Chargen Critique

[Krin]

Hey gang, I thought I'd give a quick bit of feedback about my impressions from the character generation system. I wanted to share it here in case my thoughts are the odd-ball out in the room, though I should add a qualification that I've played a lot of MUDs (a lot!) so I like to think these aren't totally out of the blue. Many of them are things that I've seen done elsewhere to great effect, and I think that if you guys can give the same care and dedication to the new-player experience that you've given the rest of the game, it'll help in the long-run.

• Each race slash nation should have it's own room off-the-main-hallway that has an example description of a character from there (complete with equipment!) and a general overview of the history. If you could make these mobprogs that made that mob speak to you in a quasi-IC manner, I think that'd be great. The world is awesome and deep, and there's lots of great things here—you'll notice many of my suggestions revolve around giving a specific trait of TI:L it's own room. I think if you do it like you do the few rooms "west" during creation (make them off of the main north/south path), it'd work the best. (Instead of it's own point, I'd also like the suggest giving each class it's own room, and each guild. These could be player submissions if you'd like them done best, and generally that's the approach I've seen with the most success work in the past!).
• Work on connecting help files more aggressively. While for the most part this is very well done, I didn't see 'help kingdom', 'help domain' or 'help surname' until out of char gen. That was frustrating to me, and I think lots of that was because there either wasn't the proper space devoted to some of these concept in chargen OR because the 'see also' segments of help files weren't as deep as they could have been.
• I know this might come across a bit ... cheesy? (that's the wrong word, but it'll have to do for now!) and I'm admittedly not as experienced at RPI's as I am at the many other kinds of MUDs, but I'd like to see a new-player-quest-line that introduces a player to the many segments of Lithmore City. A quest that begins with the person at the almhouse, and can be as simple as running messages to people, crafting items (if craft skills are taken; I suspect a simple mob-prog check can account for this!), or repeating segments of important lore sections to people could help out a lot as far as getting new players going and in the groove. These 'newbie' quests could involve speaking with members of the major public guilds, investigating further guilds that you are interested in (perhaps a quest for 'researching history of the reeves' is begun when I am seeking the Reeves and enter the library?), just small things that a new player can do to keep themselves occupied and going down the rabbit hole of interesting things. I saw that new players are entitled to a single-room house or something that meant absolutely nothing at the time that I saw it, perhaps something like that could be a reward down one of these minor, cheesy quest lines?

You've got a great world, and it does a lot of things amazingly well. I can't stress how impressed I've been both by the players and the staff, and I really hope that I make TI:L another home. It just feels like there's too much 'down time' between meeting new people, and I'd love to know what I'm supposed to be doing when there's no players around to force myself into RP with. Keep up the good work, though!