That little question at the end of rolling a character -- are you new?
As a fun question, I'm just curious what the different ideas people have about where the line should be before someone isn't a newbie.

First character? First hero? First character with 1 kill? First character with a 4:1 PK Ratio? First character that doesn't get lost in Galadon?

To be more clear, I'm not asking "Am I a newbie?" or whether you want room longs vs room shorts while running around. That's not an interesting topic for gameplay.

I'm asking the philosophical or historical question of when you considered yourself no longer a newbie, or what standard you might use to consider an enemy or groupmate not a newbie. I'm curious to see what imms, vets, and newer players have to say.

...when I could run blinded from Arendyl to Hamsah Mu'Tazz and heal my blindness.

I think that was around hero #3 or #4.

There's at least 9 healers closer to Arendyl than Hamsah that could've cured your blindness too.

Maybe you're still new?

NT

I think the first step towards not being a new player is when you go from being glad to see Tribunals in town to annoyed.

I think another step is when you get to the point where you forget that you've been walking around with a warrant for several log ins.

Then there comes a time when you're playing a character and you're fighting a shifter and he shifts into his offensive form and you're glad, because you know you can now kill him instead of being all "It's a lion! Get in the car!"

All in all, I think it's about your attitude towards certain situations that differentiate between the vets and the new players.

Those are very compelling, acknowledgedly somewhat context dependent, rules of thumb :) I like the way you describe it as a multiple checkpoint transition. It seems clear at 3, you're feeling entirely like a veteran. At which point did you stop considering yourself the new guy? Or it that you always feel somewhat a newbie until you consider yourself a vet?

With most people, they will consider themselves no longer a newbie long before they are genuinely a veteran. I would suggest that "not being a newbie" is not the same as being a veteran. There was a time when I thought I knew a great deal about the game, and thought I was a veteran player--and that took a good two or three years. However, now that I'm going on 15 years, I look back and realize how ignorant I was at the time about a vast amount of the game. I was probably genuinely no longer a newbie, but I was still a very far cry from being a veteran.

I would say, "no longer newbie" entails

1.) Being able to navigate around most of the mud except for explore areas. Also at this stage, being familiar with all of the non-class specific help files.
2.) Being able to equip yourself decently from naked or at newbie levels. "Decently" does NOT mean simply replacing your fine leather gear with whatever you happen to find as you're walking around. You should know how to find out exactly what an item does, either by class ability or Alduk, and you should know what item traits are most important for whatever build you happen to be playing. You should be getting a pretty good idea of what basic items to gather to cater to the important needs of your specific build, and you should be able to do it entirely alone within about an hour (barring interruptions from cabal duties or others trying to pk you). Which brings me to my next point...
3.) You should know how to avoid pk from most enemies. This is the survivor stage. You are no longer sleeping duck for any predator to simply come along and devour you. You have developed the habit of spamming WHERE every 6 to 10 seconds, keeping detections up if you have them, knowing where to FIND them if you don't have any, etc... Whenever someone manages to get past your vigilance and strike at you, you know how to run away properly. You may not always succeed, since that depends greatly on the specific circumstances, but when the attack first came and you fled, you knew immediately where to go, rather than just running aimlessly. Also at this stage, you're becoming familiar with the help files for the class abilities of most classes. You are getting better at knowing basically what to expect from most classes that you might have to fight.
4.) You've become pretty good at knowing what to expect from any given class. As a result, you're definitely getting better at pk, as well as EFFECTIVELY running away when you can't win. Your area knowledge has grown to the point where you can now navigate to (and possibly even through) some of the easier explore areas. Your item knowledge has increased beyond the basic level. If you were to die and get full looted, you could take an hour to gather basics, then use that basic set to start gathering things beyond the basics.
5.) You've honed your combat expertise to the point where you stand a fighting chance against most classes. You not only know what to expect from any class out there, you also have a pretty good idea of what to do to counter many of the tactics that each class inherently brings to the fight. This does not necessarily include player-devised tactical uses of class abilities, since these can be nearly infinite, and many players who are clearly veterans have some pretty creative uses for class abilities. You can pretty much handle the basic uses of any class ability that you might have to deal with. At this stage, I would say you are 100% not-newbie. You are now a confident, competent, experienced, average player. You have earned your Associates Degree in CF.

I'm pretty sure I've never had a character with a 4:1 PK ratio. I've been playing this game since 2001. I choose "no".

But as a general rule, if you find yourself asking more questions on the newbie channel than answering them, you're still new. If you find yourself checking helpfiles regularly for stuff that wasn't recently added, you're probably still new.

Honestly though, it's your choice. It doesn't have that much impact on your character. It gives you a different name when you use the newbie channel post-10. It forces you to keep brief off until lvl 35. It tags your character as new for the Imms. But as far as actually playing the game.. it shouldn't impact anything. Unless I'm missing something. I only chose new once to see the difference, and got annoyed at the lack of brief.

I think you're right -- it ultimately comes down to whether you consider yourself new or not. What about for other characters, though :) At what point do you look at a groupmate or an enemy and say "he's not a newbie"?

And navigate Thera without step by step directions. That's really all I hope for. PK competence is a nice bonus, but it's hard to gauge that one until it's too late.

After a couple years, on and off, I consider myself somewhere between newbie and veteran...

I find, beyond knowing your way around (including death traps), gear locations, a general understanding of most skills/spells, and fair knowledge of cabal philosophy (and locations):

Knowing when to enter a command. Knowing what order to progress through skills/spells in combat. Understanding lag on yourself and how long others lag you. Not spamming commands in panic during every fight.

Starting to know how to work as a team with other builds, noticing when your group-mates do things so that you can play off them at the proper time, and adapt accordingly to surprises.

Knowing when to run and where to run. Knowing where other people are going to run before they get there. Judging situations quickly.

Knowing where to hunt and where you'll likely be hunted. Recognizing your enemies' weaknesses and/or vulnerable situations.

Recognizing things that are unusual. Noticing subtle things in room descriptions and finding things that are useful and not common knowledge.

n/t

you get the ability to recall 1 time from a cursed area if you pick newbie.

Someone else can explain what all answering yes contains.

One of the cons is that you can't set brief descriptions on early on.