Noobs, choobs, froobs, we’ve all had encounters with them. We all have our most creative ways to get rid of their annoying pestering, but how many of us actually stop and help them? Not many, so I thought. I myself often help out noobs, even if they do speak incomprehensible English. Sometimes I’m feeling nice, sometimes I just want them to go away (it’s amazing how fast a free 1k makes them go running off). From other peoples’ attitudes on Runescape though, I doubted that many people would help out noobs like I did.

With this theory on my mind, I set out to test it. Going back to the beginner days wasn’t hard for me; I had about three accounts all abandoned after Tutorial Island. Off I went to login to one of them.

Getting the noob appearance was simple, but acting like one wasn’t. I’m not an expert on “tyeping liek dis.” After practicing a bit in an abandoned house near Lumbridge, I set out to Varrock to find my first…victim shall we say.

I arrived and was immediately on the tail of a level 53. “Omg liek ur such a high lvl!!11!!1 can u hlp meeeee???????” I blurted out as I had practiced. The player ignored me. “omgwtf stop ignorin me!!!!! i’m just a poor nooooob =(” That finally got a reply of, “Shut up n00b.” I was about to say something else when he ran off. Darn. I marked down a point in the “Go Away/Shut Up” section of my logs.

I continued like this for about ten minutes, getting mixed replies, most of them insulting me or not helping in any way. One person did give me a piece of information that even a noob would find useless – don’t die. As if that wasn’t obvious enough.

Finished with that part, I proceeded to think. What if I didn’t act like a noob, just appeared like one? Would there be a different response, or would the sight of that level three make everyone run away anyway? I usually would be a little more lenient if lower levels at least asked maturely. I switched worlds and decided to try it out.

Thirty seconds later (while I was grumbling in impatience), I was back in Varrock square. This time, instead of acting like a stupid annoying nobody, I followed people around or stood in the center of the city asking, “Hi, I’m new. Could you give me some advice?” The change was remarkable. I got two more pieces of info – don’t go into the wildy and use the church in Lumbridge to recharge prayer. One generous player even gave me a free 5k. I made a mental note to pay them back later.

Although some people still didn’t reply, and one strange person even asked if I wanted to be their girlfriend (I politely replied no), people did not ignore me as much and helped me out with small bits of information or items.

To wrap things up, it seems that there are more people out there than I thought who give out a helping hand to lower levels. While I know most higher levels are annoyed with the begging because they themselves never begged, it still is nice to give out a little gift to new people, especially if they ask nicely for some help. If they speak noobish and keep annoying you with “PLZ?!?!!11,” then that’s another story. We were all new at one point, and at that time, wouldn’t we be happy to receive something nice (like free money/items or advice) from a higher level? That’s what I believe anyway. However, this is entirely up to your opinion about noobs. If you want to ignore them, go ahead. If you want to lead them out into the wildy and teach them a lesson, go ahead, but just remember that we all were once noobs too.