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I must agree it seemed quite a few darts were amicably tossed in the first posts here but there is a validity to the underlying questions posed that seems valuable to discuss.
Should players be led by the hand to the logical climax of a zone?
To me that's a yes and no, dependent on the target level. Newbie zones need to be rife with obvious clues, open statements in redits, interactive mobs etc. The goal in my mind is to get them familiar with the command usage and world interaction. As the target levels get higher, make them read and search more and more in depth and perhaps make them use their brains more. I find my greatest challenge is the techno-mudder zoomers, those people that level way faster than average by either experience or power leveling and I'm constantly striving to outthink and outsmart them.
Builders sniff out clues and inform mortals of secrets or use their own mortal to abuse the secrets.
This one is a real toughie I know all of us have to deal with. The ability to review an existing zone or mob is a valuable teaching tool, a wide range of building commands at low level is pretty much mandatory too. I suppose many would say don’t let a builder have a mortal, but that’s counterproductive to them actually enjoying themselves at times and maintaining a good “flavor” of how the world is actually played. We have instituted “active” which are mortal accessed zones versus “in progress” which aren’t mortal active. No unproven or untrusted builder may modify these zones and mapping in them is mosty forbidden. Locations of builders and syslog display of loading objects or mobs is always available. We do have the luxury of almost 24/7 oversight on both builder and player ports and all are warned up front that information gained as immortal may not be used as mortal. It seems to work most of the time.
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