Ok people, so The Hobbit is coming to theaters soon, fantasy-geekdom will see a rise like it did during the Lord of the Rings trilogy. This would be a fantastic time to carpet bomb the populace with some CF ads.

I believe that snaring casual mudders into trying CF isn't the problem, and never has been. CF has to wow them that very first time they play it. So, I think infrastructure designed to help new players get hooked and survive in the game is critical. It's just too harsh of a game to come into with no one helping you out. A mentoring system would be a logical extension of the newbie channel, though I'm sure the staff could come up with even better ideas than that.


-Mek

P.S. Some of you have taken issue with what Stunna posted below, and I saw several comments along the lines of "well, you're not offering ANY ideas to be helpful, so you're just making it worse." This, by the way, is laughable. Stunna got the whole CF Marketing forum started, attempted to get some real organization going in that area, and not for lack of effort on his part it just didn't really go anywhere. Why not try again?

Is share or link to the CF Facebook site updates. I think Whiys has been doing real good work there (probably under appreciated). I know that when I'm away from the game for a while, CF info hitting the status update gets me thinking about the game again.

And encourage newbies to give it a follow on the newbie channel or whatever. The more connections you make, the more likely the game is to stick.

I'm all for marketing being done. I think it's very important.

I also have zero interest in doing it myself.

I think a lot of people are in a very similar boat.

And that's because people are too ready to either (a) pad their pk for whatever reason, such as edge points or bragging rights, or (b) grief people.

I would propose that if someone is clearly a newb, people are encouraged not to beat on them repeatedly.

That there should be an option for newbies to have the option play a character that can't advance past level 20 but also cannot participate in PK.

That way they could get a chance to learn the basic layout of the land and how some of the basic skills work without worrying about some ass bag multi killing them.

Once they are comfortable with the general areas and how the game works. They could role a real character. And, I can see no way how this limitation would be abused by veterans. They all know how to survive pre-20 for the most part.

Abandoned Realms has some nice features in their character creation process. Worth checking out.

Didn't Gadinias used to hang out in the Academy and help newbies? That seems like a good use of heroimm time to me.