[Detah]

The newbie friendly designation can have numerous meanings. Several meanings are just different magnitudes of one another, but others are completely different from one another. To illustrate my point, I have outlined 3 separate meanings for 'newbie friendly' wrt muds. I have also provided some examples of in-game features/play that illustrate that particular definition.

1) The mud has SUPPORT for new players to become aware of how the game works. I think this is the original intent of the 'newbie friendly' checkbox. The mud contains help files directed specifically for the new player, explaining the largest features of the mud, including combat, magic, guilds/classes, inventory manipulation, and npc interaction. The mud also contains newbie areas with low level monsters which will not blick the player.

2) General POLITENESS to new players. This can be anything from an automated greeting from an NPC on the public channel to a personalized greeting from a designated immortal greeter/helper. This is probably the bare minimum that would qualify as 'newbie friendly' and justify checking the 'newbie friendly' box. I think it would be fair to argue that this may not qualify as being a newbie friendly mud if this is all they offer. But I think technically someone might define it this way in a bare-minimum type of way.

But over the years, as newbies' desires and abilities have changed, established players'/creators' characterization of 'newbie' has changed and therefore so has 'newbie friendly'. It has come to be a euphemism for "I need my hand held until L20 and I have acceptable eq". That’s where varying degrees of the next category comes in, with varying degrees of assistance from wizards, other players and/or NPCs.

3) Newbies receive HANDHOLDING of some degree by wizards, other players and/or NPCs. There are newbie helpers who give players maps, eq, gp, quest advice and/or xp as the established norm of gameplay. Often this type of 'help' continues past L1. Old-schoolers typically frown on this type of thing because it defeats the dual purpose of the newbie areas and forcing the newbie to learn the mud rules/features themselves.

I will say one thing about this, as a counterpoint. I think that this level of newbie handholding and newbie friendliness can be made fun. If you do not believe me, go do the Duplo quest on 3Kingdoms mud. An NPC helper duplo-block thing walks around with you, gives you helpful tips and commands. It is a smart NPC, which alters its input based on the environment, without being overbearing, whinny or giving the player gear.

But in general, it is this definition which causes people the most trouble when defining their mud as 'newbie friendly'. Muds who fit the definition in (1) do not want to be grouped with muds that do extensive handholding to L20 complete with full gear.

You can ignore this checkbox in other more technical ways. If you truly are not 'newbie friendly' and have no interest in having new players play the mud, then simply disable allowing new players to be created. This can be easily accomplished with your login.c or whatever your mud uses for logging in.