Spamfunet Nanny Forum

Ok, I have som serious suggestions for improving Nanny. I like this MUD just to make it clear. So there’s no point of giving me sarcastic remarks like why I won’t leave it if I don’t like it or something like that. But I think almost all things can be improved, even the good things, and me putting suggestions of improvement on this board shows only how much i care about Nanny.

Since we all seem to want more people to find and get hooked on Nanny this note mostly has to do with making the world more newbie friendly. And I think this can be done without making guilds stronger, giving away more exp. or jeopardizing the status ”old” players have gained. In other words, it avoids all those subjects that usually makes people go all crazy and upset.

My first suggestion is as simple as more newbie areas. And then i meen REAL newbie areas! The term newbie is aquording to me used way to loosely. Picture a level 1 newbie playing only for 2-3 days or something entering an area with a sign telling the area is newbie friendly, only to find a monster that is for level 15 or above chars.

Whitch brings me to the second thing, please don’t mix newbie friendly monsters with though monsters in the same area. Why can’t you settle for one or another, you can’t have all at once, because it won’t be good then. I meen, why are people specializing in things, both in carriers and buissnises and things like litterature. Because the result becomes better then if you try to do everything at once. It’s really anoying as a newbie walking around in such an area, making one wrong turn, and suddenly face a monster that takes 100 hp in one blow (exagerating offcourse, but not to far from the truth…). Besides, many newbies are bound to start exploring the ”cooler” more dangerous areas like that because it’s so damn boring to to kill rabbits and chickens. Cause let’s face it, many of us go to nanny for one reason, and that is to get some adventure in our lifes that isn’t possible to get in the real world, and killing rabbits is in most cases not what people would call exciting and an adventure. If I for inctance thought so I would go and kill the rabbits outside my house IRL. I have plenty of them where i live.

So, why not put some weaker orc’s goblins and monsters like that in those newbie areas. But let them be as weak as the rabbits. Some of you might have problems with this, thinking that orc’s should be thougher then rabbits, and thats it, but on the other hand they don’t have to give more exp. or loot then the rabbits, and they could stay in the newbie areas, while the outside orc’s can stay strong as they are.

Last, but not least important are the quests. There should be more newbie quests and really easy ones. Acomplishing one quest, even an easy one makes you want to keep questing. Oh, and please be restrictive on spreading around parts of a newbie quest to several areas. Many newbies probably thought or think like me that the quests are area specific, and when you finnaly after turning an area upside down, realize that you have to search outside it, the task seems overwhelming, since you by that time probably know that Nanny is huge. If you later happen to find the last part of the quest outside the area. It doesn’t feel like you used your brains at all, you just feel lucky, that makes it less fun to have solved it.

Also, I’m quite positive that quests I like to refer to as ”find a carrot and eat it” quests aren’t appreciated by newbies. It can feel more like you make fun with the newbies, like you feel they don’t deserve anything more adventurious. There’s a simple sollution to that to. Just replace the carrot with a cool diamond or a voodo doll or something, and suddenly the quest is much cooler. I haven’t got any problem with silly and funny quests, it can be quite good to have some quests that make you smile a bit once and a while. But I really feel there’s a lack of ”serious” and scary quests for newbies out there. Also they don’t have to give much exp or loot or qp either if that’s a problem.

Reading this far some of you might think: stop bitching and do it yourself! To that I can only answer that I will, if I ever get the chance and get lucky enough to become a wizard that is. If not I can only hope that wizards, future wizards, or whoever is in charge of how areas should be designed, will implement some of theese suggestions of whitch some I’m 100% shure would improve the mudding expirience even more. Above all, they are mostly of the aesthetic kind and because of that shouldn’t have much bad sideffects if implemented.

P.S. The ”find a carrot and eat it” is just an example and not a real quest. I think some of you know what kind of quests I meen by that.

 This note is old. I was supposed to put it on a board in Nanny some months ago, but didn't. So here it is instead . I think I have found a favorite area now, not a newbie area though, so I don't care much about the stuff written above. Well, I do, but it just doesn't bother me that much, since I'm now powerfull enough to kill other stuff then rabbits . But maybe some wizzes might get something out of it by reading it. :D

Hmmm, I agree with some points, but maybe, since as you said, Nanny is huge, you cant talk of every area as if it was just one.

Yes, there are newbies area where you kill rabbits and rats, but most daring can find also wolverine and tigers... But there are other were you can kill kobolds, orcs, gargoyles and similar things... and also find cool treasures and free eq, not to mention puzzles to solve.

