I had an idea, might not be the best or well thought out but here goes!
Instead of having players do tours for young players and getting a small reward why not make it more interesting, why not make it a sponsorship!
So i might decide to go greet a new player, give him or her a tour but instead of leaving it at that, we could extend the period over to a week, two weeks or even a month. During which, we could help further more the new player by showing him the rope of the shard, good hunting places, advice on gear, realy take the time to explain things that are custom to this shard and maybe prevent unpleasant mistakes like purchasing a weapon that's crappy and puting a leveling deed on it or missing out on the rat quest.
My problem with the tour concept is that new players dont want to spend their first few minutes on the shard listening to some veterant getting exited about the shard and dumping a crap load of info on them, so my suggestion is to extend the time period, that way the new player will have someone to contact and take them out hunting or explaining how different the shard is from others or even OSI.
By the end of that period, the veterant sponsering the newcomer would get a bigger reward of say 75 ed's for the whole month sponsorship, and to prevent abuse, limit the sponsoring to 1 per month or 1 at a time. If a reward of ed's is a problem, why not go with the concept of the library collectors they made on OSI (where you got the glasses), earn sponsorship points (that would be account bound) which after you could exchange for special gear (also account bound) or some new deco.
At the end, everybody gets something out of it, the new players would get advice, contacts, and a better understanding of the shard which in return would give the shard a stronger and more experienced base of players. Finaly the vets would have new objectives, new allies, and a way of passing down all that knowledge!
There it is! That my big idea LOL
