Monvok
And finally u can say its all good if u like 90% of players give up the game on silan cuz its too hard, if u dont like it then suggest good ideas, or give an explanation why im wrong but not like that after 3 years experiance with double xp i can run across silan, thats only the description of urself. We speak about newbies who dont have the slightest idea about ryzom.
I was a newbie once, and didn't have any of the stuff in modern Silan and I am not a person who joins teams easily (I'm only a little better now.) At the time I couldn't get past level 20 without going to the ML and I couldn't go to the ML. I stayed because the game fascinated me, not because it was easy.
I'm not saying that all is perfect on Silan. However, I only think only a few small additions are needed, not a massive change. Ryzom is not a game that holds your hand. Newcomers need to figure that out. (This is why I say that the transition to the ML is "harsh". It goes from Silan with a well-defined mission setup to the barely-needed mission chains of the ML that give you no bonus xp.)
For instance, the famous q15 amps mission to kill rendors. It teaches you two very important things that you won't learn if you get them before the mission.
1.) There is often another, easier, way to do something that seems hard. (I.e. kill the rendors with your melee weapons.)
2.) Bigger is not always better. Using the less than highest spells using the q10 amps with the bonus gives you more killing power than using the higher spell and not having the bonus. This lesson will be important again and again on the ML.
As for jewels, it would be nice if the vendor jewels had hp on them and didn't cost as much, but some jewels and some armor is always on sale from new people doing the missions. I think that would be a nice change, but I don't know how easy it would be.
Having an easily available link to a runthrough / explanation book is a good idea (I said so earlier, and I meant it). Having a message that says "Please use Universe chat for questions and play nice," rather than the current message would be nice. Changing a few introductory balloons might help. That being said, everything that an NPC says has to be translated and checked in four or five different languages, and that takes time. It's not going to happen overnight. (I don't know how it works, but I suspect that it's not even that easy, since long known typos in NPC speech have not been corrected even with a wider helper base in recent years.)
Finally, Ryzom is not a game for everyone. If we are keeping 10% of the people who come to Silan, then I think that's a reasonable number. There is no way in this day and age that we are going to keep more than about a third even with a "perfect" setup in Silan. Even WoW doesn't get anything like 100% retention.
---
Remembering Tyneetryk
Phaedreas Tears - 15 years old and first(*) of true neutral guilds in Atys.
(*) This statement is contested, but we are certainly the longest lasting.
<clowns | me & you | jokers>