As for the quests, I agree there aren't many newbie oriented quests, and some of them are way too easy to be satisfactory... but did you try "The year of Banshee"? It is a very cool quest that teaches a newbie to move around in Nanny. Also other quests like all Bixby's ones can be solved by a newbie... maybe better say a low level char, since main problem with a newbie is in my opinion not the impossibility of killing big monsters, but the difficulty in handling commands and correct sintax. I agree that one could make it more clear in Book of Quests if a quest is suitable for newbies or not.

I dont think there are many quests that require to be solved outside the area of the wizard who created it. There are however some that require nanny knowledge. I can think of jeweler, painting, Lorn, trophy, message in a bottle... I understand they may be hard for a newbie, but -at different levels (i havent managed painting quest myself yet)- i would recommend them anyway, since they force you to explore nanny a lot.

But main point is, at least it was for me when i was a newbie, is a newbie really aware of the fact that the world of nanny is divided into lots of different areas and that some of them even exist one above the other? (try to map entire nanny to understand what i mean, you will find that Arbre's area, just to name one, extends east so much that it should end up in church, while Rand's should reach Camelot's planes). Thats maybe why you can end up facing a lvl 15 orc after you have just done killing rabbit, you have entered another area, or another, not newbie oriented part of area without noticing it. I dont think however such a peril exists in those areas that are clearly stated as newbie friendly. At least i never encountered it.

Well, i'll finish saying that when i started playing nanny i did found thrill and adventure, maybe more at that time than later when i could smash a minor orc with a single blow ;) Look around with curious eyes, be daring, dont kill same rabbit again and again and you will have a lot of fun :)

I think Maximus definitely has some good points, and I will almost certain implement some of those myself. Hmmm... Imps are pretty cool to kill, right? Can't remember at what level they are though... The highwaymen are too tough, but what about the dwarves? The spiders have this cool fang too!

Anyway, it would be EXCELLENT if players could use 'idea' in my newbie area, but I guess real newbies don't use that command :(

I applaud Maximus' note as well. At least the wizards who frequent the forum can get some ideas out of it. The MUD, however, would have better coverage and it sounds like a perfect note for the game :) If only we could get more wizards AND mortals here so more people saw the notes and ideas being thrown around.

/Snafu :D

Wow! Got pretty good responces on that note. I was afraid it was going to be the opposite :? . So I'm pretty shure I'll post some more  :) . To balance it all up a bit, I thought of posting a note about my favorite areas, cause, like I said. Was some time since i wrote it, and have done much exploring since then. So, keep your eyes open if you are interested  :D . Hmm, not shure if this note belongs here. Kind of got away from the subject now.

I liked Mazimus note as well, and I think that he makes some very good points.
I still remember myself as a newbie, and how frustrating things could be, and my pride when I managed to solve my first puzzles.
Here is one idea and a feature I miss from the old Nanny homepage. A view of how many puzzles you have solved.
Perhaps there is a list of puzzles somewhere and I just haven’t found it?

I would also really appreciate more easy quests. Like; The fishing expedition. Give Totoolah to Peter. Give the orcslayer to Leo, Vamilio the merchant wants you. Help the apothecary, Year of Banshee etc.
I can understand that making a really hard quests has to me more fun for the wiz, but personally I would like to solve 3 small once more than one big. Of course hard quests are fun too, and I want to solve them, but I kinda loose interest when I have been trying to solve a quest for more than a year and just can’t finish it. I have a great list of half-finished quest.
The only (in my opinion) hard quest that has caught my attention even after several months is the Asylum Quest. Not that it didn’t make me so frustrated I wanted to pull my hair out, but it was just so darn exciting, and it had these small ‘carrots’ things you accomplished, that just made me want to try harder.
I would really like to see more quests like the Asylum one, just a little bit easier to solve..

@morild:asylum quest is easy. all you have to do is to walk through the WHOLE asylum and try to find a cure for the pacients. i can't remember how the hints are but if you ask other player for a few hints i'm sure you'll be able to solve.
hint = idea of what you might do and not a quest sheet or a guide through the whole quest.
@maximus: there are some newbie that just want to go directly into action if i can say so. imo this kind of attitude is quite bad. you're barely born and you want to slay Echtor, get real it doesn't work that way. i liked a lot a feature on DAOC: when you selected a monster the name would appear in a certain colour depending on your level so it was easy to know what to kill and what to avoid. unfortunatelly this isn't possible on nanny, but what i think it's possible would be somekind of evaluate command to give you an idea about how tough the monster is.

