>Is it particularly bad to be targetted as a newbie? I think
>it will be pretty hard to disguise.

Dunno how many people actually target newbies. As an assassin, you can hide from like 90% of people. People who can see you are: Assassins and thieves at all time, duergars when you're in civilized terrain, Tribunals when they're on duty and rangers when you're in wilderness. In addition, the Imperial Shadow lord and the Emperor have a power with which they can see you (though in this case the shadow lord doesn't matter as he's an assassin or thief and would see you anyway).

>I think I have my boyfriend interested in trying to play,
>though he is not sure he can handle fast scrolling text that
>comes with combat.

He should try it then. It's a tough game and no-one expects newbies to shine. So, you're completely allowed to suck and no-one will diss you for that. If you shine, it's only positive. I wasn't sure about being able to handle the fast scrolling text and not getting lost in a text-based world and I've managed well enough.

>The dying too many times leading to perma death concerns me. I
>am bound to die a lot early on, at the least, and I was pretty
>reckless in the last mud I played. I enjoyed fighting a lot
>more than running, regardless of the odds. How many times do
>you have to die before you die permanently?

You lose one point of constitution for every third death. When your constitution is lowered to zero, your character will die permanently. This would mean 39 deaths for a 16 con character (elf or d-elf, they have the lowest constitution in the game) that doesn't practice constitution to compensate for the the ones lost in deaths. Generally, only people who con die are the ones who purposefully play recklessly or live a long life.

>It also sucks that 500 hours kills you permanently. That's a
>lot of time to put in to a character to lose them. I clocked
>way over that in my old mud, and I would have hated to start
>all over again.

Starting over isn't a huge deal in CF. The max level is capped to 51 and you can reach that in 30-100 hours if you powerrank. Also, game starts at level 1, not 51, and you should be able to have fun at any level range. Also, every class plays differently so the startover gives you a change to try something new.

>How do you guys handle that, exactly?

I'd like to point out that vast majority of characters die by deletion and not because the game forced them to die. People will simply reroll something else when they get bored of their previous character and want to try something new. 500 hours is plenty of time to get bored with your current character. Personally, I've age died one character (Fungor) and con-died two (Agantas, Endalion). Feel free to check their PBF's if you want to know how long they lasted. At that point, I was already ready to give up on those characters as their time had come. Of those characters, Agantas was my second character (first that PKed, as my first character Fungor was about survival), a crazy balls to the walls character that fought to the point where he took completely unnecessary deaths. You can also play for about half an hour or hour after your character has died, as a ghost, to properly say goodbye to people who knew you in the game. Also, there will be a death thread for your character in the Battlefield forum where you can say your goodbyes and comments about the character. Also, you can talk about that character more freely at that point, as it is not customary to talk about your active character in the forums.

>Also, I really wish the game would come back up, I could spend
>all this time posting learning how to play hands on. :(

Don't we all. This kind of longer downtime has happened only once as I recall it. At that time, there was a fireball in the host company's server room. This is not an issue like that, but they'll solve it eventually and it probably won't happen again and if it does, the Imms should be wiser at that time as they learn from this time's mistakes.