I am unable to play an active role in managing such an event, but I would be willing to try to orchestrate the scheduling and volunteering of participants in a "Media Day" gathering wherein experienced players either mentored-down or made new heroes/villains to partner up with/lead small parties of new players through the first mission and maybe one or two short story arcs.
These "new players" being media people - bloggers, reporters, anybody we can attract - invited in to see what the buzz is about. And, in the process,
create more buzz by giving these media folks something to write about.
If you think this will help, I'll start a new thread to organize volunteers to:
- help the new players make characters they'll enjoy for at least a day
- organize the teams for the missions
- lead said teams, helping ensure that the media-people "get" the story as it unfolds and learn the mechanics of the game and generally get to interact with the community
Also required are people who will get the word out, whether broadcast or by directly inviting media folks they know.
We will need to pick a day and time; I'm thinking a weekend for ease of participation, but weekdays might be better if the media folks can show up during work hours more readily than during off hours. A little input from people who know something about how reporters, bloggers, etc. do their scheduling would be useful in making that decision.
I think this would be a good place for some constructive spleen-venting, as they'd be too busy showing what they love to get too recriminatory aside from "and NCSoft is taking all of this away from us" messaging. It should help get players hyped again, should help with some of the tensions, and should help get the word out...if we can get enough media-types to show and we can put our - and the game's - best foot forward.