Just an idea that might be helpful as far as 'exploring' goes with Newbies.

The newbie booklet could perhaps notify the newbie when leaving/entering areas, and also perhaps have a list of 'newbie friendly' areas and mention that as well, so they know that when entering an area there is or isn't a newbie area.

But I haven't thought much about it, perhaps there's a downside or problem with that, I'll give it a few days to simmer ;)

*chuckles* I'd say it works exactly like that these days, due to the lack of questpoints requirement people zoom right up to Paragon without solving a single quest (except perhaps the 'keep the mud tidy' quest, they solve that one by accident).

I just checked the mud ... and excluding the old players (who played with the old qp requirement) and members of guilds who require questpoints, neither had more than 10 quests solved, most had but 3 or 4 (you included Dain *grins*).

Hey i have about 4k qp if im not wrong, and i never ever ever needed qps for paragoning of for guilds, i quest for the fun of it :P And thats main reason i dont have more qps, some quests are just not fun, heavily luck dependent as they are :p

Sure, there are some (me included) who quest for fun, or the challenge, but it generally happens once you've very high in your guild and bored, rather than as a means to grow large.

You're the exception of the rule My Lady, 9 out of 10 does not quest at all.

At least everyone has the ability to list out the newbie areas with 'help newbie_areas'. I believe that is mentioned in the newbie booklet.

As for Sir Dain not having so many quests, it is probably due to the same reason a lot of players have that. There are a lot of people who have multiple characters...and...sometimes...it gets to be a bore solving the same quest with 20+ characters *whistle innocently*. Sure, there are some quests that are fun to solve over and over...but some...aren't.

/Snafu :D

Well, the point is that new players do NOT quest, or the main point anyways.

It's a shame, there are some really good, educational quests, like Year of Banshee and The Asylum, although the later is penalized by being a little hard to find for a newbie (you can easily get lost on Casada and wander off to a sure death in the outskirts of the city, as the directions are rather vague and if you don't know the area you might as well go look there first, rather than later by mistake).

ok.
as far as i know the asylum quest is entirely located in the asylum building and i don't see a problem in providing dirs to that place. i mean ok it is quest help but it's rather small compared to the rest of the tasks.

i'm not ashamed to admit i'm in top 3 of the lousiest questers ever. that's it. i'm no good at this kind of stuff. also i didn't want to quest with Dain thou someday i'll try to hunt down a few dragons. Kherec you're officialy invited if you wish. :D

maybe it would be a good idea to reintroduce qp requirment for level. i'm thinking about 3.000 qp for level 19 which would make around 150 qp for a level. also might be a good idea to be able to 'buy' qp with gc or exp for a certain price per qp/per level

Well, if you could "buy" qps then the all meaning of qps wold be lost, wouldnt it?  :shock: You already have xp, and np and skills and a lot of things to advance, noone forces you to max qps, but if you choose to do it, then do it the right way ;)

Buying qp i do not think will ever be an option...and I even frown upon players who buy experience if they want to level...it's never worth the cost of buying...of course thats my opinion ;)

/Snafu :D

hey, it was just an idea. i did not say it's good or that it should be implemented. :x
but it is possible that from stupid ideas to come out good things. and how come none comented on reintroducing qp requirment?

I think the subject of reintroducing a QP requirement has been flogged (scourged with terrible fury, no less) to the point of death, and then some more. I'm sure I remember an admin (Brom, probably) saying it would never ever come back because of the cheating it encouraged.

I did wish (a while ago; I can't say I really care now) that the gc requirement for paragon had been kept, though, but this subject has also been discussed a wee bit in the past.

No, Questpoints will never again be required for normal play ... and most likely the guilds who use it will slowly lose that, over the years as well.

hmmm.
maybe qp should be used for other purposes. so people might want to quest more. ok if you are really lame at this probably you can always ask for help and of course there are others who really enjoy questiong.

Even if I am a not a very good quester I find it amusing to try and solve the quests. Well as long as they are not to hard anyway ;-) I hope wizards will continue to make quests, but ofcourse if players stop solving them... it would not be as fun to make them... and I am afraid that might happen if the qp requirements were totally removed from the game. .. but then again.. I might be all wrong

I, also, remember Brom citing the cheating as a reason to never bring back the qp requirements.  As for finding a use for qp beyond that? I have never been that much of a questor, I started Nanny thinking I would enjoy that aspect but discovered that I was wrong.  I think I tried to do some early on when there were bugs or other players taking required items.  I got bored and spent time just exploring and solving puzzles instead.

