here here, i can support that, anything to make the mud more newbie friendly, as we are in dire need of some newbies!

whoareas actually isn't as useful as it sounds. Mainly cause it's actualy a rather large area around the city coupled with the fact people move, and that some areas that newbies won't know how to reach occasional seem counted into whoareas but that's a diffrent point entirely. perhaps a side option of allowing a person to spawn within a room that's seen more pc traffic in recent history would be helpful but then some spammers would undoubtedly use that to strand newbies in the desert just for fun. another of the best option is for us older players to make the occasional sacrifice of not far outside the range of cities. the staff could even get in on the act by thinking up ways to encourage hotspots to be in town.
 
a possible solution to this whole mess could even be giving mentors a secure channel<something more then current ring a bell for mentor> that puts them in direct contact with people under 50 hours game play that they could use to foster limited ooc IC meets and could be monitored by the staff
 
I again personally like the thought of using the forums in  some way to announce preplanned gatherings  
 
out of my ideas the last two seem more practical as they'd take less time to code and  allow the staff oversight

My personal suggestion would be to change the default starting location to Forest Heart as most people seem to be hanging around this place. Plus, as I mentioned in another thread, a map of this city available on the website and/or in the game, upon start. We could also leave Banzaar as the default location, but inform the user upon the first logins about the whoareas function.

I do not know but I have been told Banzaar is the starting place? Is it not? If FH is, that's OK.