I remembered Durnominator's suggestion about using a gaming hub to recruit. Seems like a fantastic idea - so I found the information for MMO developers on Kongregate's website (but there are other categories of developers if CF would fit better elsewhere)

http://developers.kongregate.com/docs/virtual-goods/welcome

Kongregate is an extremely popular gaming hub - 55,000 people are online right now. Please think about it!

I'm looking in to how to get the flash MUD client to work properly on kongregate, among other things. I'm not giving an ETA though.

Totally understand. It's a complicated thing to negotiate.

Good to know it's being investigated! :)

It's a big hub and shouldn't be ignored. One important point is that the treshold to play the game in kongregate is extremely low, which likely means hundreds of newbie characters to the game, probably even more.

What CF needs for that, in addition of the game, is a cool looking profile picture and instruction text that tells all we want it to tell. The picture needs to look good so that it gives the impression of a cool game, as the picture is the first impression a person gets from the game. If it looks well made, then it is more likely that the game is as well (meaning it needs to be proper art, not Dur-art).

We might need an all hands on deck for imms, or even take some player volunteers, just to handle the sheer number of newbie questions. Not to mention the newbie channel will likely get absolutely flooded with spam and whining the first time one of them is corrected on something.

It will necessitate the dawn of the new age of tolerance.

edit: and likely also multiple newbie channels, which people are randomly sorted into, to cut down on spam.

Does CF currently have the infrastructure to support so many newbies?

Do you mean in terms of code/manpower/plans? I think it'll be fine as long as you didn't get too used to having less communication spam.

Or do you mean - can CF's server handle all the connection?

Mostly the latter, really. I'm hoping the advent of something like this would have more players stepping up to help the newcomers around (and less of the opportunistic folk looking to spree-kill the newbies!).

i second this. It would be worth trying.