Hi all, In the newbie fora, there are so many people asking for help, getting started or re-started. There has been a little bit of debate around the idea of making this easier, by having one guild (possibly one guild pr server type) that would welcome them, and where the inflow of players could help creating critical mass for the lower levels, so that they do not feel alone in an abandoned world, until they reach max level Not only could it potentially help returning players, it could help the game in overall, if there could be an increase of players, and if we could improve on the perception that it is a hard game to return or start up. So the debate is open; my input - brain storm style as is my favourite - would be: To have a list of 1-3 guilds on Live, FV, and a TLP, that would commit to take in all Returned/Newbies, indefinitely. The ones spending time on Newbie fora would then have someplace to send these people. I also think it could be fun for experienced players to participate in a monthly event, for example like this: first saturday, at noon, the 1-3 guilds hold a play-a-new-toon-in-tutorial-even, with a Discord (voice chat) channel, where vererans and Returned/Newbies can play in the same zones for a few hours, giving a “feeling of welcome” (not sure what it is called in English). Some of us likes to make small Youtube videos for fun, I would come and make one, trying to make some “marketing material” to share with Returned/Newbies (but since my kids gave me the Worst Youtuber of the Year award, that might actually be counterproductive :-D) Are you in a guild that would invite any returnee/newbie, and that have a good chance of comtinue to do so for a long time? Do you have some input for this rough idea?
I love the idea and I think guilds that claim to be short on raid numbers should be looking into this with great interest. Reaching out to this population and helping them progress and then in turn being able to utilize them for your raid force is a win for both sides. Obviously the new or returning player would need to have an interest in raiding for this to work for them. The upside is there should be no reason for these people to leave your guild for another raid guild unless they have some kind of conflict with the guild itself. For non raid guilds who would like more active members they should be trying to obtain the new/returning players who have no interest in raiding. This should prevent these people from leaving your guild for a raid guild once they hit max level also. Its fairly obvious that DB is not going to come up with a plan for new/returning players on the live servers. Their solution for these people is a new TLP server every year. As players it is in our interest to come up with a solution to this problem if we want the live servers to grow or at least maintain their current numbers. Even if this means suggesting all new/returning players go to one server it would be better for the overall health of the game to retain these players even if it does not benefit our own server. The obvious questions would be what guilds have the ability to make this work and what server or servers make the most logical sense to try and filter these players into. This is obviously a rather large project but could be very rewarding for the guilds willing to put forth the effort if they can retain these players.
No. If you want to help returning/new players, join general and newplayers chat channels on your server and answer questions (with real answers...not 1-3 word responses). Commit to playing a low level alt for 2 hours a week and asking for others to join you during that time. If you sell in bazaar, make your prices friendly on lower tier items. If you buy in the bazaar, make your prices reasonable and have a few buy lines that cater to what returning players might get as drops. Announce rots, invite when you have extra task adds, give away defiant/tradable gear instead of vendoring. You mentioned YouTube videos. Making a set of videos that go through all the new player tutorials with a decent voiceover would be great for folks to view when they cannot get in game. Or walking through UI setup, hotbars, macros...all would be excellent. Guilds are already in place to sort of do what you are asking (there are guilds welcoming all types of players on all populated Live servers...some of the really low population servers might not have these). All of these guilds advertise in the forums/general and newplayer chat on each server. I cannot speak on TLP servers. I have never actively played on any, and don't have any interest. FV/Brekt and Zek...same deal. But I played on Live for a long time in a friendly family guild who is committed to take all types and was an officer for most of my tenure there. Running a guild is HARD. Running a guild that is good is damn near impossible without a committed leader who has a vision and a solid group of officers willing to spend as much time assisting others as they have playing Everquest. Raiding guilds at least have a goal of completing content to rally around. Non-raiding guilds must have an identity to survive...whether it be friendly with clean guild chat (my old guild) or frat-house like rules (anything goes in chat...sometimes actions as well) or specific content/limitations (the all gnome guild or self-restricted progression). Guilds that just "come together" without a leader setting a real purpose for existing...don't last. A returning player or newbie (and from my skewed experience, there are extremely few newbies to Everquest these days...almost all new players are playing because a spouse or good friend is dragging them into the game) do not all share the same starting point and do not all want to get to the same end point. No single guild can cater to all these folks...we certainly couldn't. In my last 3 years in the guild, I easily chatted with over 500 returning/new players who might have wanted to join our guild. I spent far more time talking about the limitations (our clean chat, lack of raiding, lack of server lower levels for groups, lack of bazaar traffic in lower level items, etc.) than I would the positives...and we accepted everyone returning/new. I just wanted to make sure that the person understood the situation properly and understood that our guild was there to help but that we were also players ourselves and would not drop everything for them. They needed to be responsible for themselves in game. And for 90-95% of our new folks, it worked fine. Now, some would outgrow us and move on to raiding guilds (perfectly fine) or some would remember why they left EQ in the first place and we'd never see them again. It's the 5-10% that kills most guilds...the folks who constantly want help but won't go to a website to look up information first, will not go through the tutorials (which are quite good) to familiarize themselves with the game, who constantly want power levels, who constantly whine about lack of group options...and the list goes on. The only way for a guild to survive these challenges is to have strong leadership to curb this...and ultimately remove these players from the guild if they cannot change. EQ doesn't need player marketing materials...EQ needs real players spending a few moments each hour they play helping others (whether it be answering questions, inviting for groups, having a friendly conversation). If more players just did that, the game would be much more healthy than trying to shuttle them all to one place.
