However, this gives me an idea. One of the problems for new players may be simply that they log in once, see nothing happen, and just forget to log in the next day. What if new characters, when being created, could see all the realm-wide messages that were sent in the last 72 hrs? This way they would see that the game is not empty; and it would give them something to respond to other than the boilerplate introduction message.
This is a very good idea. It establishes context and gets the player looking forward to the next turn. I can also act like a built in tutorial on what it means to act midevally.
