The old mentor system had mentor points rewarded to mentor characters.
They could spend those points to gain certain special information that you would normally not as easily access.
I think the information included foreign realms tax days and possibly details on their food stored.
Then there where some other options for your mentor points that i can only vaguely remember as useless.
I think the mentor points where accumulated by completing the mentoring of new characters.
New player characters could choose a mentor and at the end of the course fill in a mini survey, if the survey was positive the mentor got points for it.
It never really worked as mentors where not really out to get new students, as the rewards where not very high and also because there was no one responsible by nature of this system.
The responsibility was diffused over the few mentors that where part of usually, only larger realms, nor did they generally cooperate.
I remember kind of abusing it just to get constant tax day information from the enemy as a young player.
I think the idea to assigning an individual as responsible by an in game system, to help new or even just less experienced players is still potential.
Yet we have to incorporate a good top down responsibility hierarchy to make sure every single individual has their own specific task/responsibility, without taking way part(s) of the free, player driven character of the game.
Something like our feudal system, where a duke appoints the lord positions(responsibilities).
Where we can have for example a government(judge or ruler?) member assign mentors to students.
The same old system with the mini survey can be applied on this for the students to rate their mentors work.
Our top responsible, the government member whom assigns students to the right mentors, can see the total score of these mentors based on the surveys from the students.
If the top responsible doesn't assign (certain) students to a mentor, he gets reminded and perhaps a score can be held of how fast characters where assigned including the average ratings of the realms mentors.
This info could be public realm information, also when creating a new character or immigrating to a new continent, but also for the titans of that continent.
Rulers/realms who ignore the system can be asked to do more to help integrate our new players by those Titans if scores drop considerably.
When the survey is filled and thus both student and mentor have agreed that the basics are mastered, one can always keep or change their mentor for rp flavor.
Especially if its easily publicly accessible by many other characters, it can be an interesting social status for a character to be mentored by the King and other highly respected individuals, or even better; mentoring the King your self.
