This story started before the guide program. But I hit my character limit, so the following was originally posted in a hidden Calypso Guide section on the forum by Alice in Wonderland on June 25, 2010.
I wrote this thread to explain more about how the extended guides received the CRA armor and how the guide programs themselves worked. My hope is to answer the questions “What is the guide program?” and “What did they do anyway?”, mostly from the perspective of the communicator role I generally had.
First of all, thank you.
Thank you to the extended guides who showed incredible commitment. It was genuinely fun working with all of you and it was a great time overall.
Thank you to Simon, Emma, and later Hanne for giving us the opportunity to officially help newcomers while also supporting events with prizes and client loader advertising.
Thank you to Stave and ETA for helping with TP runs, especially during the Crystal Palace sale period, which I will explain more later.
And thank you to all the newcomers who participated in events, asked questions, or simply gave us reasons to smile. I hope you got something valuable from our help.
For me personally, it started during Guide Program I, when Simon the Guide sent me a PM asking whether I would be interested in helping newcomers through a guide initiative.
Most of the work involved standing around the newcomer arrival zones offering help and answering questions for incoming players. I had already been doing that for years anyway, so I agreed.
I do not know exactly why I was asked specifically, but I assume the regular newcomer helpers around the arrival zones had become recognizable to the official guides because we spent so much time there before and after the official MindArk and FPC guides appeared.
Guide Program I had quite a large number of participants overall. Alongside the original arrival-zone crew, we also got to meet many new faces.
Pretty early on we were informed there would be some kind of reward at the end. The first guide program itself went relatively smoothly. Many members of the original arrival-zone crew spent enormous amounts of time helping players, ranging from one hour to over fourteen hours per day.
One major challenge during that period was the flood of confused newcomers asking why sweating no longer worked the way they expected. That created a lot of frustration at times.
The real story though began during the extended Guide Program II.
After the first program ended, several of us were invited to continue into the second version, although this time the group was smaller. We began with nine guides, but eventually lost two members because the workload became extremely time consuming and mentally exhausting.
At the start of the second program we were given no details about rewards or even how long the program would last. We were simply told that helping two or three times per week would be enough.
In reality, most of us were online every single day for several hours.
On top of those normal guide shifts, we also organized newcomer events and competitions together. Some examples included:
Kill 1000 Newbies Quest
Treasure Hunts
Bridge of Death
Picture Events
Riddle Events
Easter Picture Events
In total we ended up running more newcomer events than the game normally saw in an entire year.
Beyond shifts and events, we also participated in TP runs organized largely by Stave and the ETA crew. Many of those involved escorting completely new players across dangerous areas of the planet.
One of the most memorable periods was during the Crystal Palace sale wave. The newcomer population exploded so heavily that Port Atlantis and Swamp Camp could barely handle the server load, causing players to spawn elsewhere instead.
During one weekend alone, teams organized multiple relocation TP runs each day to move huge numbers of players toward Nea’s Place to help reduce congestion.
A lot of the work could be exhausting. Some newcomers ignored us entirely because they assumed we were NPCs. Other times there were long quiet periods with very few arrivals.
What became frustrating however were comments from players claiming guides were “never around” despite many of us dedicating absurd amounts of time to helping newcomers daily.
Alongside direct guiding, I also handled communication with Simon and Emma whenever event prizes or organizational requests were needed. I additionally gathered newcomer feedback and wrote multiple large reports about the new player experience, some of which directly influenced later improvements and changes.
Even near the end of the program we still did not know exactly when it would officially conclude or what the rewards would ultimately be. We received several estimated ending dates throughout the process before the final conclusion was finally confirmed.
Until the very last moment, none of us knew what the final reward would actually be, making the announcement a genuine surprise.
That is most of the story from my perspective.
I will leave the rest to the other guides if they ever wish to add their own memories as well.
