Today i had a look at next island (on my wife's account, still don't see enough reason to go there myself), and i saw some things i hope you will do better in arkadia, so i thought i would just list them here in case you didn't think of it. Make sure the mission givers stick out to the newcomer (making a monkey give out missions, in a town filled with monkeys might not be the best idea). Give mission givers a distinct look(s) (although a big shiny arrow in their direction might be a bit too much) Make sure the missions are doable for newcomers: make sure if it's the first mission and you have to go to places, it isn't two hours of running to get there (if you don't get killed), newcomers don't have vehicles/mindforce make sure that when there are spawns of monsters in between the mission giver and mission objective people can walk around them Don't put the mission objective on top of a hill that can only be reached by one side, running another 15 minutes will make people log off Make sure that the towns are free of annoying red dots (use a variant on turrets like fpc does) Make sure that a revive is on the ground floor, and the starting area isn't too hilly (falling deaths can be very annoying, especially since mobs have a tendency to be on the main roads, and people will try to run around them). Make sure to have at least 5 people proof-read the missions texts to avoid typos Make sure there are enough revival points
Very good suggestions here. I remember when I went to NI (yes I did go to NI... lol) that everything blended together. As you said, that's not good for newcomers. Overall, make newcomer missions easy to follow and complete.