Hello there.

I want to share my experience on one project. We have almost doubled retention of newbies when implemented mentors system. It was simple: mentors were offering a deal to a newbie, and were receiving special scores when their newbies were growing through levels. For those scores, they were able to buy special, unique good.

I do not suggest to create something similar here or reward them that way, but I suggest to create a cabal for newbies. Cabal that would be led by experienced players, and newbies who would gain some benefits, like a bonus to XP, calling mob that would level up with them and be their groupmate (like mercenaries from Galadon), etc. Those benefits would be working, say, until level 30.

But even if they wouldn't have any cabal powers, they would be in a team. And being in a team would (I believe) greatly increase their desire to play and to return.

From the coding perspective, I do not think it will require a lot of it. There are tons of functionality that can be reused, such as nightwalkers could be their groupmates, but would leave immediately if it's a PK fight. So, I suggest something that would accumulate those newbies, teach them, help them, socialize and keep in the game, with a minimum new code and maximum of reuse.

I think that there are a lot of players who would like to be elders of such cabal, even if they wouldn't gain any special powers themselves.

That's it.