EQ has tried to ease returning players who have lost their guilds by creating this quest: http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=8451 which will allow use of the ports in the guild hall. Like Goodn says always try to help in newplayers chat since that is the only chat free accounts are allowed into. Returning players have access to general chat so tend to get more answers there. A specific guild geared towards this would be redundant but I love the idea of the weekly group/mini raid idea in specific areas. Maybe ditch the (voice chat) discord channel since new players and returning are timid to begin with and that might overpower their multi tasking what with getting used to ui - key strokes - etc all over again.
Some of the 'Novice of xxserver' guilds have equipment in the guild bank you can use for newbies, and actual people in the New Player channel. You get a little newb aug from the quest to join too.
The problem with raiding guilds taking on a large amount of new players is the few players that can soil the guild chat fast. We have all seen these drama folks from time to time. When heroics toons first came out. . We in Ring of Valor, on the Bristlebane server, opened up casual recruiting to all players 85 and higher at that time. We were buried. We had many great folks join, but we also had Drama too. A raiding guild can not have daily drama. We all pay to play to get away from the world of Drama. Now we get to know folks who wish to join even our casual membership.
Some thoughts on this based on how it's done in another game, EVE Online. The game has a very high learning curve and it's hard to get new people in and acclimated to the game well enough for them to move on to more challenging things. In that game you are always "guilded" although they use the name Corporation instead of Guild. When you first start the game you are in an NPC corp based on your player race. If you join a player corp then you leave the NPC corp to do so. The NPC corp isn't much different than the chat channels that EQ puts you in. There are no assets or anything tied to it, it's just a way for people starting out to talk to others in the same situation. I don't know that EQ would benefit from something like this, because the General and Class channels basically cover this. But it's important to make sure new people have a way to ask questions of people, and hopefully people help them out. Where things really get interesting is with the player-run corp EVE University (E-UNI), and its sister corp The Graduates (TGRAD). E-UNI was started by, and continues to be run by, people who want to help newbies get into the game and learn it. They have numerous online resources for learning and they run ops in game to teach people how to play. TGRAD would be the equivalent of an EQ raiding guild, but it's made up of people who came up through E-UNI and decided not to move on to some other end-game entity. That solves the issue that Shredd mentions with drama in a raiding guild. By the time they join you they are trained and experienced, and interested in fighting along side you. I think there are some guilds on some of the EQ servers that aren't much different than E-UNI. The trick is getting new people to these servers and pointing them to these guilds. Not everybody will come to the forums to ask for help. But it's also hard to put something in game that directs people to a player run resource. And these kinds of things really have to be player run to work right.
Although it takes a little work in reading the Guild Recruitment forum it would seem to me that it should provide all the information players need. There used to be a sticky post listing guilds and which took in new players like my own guild but I always wondered how many people noticed or read it. I think any guild serious about helping and recruiting new and returning players will emphasize that in their guild ad and also keep their guild ad from vanishing to the bottom of the Guild Recruitment forum. This also helps ensure the information is current. I know the sticky list wasn't current for quite a while. Lions has used this method for some time and had good results getting returning players who found us this way.
I remember the listing in the guild recruitment page. It was a good idea, but it seemed to be really hard to keep updated.
There are some mechanics to joining RoV, but for the most part following the don't be a richard rule solves it for casuals.
Before making it to Corwyn's post, I was gonna mention him and Lions of the Heart on Xegony, and Black Dragon Legion on Luclin. Both guilds are HUGE, in excess of 4500 characters, both good at helping new/returning players.