Since then I have started to quest some again, but mainly because I have found some quests do some useful things.  Most questers already are aware of the advantages to solving the secret police quest already, and plenty of other quests have popped up that have little 'bonuses' given for solving them.  It seems to me that this is the way to encourage people to do larger quests, a reward other than qps.

Of course, some quests are just fun and are worth creating new characters just to do the quests again.

Just my thoughts on the matter...

maximus:
Creating more newbie areas is a good idea, but... Does it work? My impression is that newbies have problems finding the newbie areas which already exists, and that newbies feel too unexperienced to walk around in the mud. I mean... Here's an example. The Abyss. How many newbies have been there? The first floor, and also the new oracle cellar, is fantastic for newbies. Still, it's not too often frequented, is it?

I don't think the main problem is that newbies are lazy and too afraid to take risks. I think their main problem is that they don't know what to do. I mean... Why isn't there a newbie line? Why isn't there an own club for people who like to help newbies, where people could sign up for "helping newbie duty" and be noticed every time a person under a certain level logs on, eventually who's helped that person before? Why aren't there more NPCs like e.g. the tourist information guide, showing you around and telling you what to do? Although I agree there can never be too many newbie areas, I also think they're relatively useless unless newbies find them, and thus the main priority in that field would be making more things to encourage the newbies to explore, so that they find the newbie areas which already exists.

Here's two ideas I just thought of.

1. What about adding a rack in the tourist information office, holding a list of ALL newbie areas and a clue on how to find it? Sometimes it's more interesting to find things on your own, but many newbie areas are in so distant location no newbie will ever find it. (how many people below level 10 has ever seen Mthead's newbie area?)

2. What about making a magical amulet which can only be worn by players below a certain level, which makes it impossible for monsters of a high level to attack you when wearing it? (and for you to attack them, of course) That way, it would feel safer to walk around as you would know instakilling megamonsters couldn't take you.

Only thoughts. Encouraging newbies to find the newbie areas already existing is in my opinion more important than making new areas. Otherwise, only the newbie areas close to the login point is explored anyway.

You mention mixing newbie friendly monsters with tough monsters in an area is a bad thing. Sorry, I disagree. Plus, one of the main rules of creating areas for Nanny is to make balanced areas. A normal forest would have birds and bees and rabbits even if it lived a troll in it. I think that an area (except for newbie areas) should have a little bit for everybody. Also, most areas, especially the ones with a good theme and a few puzzles or quests, have terribly many KINDS of monsters. In my opinion, it would be wrong if the nice farmer helping you, his labrador, the rabbit in a cage behind his farm and the nasty troll king trying to take over the world would have the same level.

I also must add: Newbies aren't stupid. Newbies, especially the ones understanding English, are careful on what they kill and not. If they enter a room and see a gigantic troll or a minotaur something like that, they won't attack it, as they understand just from looking at him that it would rip their guts out. And if he's instakilling, you still in most cases have a chance to wimpy out as fast as your feet can carry you. People know what to attack and not to attack. Not only because of size, but we also for certain reasons stay away from certain creatures. Here's a confession: NONE of my characters have EVER tried to kill a scorpion. That is because I know from real life that scorpions have lethal poison in their tails - even though most scorpions in the game most likely doesn't. People often get the time to think that this is a bad monster to challenge.

However, I find increasing challenges to be exciting. One example is the Abyss, where the monsters get stronger the further down you go. Another example is the trolls in Bixby's forest, even though that's not a newbie challenge. A small troll, guarding the way to a bigger troll, guarding the way to a bigger troll, guarding the way to three large trolls... THAT kind of challenge I must say I like. And I miss that in the most-known newbie areas.

You mention that rabbits are too unexciting to be an adventure. OK, could be. But you're forgetting one vital fact: A rabbit is OBVIOUSLY something you know you're strong enough to kill. A troll or orc is something many lowlevel players would run away from before even TRYING to kill, because they know them to be strong. That's it. I think most newbies have the guts to kill rabbits, birds, insects, rats, chickens and other small creatures, while they leave the larger ones for when they get a little bigger.

Of course, an amusing newbie area to make would be "The Scary Monster Kindergarten"... :-)

As for quests, I agree. More newbie quests. Also, perhaps there should be made lists showing which quests are suitable for lowlevels. Personally I stayed away from "Year of Banshee" for a long time because I assumed "a quest with that many points can't be suited for a newbie like me". There's more than a hundred quests, and a newbie won't read the entire Book of Quests right away. Making it easier to see what quests are suited for newbies would make more newbies do them.

