Illarion.org

Eyo.

In the recent past I had a number of newbies that I wanted to help out. Which proved difficult as quite some few of them did not directly react to any attempt on communication from my side. "Hello", "If you have questions, just ask away.", "Can I help you with anything?", "You getting along fine?", even one "Interacting with other players might prove helpful, you know." did result in no reaction whatsoever. No matter if I tried talking to them in character or ooc. There was no 'go away', no 'no thanks', nothing. They just kept on doing the tutorial, usually made it into the game and logged off pretty soon after that.

I am guessing they did understand what I told them, as they reacted to tips such as that you only have to use your pickaxe once to mine and walking is best done with the numpad for 'finetuning' and fighting and klicking for walking long distances. They all talked to the npcs, usually with "hello", "help", or any keyword given. Twice my character was approached the same way, but after telling that I was a player, I was ignored.

On a rough estimate on my newbies for every six people assisted, four did not react as discribed above, one tells the game handles poorly/looks bad/is generally not to their liking and one reacts normally. The later two I can handle just fine, but I have no clue on what to do with the non-reacting ones.

Maybe someone might give advise on what to do with these kind of people?

You are doing it just right - not every player is used to games where other players talk to them. Two hints:

-Always tell them that you are another player, many newbies I came across did not realise that my char was not an NPC or bot
-Tell them how to write text messages. Not everyone grasps the concept of the text box immediately

Good job, helping the newbies! If one out of five stays with the game, that is a good ratio, actually!

If someone came up talking to me as a newbie i'd be scared and think they were going to get me out of town to pk me ;P

I think there are a lot of reasons why new players ignore us in game. I've found recently some new players are from Asian countries and struggle with the language. Some new players do want help, but many want privacy to figure it out for themselves -- though some are also going through the tutorial for any number of reasons but are not actually new players. Many don't realize the roleplay expectation and don't bother reacting to other players because that's just not where they're at game-wise. There's also a lot of text spam which can be hard for new players to filter and figure out that 'someone' is actually talking specifically to them -- not to mention the concentration it takes to wrestle with the game interface in those first minutes which can make any additional input an unwelcome distraction. Many will also attack a player character that's trying to help them. Go figure. All you can do is make the offer and be as clear as possible. The rest is up to the new player.

I suspect one in five new players staying is probably optimistic. Since July, I've personally seen only two new players that logged on more than once during my play times and neither of them is still playing to my knowledge.