TriadCity Message of the Day
2012-09-25

First-time visitors now experience a special one-time tutorial designed to help them get started. Borrowing and mutating liberally from The Wizard of Oz, Snow Crash, Kung Fu, Star Wars, and Aristophanes' classical comedy The Birds - and featuring super special guest appearances by our own Gary and Mark, a campfire, and some marshmallows - it incorporates suggestions and feedback from several of y'all as it evolved over the last couple of weeks of intensive testing. Thank you!

Our hope is that it'll introduce first-timers in a simple way to the basics of entering commands, moving, looking, interacting with items and with other characters, and getting help.

Some things for you experienced veteran types to note:

- Not all of the chat channels are broadcast to the tutorial area. Noobs there can see say, chat, and tell - no auction, shout, ooc, etc. This is a deliberate decision to allow them to focus on the tutorial without interruptions. We ask that when a first-timer arrives, you say hello using chat, offer to answer questions, and please don't bombard them beyond that. We realize there's the proverbial fine line between being welcoming and overwhelming, so, we'll leave it to y'all to figure just where that lies. Thanks!

- We'll make a copy of the tutorial accessible from the Continuing Education Classroom in NorthWest. We know you're curious! Be there in a few days.

- A bunch of logic determining where you arrive on login was inevitably touched to set this up. We've tested intensely in dev, but, please holler immediately if you notice anything whacked. Non first-time visitors should notice no change at all. Please bug if you do!

- The who command has been tweaked to note who's inside the tutorial.

As you can see from many recent MOTD's, we're trying to focus on making the newbie experience as straightforward as possible. Please post your feedback and suggestions in the bulletin boards. Thank you!

Back to the current MOTD index.
Not yet a member? Get started today!