I'm actually considering trying out Arm

Ha, dude...we both know that any new pc that rolled in lets say...Minas Morgul, was immediately set upon by several clans to try and recruit.

There's also being ignored, and being ignored...ie. emote casts a casual glance your way, then snorts and continues scratching themselves indignantly.

Just saying

Look at the issue from the perspective of a new player trying out the game. They come in thinking it's a roleplaying game, and the first thing they see is people rushing around to sell things, probably because the server rebooted recently or something. They try to RP and are rebuffed. Your telling them that they should have joined a clan is both an invalidation of their efforts, and an excuse for the playerbase to not even toss a casual emote at people they don't know. God forbid that some small interaction might be the spark that creates a connection for future characters to RP.

Then multiply this across the dozens of reviews on Arm that go back for years, from new players who talk about how they were ignored by other players and couldn't find inroads to get interaction. It should be an obligation for established players to make new players feel included, otherwise you're just throwing new players in the deep end of the pool and yelling that they should start swimming.

Do you not see the problem here or do you just not care?

*shrug* At least you're honest about your apathy.

The other RPIs and RPI-like MUSHes are better at onboarding new players by finding creative ways to include them, while Armageddon vets tend to hold attitudes like yours. Meanwhile, new accounts/week numbers on Armageddon dropped from 120 to 6 over five years. The new player retention rate was close to 1-5% back when it was publicized, and now staff don't publicize it anymore.

It's pretty easy to see where this attitude has taken and will continue to take Armageddon.

It's kind of like getting invited to a party. You come in by yourself, whoever invited is busy at the kitchen and you know nobody else. So you come in, but nobody saddles up to you with an offered drink in hand. So you mill around, watching everyone else doing their thing. Dancing with people they know, talking with people they know, laughing.

You could do something to break the ice and insert Yourself. Because in reality they are all good people, they just don't know you. They don't have a problem with you, they just don't know who you are. Are you here to party? Are you here looking for someone specific? Do you want strangers approaching you? Are you here to assassinate someone? They don't know.
Some people are friendly, they can catch the vibe that you are alone and unconnected and will extend a smile and include you. But they are busy elsewhere and nobody actually "owes" you anything.

So you mill around with no connections made and the sensation of being rejected grows. Suddenly you assume these people have a problem with you. Suddenly the scraps of conversations you are catching make you realize how dimwitted those people are. A sixth sense develops that illuminates that this girl is shallow and that guy is a latent sociopath. Defensive mechanism for anxiety, rejection, and lack of instant gratification/reinforcement goes full force. You finally realize that the party sucks ass and you leave.

Or ... You come into the party and some dude walking by conscripts you to carry the beer, suddenly you join a bunch of people as the BRINGER of BEER. A joke. Two jokes. Cute girl smiles and you think she checked you out. Introductions. Another joke. And you realize that these people are pretty cool! This guy is an aspiring physicist. This chick thinks she's a model, but it's okey to have dreams. You are having fun.

Same people. Same environment. Just a fraction of a difference.

I did sort of hope that as an experienced Mudder, you'd be able to overcome first stage.

I think the dumbest thing about this post is that it supports new player proactivity (which I never said was NOT useful) and veteran player inclusion (the guy who makes you the beer-carrier).

Clearly both of these things work well together, but for some reason veterans expect ONLY new player proactivity and NOT veterans to do anything to include obvious new players because it might be misconstrued as "metagaming". Ask staff how they feel about veterans finding random things for new players to do and see if they say "No, that's not IC" or "sounds great, do it as often as you can".

I'm not against including new players in fact I will go out of my way to even use the OOC command and help them along. However breaking immersion is almost always a bad thing on an RPI unless absolutely necessary, and I do think it is necessary with some new players. But to be quite frank I think players should try to cut their teeth at other muds before trying an RPI where strict IC adherence is practiced 99% of the time.

And because of all that is the reason I push for newer players to join the Byn so they can get the help they need behind closed doors and not in the Gaj.