Probably one of my personal favorite tutorial zones is the one in EverQuest II -- now. The tutorial zones in EQ2 can get you into the swing of things fairly easily if you're not familiar with the game. Not only are there myriad quests designed to teach you what you need to know, but there are also tons of NPCs whose sole purpose is to give you tips and tricks about how things work in game. While the tutorial in other games such as EVE and CoX could be said to be roughly as good about telling you how things are, I simply don't think they're quite as much fun, or as chock full of quests to keep you engaged. (Although I will give props to CoH for having the Isolator badge in the tutorial.) A close runner up is the tutorial in LotRO, which drops you smack into the middle of the lore and story that people play that game for while doing a good job of explaining the game. On the other hand, there's the problem of believability when it occurs to you that any low-level character wouldn't likely come out of a brush with a Ringwraith alive.
While WoW may be the 800-pound-gorilla of MMOs right now, I do honestly think their newbie zones could stand to be instanced like many other games are. Why? Because if you're new, there's nothing that will turn you off quite a quickly as being ganked and corpse-camped in a noob area when you're level 3 and you're dealing with players who are easily ten times your level. (Yes, I've been corpse camped in WoW's new-player areas by opposite-faction griefers.) Games with distinct, separate tutorial areas save new players from this hassle while they're getting used to just what those shiny new buttons do.
There are many other things that we love and hate about tutorials in MMOs, but we'll skip off those for now or this will quickly become a novel. Instead we're curious what you think. What do you love about the tutorial zones in the games you play? What do you absolutely hate? Is there something an older game did better than the newer games you've experienced? Which is your favorite? Let us know!