Some quests HAS TO be in several areas. I mean... In the Prince Violent quest, that's the entire point of it. It wouldn't be any fun if Violent was standing in front of Padrone's castle. You have to go looking for him.

Besides... Exploring is a vital part of playing this game, and we should do everything we can to encourage newbies to explore as well. What about e.g... say... a quest which starts somewhere near the login point, where you have an easy task to solve, and then the person helping you would tell you something like "thanks you very much - for the next clue, you should go see my brother, he's running a shop in Loreley's area" or something like that. That would be... almost like Year of Banshee, but instead of being transported automatically from puzzle to puzzle, you would have to maybe look it up in Tourist Information and finding it yourself. That way, one wouldn't force the players to search the entire mud, but one would still encourage them to explore different areas. Just a thought.

"Find a carrot and eat it" quests are rare, but the ones which are almost like that are either meant for the players who just logged in (finding the tourist information, buying the Book of Quests...) or in my opinion kind of amusing (Tootolah, fishing expedition...). And again: I guess the reason there's so few scary newbie quests is that scary quests scare newbies away.



Kherec:
I think, and hope, that you're underestimating the players when saying nobody solves more than ten quests. I've solved more than thirty, and I know there's many like me. In no-QP-req-guilds. But perhaps we just don't think too much of the quests? A new idea from me would be: What if there was an echo to all players logged on every time someone solved a more than a few points quest? That way, we would talk more about the quests, we would become aware of the quests, and if I see someone I know is not much stronger than me solving a quest, I will at least read the quest's description and consider doing it. Right now, it's a kind of mess knowing which quests are suited for who. Hm... Could an idea be adding a wise person in the town area who could examine you and give you a good tip on a quest you should solve, based on your level, your guild and which quests you've already solved, eventually on other things?



Dain:
Personally I wouldn't mind a QP requirement, but adding that now would be saying "OK, we know that you hate to quest, therefor we FORCE YOU to do it! In your face! Haha!" And that is not very encouraging. That would make you feel more like leaving than questing. In my opinion. A better thing to do would be to do things to encourage people to quest more, instead of forcing them to it.

Perhaps I should explain myself a bit. Maximus is quite a new char. I have another one, and I have played nanny for about 10 months now. Almost every day or at least every other day. So, I kind of feel it to be a bit extreme to refer to me as just born yesterday, or something like that. Besides, I think the name newbie is used a bit loosely to. It feels as if you have to have been on nanny for ages to be allowed to call yourself a "normal" non newbie player.
   One shouldn't have to become a paragon for it to happen, cause that's putting the newbie limit a bit high. Besides, calling someone like me a newbie would be missleading. I meen, I'm far away from the level where I can't find green or don't know how to give a tell. It has happened that 15+ chars asked me for directions, and belive it or not, even a few paragons got my help after they got lost or needed directions. So, by that I also want to say that I can totally understand kherec when he sayes some people "zoom into paragon level".
   It's ok to call me a newbie though, even if I'm concidering to stop calling myself that, even though it might piss some people off. But It would be cool to refer to those really really new players as something else, like lowbie. That's a wonderfull word I read on a board in Nanny, and I think it would be a perfect word for that. That would also be good for the really really new since people would then take it more easy with them. Cause now you can't really tell how much people allready know when you help them. They might as well have a paragon char but still call themselfs newbies, and that has really happened when talking to a person in nanny.
   
When It comes to quests I can tell Dain that I most certainly am not, or was not, one of those newbies that didn't like quests. It's just that I found them to difficult. Because in the beginning when I hardly even knew that Nanny contained several areas made by different wizzes, then it could be a big problem just finding the quests. I solved the first ones, Keep Nanny Tidy, find book of quests and those quite fast, but then I can say that I had a big paus from questing untill some time when I got to level 10. And belive me, it was an long paus, cause I spent most of the time exploring (my favorite thing to do in nanny) instead of solving quests, mostly because I had bad experiences by just trying to pick out a quest from the questbook randomly. Among the lower chapters offcourse, but still.       So, because of this, and because most replyes on my post agreed at least on the point that it would be fun with more easy quests, I ask the wizzes, if they read this. To please make some more easy quests if you are up for quest making that is.
   Ok, I can understand that wizzes find, like Morild wrote, more fun to do heard quests. But if making easy quests, then you might end up making several of those instead of making one big, and if more wizzez did that, it would be easier to stumble upon a quest while exploring, since the amount will be bigger, and solving that kind of a quest is way more fun then picking out one from the questbook. Isn't it?.
   Buying qp? Hmm, totally against that to, sorry Dain. It seems as if I'm totally against everything you wrote. But there is at least one thing that I totally agree with you on, and I really like that you brought that up, And that is about writing and posting stuff, even if people might think it's stupid or whatever. Cause like you said, even stuff that aren't so good or well thought trough, can end up doing something good. Maybe it get's someone else to think about the stuff and come up with something better. Besides, sometimes people don't take stuff so seriously, or don't think stuff through. They just write stuff cause they feel like it. I know I do. And then it's not fun if someone tells you how stupid you are or whatever. Hey, does everyone have to be politically and by all other meens correct all the time to avoid sarcastic remarks or something. Eh, not saying it happened on this forum. But it happened to me when I posted with my other char in Nanny.


