If I can get a thumbs-up from the higher-imm staff, I'll post a sample newsletter. We, the marketing community, can review it and throw together some ideas in this forum - adds, deletes, whatever. What draws current players to read the newsletter, what draws past players to read the newsletter, what would draw new players to the game by reading the newsletter?

Here is a huge list of ideas that may or may not be worth sticking in a newsletter. Let's discuss. Remember, this isn't coming out weekly or anything. It's four times a year at most. It could be distributed to emails of registered CF-forum users, and it could be posted on other forums (unofficial CF forums, and as advertisement on other forums such as Top Mud Sites).

Please help me tailor this to be something good and useful - not too long, and not too short; enough information to spark interest in the game, but not so much that there may be negative in-game backlash (specifically, Fjarn getting canoewhacked or fed to Floofi).

News Section
-If there's CF news, this is where it would go. Things like being up again after a nasty server outage would be newsworthy.

One or two articles
-Discussion articles, written by anyone. Detailed article on something that's going on. Trying to stay away from opinion articles here. Can be:
==serious/analytical (summary of dex changes or shapeshifter revamp update)
==historical/role building (why orcs hate elves, what is a saurian/history of "mobtype XXX", what burned the Forest of Nowhere/history of "zone ZZZ", what is the Veil?)
==comical (what CAN'T you hide in a dwarf beard?, letter to the editor from a disgruntled centurion, a gnome's-eye view of the world's kneecaps).

Cabal Wars section
-Leaders sidebar - shows current cabal leadership
-Graph showing current cabal population?
-Graph showing 4-month average from cabalwars (kind of a quarterly bragging rights)
-Or, instead of graphs and real data, maybe just a ranking of highest-to-lowest population, best-to-worst 4-month cabalwars average
-Cabal news/rumors - If anything really spectacular has happened, it goes here. A new emperor is crowned. The Outlanders burned Galadon to the ground. Rumor has it the Scions are searching for something important in the Underdark. This should give basic updates for current players who might have missed something, new players who need to be convinced that the world is alive and they can impact it, and past players who have soft spots in their hearts for specific cabals.

Code Changes section
-sidebar area for bulleted summary list of code changes. Draw attention to new areas, new mechanics, balance tweaks, etc. Tease folks into coming to the website to dig deeper if there's a change that interests them.

Fan Fiction
-Kind of like the front page stories. Have one submission per issue. Opens up the newsletter to contributions from the community so it's not just a staff newsletter.

Role Contest and other competition winners
-List role winners and runners up for this time frame
-Print a teaser paragraph or two from winning roles (with permission from the player, if character is still active)
-List other competition winners. Arena championships, inn events, etc. Maybe a hint as to what the winners were awarded to drive interest for future events
-Heads-up for future events, even if they're not formally planned yet.

At a Glance
-Brief sidebar with a few things we forum lurkers may know, but non-forum-lurkers might benefit from. This is where something like the dex/evade and armor class changes might go. A few sentences, tops.

"Did you Know" box
-Helpful hint, obscure tips, random fact.

Population stats (?)
-Would it be worthwhile to put CF population stats here? Average players during the 24 hour day this quarter? Total number of new characters, total deletes, and/or total age/con/herodeletes? Snapshot of total number of characters 10 and under, 11-25, 26-50, hero?
-Any interesting stats, like the warrior specialization preference posted on the forums. Most/least popular classes. Most/least popular legacies. Most/least popular races. The idea is to spark those waffling-on-returning-to-cf underdog players into thinking "Hey, I always wanted to roll a gnome/pole/hand/whispers/autumn spec...look at how few there are! (rolls character)"

Staff News
-News from Immland. Welcome back YYY who returned after a hiatus. Congrats on ZZZ finishing a new area. Special thanks to XXX for tracking down a crash bug. Congrats WWW on your promotion to 54. TTT's religion is now open. Something to keep the connection between players and imms open, and give the Imms a chance to be recognized for the work they do. Short section, couple of bullets/sentences at most.

Poll Results sidebar
-Results from a recent forum poll(s).

Quest update
-Any quests that might have happened and are public knowledge. Demons from hell repelled by the Maran. Scion open a portal near Arkham; Nightwalkers flood Thera.
-Rumors of potential upcoming quests. Plant the seed for folks to get interested.
-Basically this section would be to inform current players of what's going on if they're not online when things happen, and it motivates more people to play and get involved, if live quests are their interest.