I just wanted to toss my two cents in. Your welcome letter has a good conversational tone, and does a good job of staying lighthearted, casual, and positive. You earn credibility through "full disclosure", and the specific topics flow allright (a few revisions would help, but as you said it's an unproofed draft).

That said, it reads to me like a spam email. I'm not sure why that is, but the end effect is that I (as you put it) hit the button on the remote.

I'll try to be (briefly) constructively critical in the interest of improving this style of welcome page:

"I promise you won't regret it" doesn't fly with me. My analytical mind says that's an empty promise (how can you promise how I will feel?), so anything else you say may be just as empty.

"Literally takes your breath away" - probably just a pet peeve of mine with the overuse of the word literally that drops my attention level.

"You know you would" invokes a feeling of being pressured to me. Try it, you'll like it. You know you will. Here. Do it.

"Thousands of gamers...hopelessly addicted", but if I do log in for the first time and find there's only 50 people online? I know what you mean, but would a first-time reader understand?

"FREE FREE FREE" I get it, you're free. But everyone else who wants my money is "FREE FREE FREE" too (this complaint holds true for the other marketing efforts as well, including the other revisions of the welcome page - just an observation).

But see, this is the difficulty in marketing. I may be the 1% of people that reacts this way, whereas another 99% of new readers may react extremely positively. To me, this would make a good one-page testimonial. As a testimonial, I naturally discount the pet peeves above, and pick up on the major items that interest me - including the drawbacks of the game. In fact, I tried to gear my mind toward "this is a testimonial" the fourth time I read it, and I picked up on things that I hadn't seen the first three read-throughs (like marriages).

Take this all as constructive criticism. You tossed it in the ring for us to kick around, and I gladly obliged... because kick is overpowered.

Now...you know...what if you stick this on a parchment-style background (or, better yet, a jpg scan of a really distressed/burned/crumpled -actual- letter)...reduce it to one-page and clean it up some...LINK to it on the welcome page (use a couple-inches tall icon that looks like the parchment document itself)....put "Letter from a Recovering CF Addict" below as part of the link... Maybe rewrite it in the form of convincing me NOT to play the game because of it's dangerously addictive qualities.. Then you create a little gimmick, a little whimsy...and I can stop putting elipses between every thought...hmm...