>When I started you could perfect your skills really quickly
>and easily as you could practice on low level and immune mobs.
>So you could go into the air of Galadon and gather all birds
>or Kobold cavern and get defenses done in an hour.
>
>When I started CF had a way more casual approach to OOC so it
>was way easier to get help with things. These days the damn
>newbie quest in the caverns is regarded as secret and people
>are getting yelled at if they are asking questions about it.

Be all this as it may, you're still describing a CF from a long time ago that hasn't reflected our vision of the game for the better part of two decades.

Honestly, if you think that CF was 'better' when you could buy 150 puppies to wail on you in Galadon then I'm sorry but I just don't think we're going to see eye to eye on much.

>When I started there were not as many secrets and it was
>pretty ok to do a map of something like Elven Vaults even if
>it was an area explore. These days more and more powerful
>things come from area explore / quests and they are seen as
>incredibly secret so it is almost impossible to actually learn
>what advantages the "in crowd" (IMMS and certain players)
>has.

Again, you have to go back a lot of years to get to a time when publicly discussing or sharing info about explore areas and such was cool, if it ever was (before my time).

>When I started players dependence on IMMS to get an advantage
>was pretty minimal. Quest forms and skills were rare and that
>has changed towards a lot is hinging on IMMS to gain an
>advantage with several classes.

It still is minimal. It really, really is. Short of empowerment, which again, has been a part of CF for the vast majority of its life, this claim just doesn't hold water. Stop making it.

>When I started I as a newbie could always get things like
>jeweled broadswords (that also was better) because they were
>unlimited.

I'll admit in a heartbeat that learning to dress adequately is difficult for real newbies and its something I'd like to address this year. But if you're the kind of person who had no trouble getting jeweled broadswords and you think gearing a lowbie (or anything for that matter) is difficult today then I'm going to laugh at you.

>I understand that these are design decisions that has been
>made and several are probably really good for your idea of the
>game. But I also feel that the vision of creating a realistic
>fantasy world is not always aligned with those that play the
>game. The community around CF is incredibly limited these days
>and I think creating maps, guides and adding items to item
>databases is vital to retain newbies but the vibe you get from
>IMMS has more or less squashed those attempts so people have
>grown tired of it.
>

I agree with you that our vision doesn't always align with what some of our players might want (or more often than not, think they want). At the same time, part of our job is to make CF appeal to a wider audience than just, for example, players who only care about PK or exploring Hell. Ultimately, that balancing act is on us and I think over the years we've done a poor job with it at times, though not necessarily how you might assume.

As for the community and it creating resources for players, I think that's great. We ask players to make very few concessions with regards to what they publish about CF in the grand scheme of things, and I think for the most part the Diku wiki, for example, is a fantastic (if often outdated or inaccurate) resource that, for the time being, we can't hold a candle to. I'm glad all of the players who've contributed to it did so, and I'm also happy to see that 99.9% of the time the player base respects the wishes of the staff with regards to the contents of the wiki and other such endeavors.