Newbieland

[Delirium]

I like Cale_Knight's idea - but definitely a separate character for the Newbieland area. That way you are not tied to your current PC, which may be either super-secretive or very notorious, and alternatively, if you're currently not playing the game at all you can still log in as a helper.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

All of these various ideas have merit. Not a single one beats a newbie/helper chat channel.

[Kol]

How about a separate OOC newbie channel, gamewide, that's only viewable by Helpers and newbies? Set a flag timer for say, 1 karma, a year or a couple of months, whatever seems appropriate, before you lose access to it. Obviously, this flag would have to be toggled back on for helpers, with the understanding that it's only for the use of helping newbies out, and newbies would be told that chatting on the channel is highly frowned upon, and if done without asking a question, they could lose access to it.

That way they can learn while experiencing the full game, helpers wouldn't have to jump in and out of several characters, there's no need to create an entirely new area, and helpers can respond no matter where they are n the gameworld.

The only downside for this is off-peak, it'd be pretty empty, I think most helpers play peak, and obviously, it would be another channel o communication staff would have to monitor, but I think it could be implemented and run with little effort, and isn't open too much abuse.

[Quell]

I think this would be a fun thing to do while waiting for a character to be approved. Then you wouldn't even need full time teachers. Just a bunch of addicts (us) who need their fix while they wait for their real character.

You could make it a little rough and tumble farming village that exists theoretically in the game (it's in one of the room descriptions near Alanak), but has no actual exits connecting it to the game (possibly because the gates are always closed). Litter in some crafting items, some forageables, some town bullies to fight with, a haberdashery and whatever else to make a little microcosm of the game. People get characters just like in the real game, but their skills don't improve and their descriptions and backgrounds are chosen from a list of fairly generic Zalanthan backgrounds and descriptions. Then they can putz around until their real characters (different ones entirely) are approved.

I think it could be a lot of fun.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Farming village isn't a terrible idea.

[CodeMaster]

Random idea (not really newbieland, but this seems to be the best place for it):

I've recently began experimenting with adding time pulses to my play logs, so I can play them back more or less in "real time".  Still working out the kinks.

But it would be cool if there were logs on the website that you could 'push play' on, and some backend javascript or something would display the user's input, as well as the textscroll from the game, approximately as they happened in real-time.  Maybe with some nice syntax highlighting and/or color commentary informing the player what's going on, exposing the user to a cool sequence of events that s/he might expect to see in Arm.

I guess you could do the same with a youtube video, but there's something I find a little lacking in youtube videos of gameplay that I can't quite put my finger on (beyond how hard it often is to read the text).

Maybe I can write something like this, retrofit some old logs from the website onto it, and see how it looks.

[shadeoux]

While I admitedly did not read this entire thread, here is my proposed idea.

Have a newbie area in each of the three main starting areas. (The Arena's for this example).

Steps
1) Anyone wanting to assist in helping newbies in the areas out should have a "Helper" flag that is a totally OOC feature.
2) If a newbie chooses to go through this "Mudschool, newbie area" A ping is sent out to those helpers in that specific region.
3) In Nak, utilize the Arena area, put in a "Bar or shop" and if the helpers decide to want to help they would have total access under the arena area.  In the arena, you can learn to manipulate objects there with reasonable ease, chat, fight and ask ooc questions without having to build a new area or disrupt the natural flow of the game. And when they feel comfortable enough they go to an NPC of Tek and pray for forgiveness then they get released from the arena or tossed into Rinth, or the other starting points.