I had a Nihilist alt for a brief period of time, that was a great novice experience. Other than that, haven't had much experience.

The Ur'Guard's training of Grunts has frankly gotten washed down the drains when the Collegeums came out in the city. The whole point was to have a proper RP style boot camp to jump kick the new players into a world of a soldier. Myself, I still try when I have time, I know Vena does as well, but no one else really tries anymore, because it just doesnt fit into the whole college thing.

Overall, the smaller guilds benefitted, that is true. Their novices no longer get ignored totally, though on occassion get told the wrong things about their guilds. In my opinion, out of the three organisations, Magnagora, Serenwilde and GLomdoring (dont have an alt in Celest, so no idea what happens there.), Serenwilde seems to have handled the conversion from guild to college novices the best. Likely due to two reasons, one that Serenwilde does have a high proportion of newbie friendly people, and two that the guilds, despite how they like to put each other down, do have a sense of unity when it comes to dealing with novices.

As for this poll, I cannot make a vote, because there are no more real guild novice programmes, only that which the cities or communes put together.

Given Lusternia's size, novice experiences tend to be very relative depending on when you actually start out.

As far as the SG goes, I've always kind of wanted to give them a post-novicehood goal like Knighthood, but that's too much city-like.

Someone is going to bring it up eventually: I'm going to talk to the kid whom I threatened to remove his hand for murdering gnomes.

In the Paladins, there is a bit of a problem with a few things. One, most people are either bashing or tired from bashing, or working. Little time for most of us to train the Pages. Those of us who actually can or do help the novices usually become very...jaded is it? Most undersecretaries come out of the position with hatred of novices.

Of course, when most people aren't working, they are actually pretty good. The whole collegium is confusing me on how to deal with it, but I'm working on it. Gadritan is decent about either making them feel welcome most of the time. Most of the others are pretty good about helping them with items or advice. I've kinda developed irrational hatred of stupid novices and general apathy for novices in general, personally.

The spiritsingers were great, very friendly and helpful

I had a Blacktalon alt for a bit, it was really fun. The people were really welcoming. Moondancers also treat their noobies pretty good on an impersonal sort of systematic level. I'm guessing because there are so gosh darn many? -___-

Whatever happened to the vision quests? Or you expand the whole concept of 'Unblooded' v. (I don't think this was an actual title) 'Blooded'.

And to try to elaborate on an earlier point - people respond very differently to novice programs. The Shadowdancers, for instance, have a very solid walk-through that can be extremely helpful for an actual novice but irritating for people with more under their belts. I tend to the lengthy side of introducing novices, giving extensive backgrounds for skills and culture and stuff, but when I was in the Ebonguard a lot of the novices reacted best with a brisk treatment and a 'get these lessons done, I'll explain what they do as we go, ask questions if you have them' speech.

As a personal note, I'm having a lot of issues with the whole Collegium setup. Currently, when a new Ebonguard steps through the Portal, I don't get any notice that they are, in fact, a member of the Ebonguard. I don't find out until later. They can't ask on GNT for help, but on the more generic CGT. I've not applied to be a professor for a reason-- I've spent two years of my life doing it, and while I'm glad to help on a case-by-case basis and given answers on the Collegium aether, I can't really see myself volunteering to train four guilds' worth of novices at once, so maybe this is an issue that is cured by being a Professor... but it is somewhat difficult to take a more focused path.

Thus, the whole "Collegium is dividing novices from their guild" argument is very true, for me, and for others in the Glomdoring. We've... a very, very tiny playerbase now. Removing a lot of the "Hey, you've got a new novice here to train!" kills a lot of the initial roleplay/experience, and, from what I've seen so far, leads to novices being ignored a lot of the time until they actually graduate into the guild.

Some people really like being left alone until they're ready to participate, but not everyone does, and in this case, I think it's somewhat detrimental.

Glomdoring's newbie experience is definitely very subpar these days, which is really unfortunate. (And yes, I do think this includes Shadowdancers. It's not really anyone's fault, and our professors are trying their best... but they can't do everything).

I was working on something, but that was when we had an election every week, so nothing ever got done.

In my opinion, the Spiritsingers have a lot of really useful programs for the newbies and for everybody else. We give out an instrument when a novice graduates, we have an armoire for clothes, a rack for instruments. In all the bard guilds, the Spiritsingers really do define bard. We're all-around: Lendren for our plays and other activities, Zia for combat, and Ialie for a really nice leadership.

I know this, since I'm a Spiritsinger Undersecretary (now Secretary and Protector).

I had a Ur'Guard alt back before the collegiums and I didnt like it, but that is just me.


Best had to be when I was a Moondancer way back in the day.

I find this to be true as well, and I'm glad people seem to think the BT are handling it well anyways. I know my own personal handling of novices is not as smooth as it used to be. (I do still think we have the best post-novicehood program, though, bar none.)

The collegium is too impersonal. When it first came out, I thought the automation would be the one redeeming feature of the system. It still baffles me that it turned into the worst part of it, and the best part of it (larger group of question-answerers and helpers) is what I thought would be the worst.

When a novice is your responsibility and your responsibility alone, you get better communication. Some people want to be left alone. Some people want skill training. Some people want the RP tour. Some people want to be introduced to other people. When someone goes to the novice and talks with him or her for a while, you get a good feel of who wants what. With the collegium, ridiculous difficulty of the quests aside, everyone gets the same narrow path, and that's detrimental. If the automated portion was simpler and more guided, it would be better. As it is, you have novices doing things that major players can't always do with ease with fairly little guidance.

What are the Nihilists, Aquamancers and Cacophony doing badly? I see many votes but few comments on them.

Could be a case of them being inferior solely by comparison. Think most Lusternian guilds handle novices adequately.

That said I found the Celestines most enjoyable.

I also miss GNT. I hardly communicate on CGT now except to answer the odd random question.

Spiritsinger's definitely for me. I wasn't a novice there for long, as I had joined like the same day it opened, but I was an undersecretary and I actually enjoyed it. I went out of my way to make the novices feel welcome. I don't know, it was like an atmosphere that said they didn't expect anything out of you except to be happy and that made you want to contribute to the guild and forest somehow.

See, this varies on how you react to people, who's online in the guild, who's doing what, what events going on, etc.

I've had about.. three alts in the MD I think. Two in the HS. My first time as a MD, as Dia, I had a wonderful time. Gwyne made me feel very welcome. The other two times. Not so much. My first time as a HS, was actually in Beta. I didn't understand a thing and no one was able to help me get started, although Narid tried, he knew nothing about what to do for them. However, with Shorlen and Saran in the HS the second time as Dylara.. that was fun. Shamarah raided, so Shorlen kept buzzing in and out seeing how I was doing. One time he was showing me the Halls and had to leave suddenly. He didn't realize I was there still until I asked. It was made fun!

Anyways. I've rambled too much. Best time was my second try at Hartstone, worse was my first!

Hmm, yeah, Spiritsingers.

Seriously, they've got Lendren. A hundred secretaries can't match his productivity when it comes to helping the guild and its novices.

Shadowdancers used to have a great newbie system. We don't mesh well with the new collegium system though. In my opinion at least.

Can't you guys just revise your newbie system to mesh well with the collegium? That's what everyone else did...at least in Serenwilde.