Was I intimidated at first, heck yeah! I still am, but the fun more than makes up for it.

One of the things I had to get used to was dieing.
At the other MUD I came from it took literally months, I mean like 6 months to rank my first character up. And dieing was always painful (loss of HP and Con) so it was something you avoided at all costs.

CF is very different. Even if your character con dies, you can make a new one and rank right back up there pretty quickly.

I think the HARDEST thing was learning the lands enough to be able to run away far enough to be fairly safe. You put a newbie in a fight with someone who knows the lands and all the hiding spots and that newbie has almost nill chance of getting far enough away if the experienced player decides to give chase.

Full looting is another hard thing to deal with as a newbie. It takes a lot of learning to know what gear to wear, where to get it, if you even CAN get it at your rank. People give you stuff, but you have no clue wear to find that piece again if you die and lose it. That is still hard for me and something I find very intimidating.

What got me to stay and play, you ask? The players who are helpful, and the RP. Those two things are what make CF really enjoyable for a new person I think. I don't think any newbie is going to be very successful at PK with their first couple of characters, if they are my hat goes off to them and they better stick around because it only gets better.