[MUD-Dev] Justifying twinking

[Schubert]

-----Original Message-----
From: Raph Koster [mailto:rkoster at austin.rr.com]

>Damion Schubert once said to me, "I want a newbie to see the coolest thing
>the game has to offer in the first session. Imagine if they saw a dragon
and
>helped kill it on the first day." (Very rough paraphrase here). He's dead
>right. That first play session, before they make that decision to
>emotionally invest in the game, needs to be awesome.

Nutshell version:
(a) If a player makes a friend the first day, he will log in the second 
day. If a player logs in the second day and his friend is there, he is 
very likely to stick around.
(b) _Witnessing_ the death of a dragon has got to be more impressive
than _killing_ giant rats with a newbie sword.  Even if you're just
the drummer boy.
(c) Tutorials suck.  They aren't effective.  Most people want to skip
them.  They are usually easy to break.  They are condenscending.  A
real person is a better teacher than a tutorial (most of the time).

QED: Pairing up a newbie with a high level character is a good thing.

The trick is to make the high level character want to have the newbie
around.

--Damion



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