P.S. Was written before Olaftheblues post  :? . But I'll get back to your note next time Olaf  :wink:

Now maybe an idea for qp..would be for qp for Paragon...then again...maybe not. I don't like the idea of paying for Paragon. It is only a means to see who can get the most money or who can give the player money. No go. Do not pass go...do not collect paragon level. Um. No. I don't think so.

As for listing of newbie areas...I believe in the newbie booklet, which I immediately ripped up upon making a new char (and for some reason am now unable to until level 5, even though I am obviously not a newbie...I believe you should be able to rip it up upon login). Anywho...in the booklet, I believe it mentions the ability to 'help newbie_areas' and it would give a list of some of them. NICE IDEA. Use it! ;)

As for the idea of amulet preventing you from getting into scrapes...I can see for and against. For, meaning you won't get killed a few steps from Green because you see the wrong monster... Against...hey! We all died at one time or another...its a fact of life on Nanny and even if you die as a newbie. You live and learn. Whatever does not kill me makes me stronger? Um...well....I'm not dead! I can pray and come back! Riiiiiight. That's why it's called fantasy. Death is a fact of life and in the case of some guilds, a WAY of life.

Gratz to Olaftheblue for successfully spamming the board...or is it really spam? Isn't spam useless...well his note wasn't worthless...so I would call his note...hmm...'time consuming'...Muahahahaha

/Snafu :D

On the subject of newbie areas, I did find one (Ulrik's, maybe?  I don't quite remember) a little while ago that walked one through the basic commands - "exa, wear, wield, remove, kill, etc."  The room descriptions gave clear directions on what to do, and though it wasn't the most exciting area, I could see how it would be helpful to a newbie, especially if he/she is so eager to get started and a bit too impatient to read the booklet.

I admit that I was one of those beginners who thought I could start playing right away - I had, after all, watched someone else play the game, and it didn't seem that difficult.  Stupid stupid me  :wink: Although I don't like dying, I agree with Snafu in that dying is a part of Nannylife, and a great deal can be learned from it.  If you never die, you're either incredibly lucky, or very cautious.  Sometimes taking those risks opens up new opportunities to explore areas.

Getting back on topic, I didn't find Ulrik's Newbie Area until I was quite big as a character, and had to use a newly created newbie to investigate further.  It was probably due to the fact that it was on the Isle of Lost Empires, and finding one's way to Middle Earth and then taking the sturdy little 'Turtle' boat might be a bit difficult (and time consuming) for a completely new player.

/Smudge

The newbie booklet does indeed have a list of exact dirs to newbie areas (well, those that the wizards in question contacted the admins to get it added, and those that are reasonably close to green).

No offense to Soulfly's abyss ... but really, you can't expect a newbie to run half across the world to get there. That's not newbie friendly, no matter how good the area might be.

And about questing ...

There are a handful of quests with permanent rewards, but I wouldn't go glorifying the quest-rewards because most of the rewards you can get are time-limited or even login-limited. I quest for a few reasons myself, namely -- For fun, for the challenge and to get all my xp spendable (which is very nice for some of my chars).

I also have an interest in recoded quests, to see what changed in them, to solve a quest again that I haven't solved in 3-4 years. Sadly sometimes you encounter quests that have the original hints and tips for getting solved, but major parts of the quest have been recoded or even removed. That is a sad thing, but most quests are still in pretty good shape despite recodes (some even better).

i agree with Kherec here. when a quest is recoded most of the times things go wrong. :(
and it's very frustrating for the solver.

I said 'sometimes' not 'most of the time' ... just wanted to point that out.