HEY YOU!
YEAH, YOU NEW and/or POTENTIALLY NEW PLAYER!
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I just hit the 30 day mark, and I wish I had started sooner. The longer someone waits the more "catching up" will need to be done, if you happen to be the type of person that is bugged by that sort of thing (and I am). And now will probably be a good time to start, with equipment changes going in (from the discussions I've seen there will be sets of gear with stats that are better for noobs and worthless to vets) not to mention the possibility for BIG THINGS to start going down once the frenzy for the new gear starts to settle down.
If you think that you might play sometime in the future and are on the fence, it doesn't cost you anything to join the game and just click for a few minutes each day to start leveling up. Also if/when they start another server, you'll be ahead of the game on the learning curve if you join now, as opposed to waiting for a new server to open up and then starting.
One of the strengths of SK is, IMHO, the people. As in, having live people as opposed to countries with legions of multis (multiple account bots). Taiwan just had a ton of their accounts permabanned for multying, and who already had their foot on the neck of Taiwan? We did. Having actual, live people who are organized and competent on a level that a lot of people who have played MMOs are, is an incredible force multiplier. But of course, we still need people. We're still outnumbered by quite a few other countries, to the point that it's a frequent topic. And people don't have to play hardcore or spend a lot of time in IRC to coordinate hitting in battles (if at all). While it's nice to have people that participate on that level, even people who log in for a few minutes each day still contribute. Working each day, you can click once or twice and help produce goods, and even if you drop your damage as soon as you log in, while it isn't coordinated damage it can still be directed via orders and it can contribute to the larger set of battles that are going on.
At only 30 days played, I do maybe 5%-10% of the damage that some of the more established accounts do but I've already had a few battles where my contribution made the difference or came very close to it. And I've worked every day so I've contributed with manufactured goods and my Econ skill is rising. And that's after only 30 days. Now picture that with another 10 new players, or 20, or even more.
I know that one of the things that draws new players to games are the notable events - whether that is drama, like EVE-O and the GOONS/BOB war or something like some random guild sploiting the bejeezus out of a game or dominating the competition and getting things like server firsts. And that's the kind of thing we are working on right now, but much of those accomplishments will be hard to grasp by players outside of the game, and the more new players we can get the better our odds will be at pulling off something truly impressive.
Plus, we have the Shovel and Bat corps.
http://secura.e-sim.org/militaryUnit.html?id=290
http://secura.e-sim.org/militaryUnit.html?id=72