaterasu and then name changed to Ammei. And so there is no confusion I was RPing a female character but I myself am not (So don't get your hopes up! )

I think Shorlen got most of the main things, though I would add that I think the dominance of nation areas over non-nation areas is a bit of a problem. When you start out, you're told not to explore 3/4 of the world because they will kill you. I'd much rather there was a perception of the communes and cities being little dots on a huge map, rather than huge shaded areas that take up about 50% of it.

Maybe its more because I'm older now and can see the world at large, but I do remember thinking how odd it was that Serenwilde was so huge, and there weren't really many other places to go and do things other than the villages. Which are all nation territory anyway.

Edit: In Aetolia, I remember having completely the opposite impression. It was all about going out into the world and finding places that you liked (because I was a Druid and Groves were -awesome- for making the world your own), whereas in Lusternia the general emphasis is in hiding and entrenching in your own territory.

That sounds like an unusually short amount of time to be deleted in. Maybe you forgot to REGISTER?

Register? o_o I went through the character creation system and I had loged on and off a couple of times over those 4 hours I had played, what did I forget to do?

The REGISTER command. If I remember right there are brightly colored notices reminding you to register every few minutes until you do it. If you don't do it your character is deleted in the daily purges.

Yet another of the many things that I do not think is clear enough to true newbies.

The tour could REALLY use some work.

I may be mistaken but I do not remember seeing one of those and I read everything, and I have yet to see it now and I just remade my character 30minutes ago.