As someone who has played Gemstone off and on since the Gemstone][ days, but has left for a long long time to play the MMOs, I have come to appreciate that the depth and scope of Gemstone far surpasses any of the MMOs out there including Blizzard's products. Sure they have a lot of content, but really people mostly play their current expansion and patches. In Gemstone we have far more abilities and the AI for the mobs surpass the trash mobs in the MMOs.

Besides the fact that text based games can't compete with the graphical eye candy, there's the extremely extensive learning curve. Sure there are systems like the Sprites, and groups like the Mentors, BUT there are lots of people who are too young to have played MUDS back when that was your only choice. The MMOs are much more forgiving and have a shorter learning curve. Having played WoW, Runes of Magic, Rift, Guild Wars 2, ArcheAge, I can tell you that you can be up and running in a very short amount of time. I feel that if Gemstone wants to lose it's niche market mentality, then they need to develop more stuff to take the players by the hand.

I suggest that new characters, if they chose should come with the front-end set up better with some starter macros and scripts. For all aspects of basic gameplay. Taylor them to their profession and starting town. I know the sprites get you started, but its not enough. People are used to having a lot less initial setup and I know several people who tried Gemstone briefly, but left because its just too hard until you have been around awhile.

I always start fresh because I always have replaced my computer when I return to Gemstone and I use the Wizard front end not Stormfront, but I enjoy gradually rebuilding my macros and short scripts, but many players who didn't start computers back in the day are scared off because, macros and scripts are programming and theres not much of that in the MMOs.

Just your everyday elf