[MUD-Dev] Addressing newbies (was: attracting players)

[Jerry Hill]

There's one other issue I haven't seen discussed directly,
which is the presentation to the player -before- they log
in.  I know that the very first thing I do before logging on 
to a mud is to look at thier web page.  A mud with a poorly
designed web page will definitly turn me off, because it 
leads me to believe that the remainder of the mud will
share the same style.

I want to be able to learn about the world, character creation,
anything that makes your mud unique.  Specifically I expect at 
least the following:

- Character creation
  - Race options
  - Class options
  - Advancement procedures

- Style
  - Are you a PK / non-PK / optional-PK mud
  - Is roleplaying encouraged / discouraged / required

There's lots of other material that is good as well.  Especially
history (both real life and in-game), a discusion of the world, 
and links to player run pages.  Access to the actual mud help files
is grand, though not always practical.  

Basically, for a lot of people this is the first exposure they have
to your world, and these first impressions count for a lot.

On a related note, has anyone ever tried to correlate web page hits
to people logging in?  I.e., how many IP addresses hit your web pages
and never log in, how many log in without seeing the pages, etc.

Jerry Hill

PS: Though it's not perfect, http://retromud.org has a good set of 
web pages.  I'm sure there are others that are as good/better, this
just happens to be the only one I'm active on at the moment.  




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