This is not really the best time to be doing it. There are still upwards of a couple of hundred RTB houses that will be falling in the next couple of weeks. I would leave it a month.
Aye, and they know that. This is just to get it off the ground. Get an idea of what is here now, so that when the influx of new people happens we have a base to start with. Areas like Barter Town and GIL are fairly well established, but this will tell them where our current boundaries are. And they *do* expect there to be a huge influx (as we've all expected). I think EM Aurora is hoping to have something basic set up so they can quickly learn the basic lay of our lands.
To this day I remember my first encounter with a Barter Town resident, lol. I was not in GIL, not in NEW (I had played maybe a month several years earlier, so I knew the basics and wanted to see if I could do it without NEW). So I had my newbie crafter Camriel mining just east of Minoc when someone came riding in on a swamp dragon (I
think it was Nightstalker - at the time I was too scared to pay complete attention). Camriel had his hiding and stealth already, so he stealthed around as this person performed earthquakes trying to reveal. I calmed down enough to just pop out of hiding and ask, "Are you looking for me?" A conversation ensued wherein he told me that I could not mine there unless I wore a jester's hat. I said "okay," and he replied, "You would wear one?" I replied, "Sure." So then he made me a deal - if I would go and get a jester's hat, he would go and get me a fire beetle! (Yes, I was so newb I had no fire beetle.) I wanted to pay him for it (as I did have some gold from my former short stint of playing). Anyway. So I got the jester hat, he got me the beetle. I think I tried to pay him for it, but cannot remember if he accepted the money or not. In any event, it was a typical 'welcome to Siege' encounter. So I GM'd my mining wearing that jester's hat . . . .