Well written article so far. Re: the mentor thing, trying to give benefit-of-the-doubt but you did get a gun and ammo for free, and some rudimentary help. No doubt that person wasn't that good of a mentor, which brings up a good point: How does the n00b recognize between a good mentor and a below-average one?
The few times I've taken on disciples, I've tried to have the foresight to help with issues that annoyed the hell out of me, when I was a clueless n00b. Things like managing the ridiculously unintuitive GUI & keymappings. You can spend a good hour trying to explain this to a new player, and I agree that a lot of mentors (most?) would overlook this detail. I guess the onus is on the n00b to ask a million questions...those are the n00bs that I like the most, the ones who show a genuine interest in learning more about the game. The n00bs just standing around expecting people to share their info won't get ahead too fast.
Looking forward to the next episode!
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