What knowledge base are you assuming? Are you gearing the new tutorial towards people who are already gamers and have a pretty good idea how general game mechanics work, or do you want the tutorial to be completely newbie-friendly? There is a LOT of learning to do when you start playing Obsidian, so the challenge you'll face is figuring out what new players NEED to know, what can easily be found in other sources (the forums or the skill guide on the website, or training guilds, for example), and what they won't really need to know until later in the game. No one wants to take a two-hour long tutorial that tries to cram in EVERYTHING you will ever need to know about the game.
I'm not exactly an experienced gamer, but I have played a few MMOs before. From that perspective, here are some things that I would have liked a better briefing of when I started the game. These aren't so much suggestions as they are just things to keep in mind while designing, and general statements about what worked and what didn't work for me when I started playing; you can take them or leave them, I just thought you might like to know how things worked from a new player's perspective.
I did a lot of compare and contrast with WoW and LOTRO when I started playing, simply because those are the only MMOs I've played seriously, so I would consider touching on the things that are different in the fundamental game play - not in a compare and contrast way, but just in a way that makes people realize that this game is played differently. There were certain things I was confused by at first because of the difference - for example, as far as gear and armor goes, I was accustomed to being able to see the gear score before I bought something, and things were clearly marked as unequippable if my race/class/whatever wasn't able to wear or wield them. Obsidian doesn't make things that easy, which is GREAT, in my opinion, but it did cause a bit of confusion when I first started playing because I wasn't prepared for the difference. I dropped into the game and was immediately looking around for where I was supposed to pick up the first quest, and I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do when I realized that Obsidian isn't quest-based.
Here are a few things that I would have found immensely helpful to know early-on in the game (I don't necessarily think they should all be included in the tutorial, I'm just pointing out things that the old tutorial didn't really address sufficiently for a new player):
- How to read signs - laugh all you want at my noobishness, but I wanted to double-click the signs to read them, and they are damn near impossible to read that way. Someone had to point out that I just needed to single-click.
- How to initiate a trade with another player - probably not something that needs to be covered in a basic tutorial, but helpful nonetheless.
- The dos and don'ts of mounts
- *Make sure you're out of war mode before trying to get on your mount* (it's a lesson I just can't seem to learn)
- Feeding your mount
- Basic mount commands
- What are moongates and portals, and how to get to the rune chamber, along with *how* to use the rune codes (but let them find out for themselves via exploration or forum searching what those codes actually are)
- How to use the bank
- A brief "What are macros and how to use them" tutorial
- A brief description of the blue/grey/red system, and perhaps a briefing on the functions of guards in a city
- I started as a mage, but the tutorial really told me nothing I needed to know to be a mage. I had to find out through other sources how to even get spells into my spellbook, and it was quite a while before I ever did simply because I stuck pretty close to the newbie graveyard and didn't even know what scrolls dropped from or how to use them.
- I like that the tutorial let you choose a weapon before learning the basics of fighting, but it really didn't address how weapons deal damage, etc. Since a weapon is one of the first things a new character is going to buy, I would at least touch on how some weapons are stronger buy slower than others, ect.
- What happens when you die - both as a newbie, and what you will have to do when you outgrow poofing.
Some things that I liked about the old tutorial:
- Fighting the rats - even though they were ridiculously easy and more annoying than anything else, it did actually help me more than just a dummy would have, because it helped me see how things move and fight in the game, how to target and attack, how war mode works, cutting corpses, etc. I would encourage you against just putting in dummies for the tutorial. I'm not opposed to having them there, but I would keep the annoying rats as well, or something similar, because there's a big difference between whacking a dummy and fighting a critter or monster.
- The whole "pick up the peaches and sell them to the vendor" thing. Again, vastly tedious and annoying, but it is much more effective than just having money dropped in your pack and being told how to buy/sell. The peaches thing made you do it, and that definitely stuck in my memory after the fact so that I was ready to go shopping when I started the game.
I'm sure you've already got this in mind, but a proper tutorial should be about teaching and not telling. I'd rather have something brief that gave me the skills I needed to explore the world around me and make my own mistakes than one that spoon-fed me everything and never encouraged me to get outside of bank-sitting and casting on myself until I can solo bosses. The tutorial is the first experience most people will have with Obsidian, so it's the best opportunity you've got to captivate them with the amazing world you've grown.
Sorry if all of that isn't very specific. Hopefully you found it a little helpful and I wasn't just chattering on pointlessly and wasting your time.
