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Old 05-06-2008, 06:51 AM   #9
shasarak
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Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Emily's Shop
Posts: 60
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Re: When do you stop reading?

Generally speaking I prefer to be given information in small chunks when I need it rather than having to wade through many pages up-front. It's useful to have a couple of pages somewhere (on a web-site perhaps) talking about the MUD in general and what makes it distinctive, but this is something I would read before deciding to play, not something I would want to read after I connect for the first time.

In terms of the information I'm given up-front, tell me things that are helpful in making the decisions I need to make, and don't tell me anything that isn't (yet). If you're going to make me choose a race and a class then I want to have a reasonably clear idea about what the implications are of that decision. If I'm going to have to choose a starting location, then knowing something about the local politics and the danger-levels of the different options is useful. If there isn't a choice of starting location then finding out about the geopolitics of the MUD world can wait until I'm safely into the game.

Have plenty of information resources available within the game, too - not just help files, but IC sources of information such as libraries and bookshops, or helpful NPCs. (Check out Morrowind for examples of what I mean). You could perhaps have some newbie quests that require the player to do research into the nature of the game world to complete. (Obviously it has to be possible for an experienced player to bypass them).

The thing that would be most likely to put me off would be a ten-page-long creation myth that comes up before I can make a character. Clearly, if all of the information in it is actually immediately relevant to character generation, that's fine; but creation myths rarely tell you anything you actually need to know to play the game.
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