The Novice Network

Back when I first did the free trial for this game (not long after ARR released) I couldn't find help and was so confused I left the game 2 days in. I didn't return until early 2019 when I had had enough of WoW and remembered I had the old trial and gave this game a new try. Again no mentor, no invite to NN no help for weeks. A friend joined and got into NN immediately (he is now a mentor himself though on a different DC). It is sort of a crap shoot weather a new player even connects with a mentor. I did eventually get into NN but quickly realized at that time NN was Barrens chat on steroids and left it again. I have found more help just walking up to someone with a crown and asking a question. Outside of that most of what I learned of the game was google foo.

EDIT: TO be fair coming from WoW googling for answers and looking up guides was already pretty much ingrained.

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Originally Posted by Myrany

I have found more help just walking up to someone with a crown and asking a question. Outside of that most of what I learned of the game was google foo.

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People should just ask in gen chat IMHO. Everytime someone did that, they got answers. NN is limited and superfluous.

Edit: agree with the google comments. So many answers there right at the tip of your fingers.

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Originally Posted by Darkobra

I saw a mentor kick someone for speaking another language. The very first thing it says in the network is "All languages welcome."

That's the guy's first impression of the game, coming into a chat that's meant to be welcoming and helpful and he literally just gets player moderated without any repercussions to the mentor.

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I am not justifying this behavior but this is notorious over in JP as well. Which is a large fear of them adding cross region travel. Instead of enforcing the rules, SE is to scared of backlash to do something about it.

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Originally Posted by Darkobra

I saw a mentor kick someone for speaking another language. The very first thing it says in the network is "All languages welcome."

That's the guy's first impression of the game, coming into a chat that's meant to be welcoming and helpful and he literally just gets player moderated without any repercussions to the mentor.

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Note to self, start using google translator to gaelic on balmung.

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Originally Posted by JiraTyanu

Note to self, start using google translator to gaelic on balmung.

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That would be original. As someone who speaks several languages (English is my 5th) I would love to see that but I am not on Balmung. Most often than not, when it was a language other than English, I used to see posts in Spanish, French and Portuguese in the NA NN and more often that not they were met with "English pls". I wish people who don't understand the language would ask politely if they are able to post in English for their own understanding as am second option so they could help (or just use google translate for an approximate result) and not for the sake of booting the poster and the mentor (or whoever) answers in the same language.

Okay, so for those who have issues with what's being said in NN. Do you report them?

No? Why not?

Yes? Don't you trust the moderators to do the job?


On the other hand, I had folks show up in hyperion, because they were told, it was the best NN to actually get an answer. They CROSS SERVER TRAVELED, to ask a question, and got it answered.

I have never interacted with the Novice Network, but I am bewildered at why it was ever deemed necessary in the first place and I've heard mostly bad things about it. Newbies can just ask for advice in map chat, or google it, or ask on the subreddit. Giving a power structure to random players who can control a chat channel and kick whomever they like doesn't seem like a good idea.

This seems like the kind of naivety that originally brought us "no Vote to Kick function in dungeons" and "skippable cutscenes in MSQ roulette." They seem to just assume people will be polite, civil, and nice.

Every time I see a Burger King crown in a roulette raid/dungeon, I just wonder what the heck they are even doing here. They aren't "mentoring" anyone. They aren't helping or explaining things to any newbies. They're just doing the same thing as anybody else. How are they mentors?

Eh, maybe it's just Gilga's NN but it really isn't too bad most of the time. If someone asks a question, usually you have a few people answering it. If someone asks for help doing something we usually have no problem filling a group to help or a couple people hopping in to help them out. Sure it is a server wide general chat most of the time, but usually it's pretty accessible for sprouts and returners to get what they want and need out of it.

Obviously it's not always that way as anytime you get hundreds of people in a glorified chatroom stuff will happen, but most of the time it fizzles out pretty quickly or if it devolves into fighting then people will be kicked to keep it out of NN.

I do wish we had a global chat channel in game, though, if nothing else do it like wow where the cities have access to a shared global chat with the ability to easily leave the chat if you don't want to see it.

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Originally Posted by JiraTyanu

Note to self, start using google translator to gaelic on balmung.

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It's a shame that language is dying. Only 60,000 people in Scotland still speak it.

I haven't seen any problems with it on my server. I hardly ever see anyone being kicked out unless they're a bot or player is not stop spamming same thing over and over. Seems for the most part all the ones I see on it are pretty nice and helpful.