Look, if we give up the identify files, we've just hurt a spell. The identify spell is one of the few things that makes casters/communers unique.
And the idea of listing the area, well, they still have to find the area.
Fem-Nec: I agree that you can ask in game. But it's so often I find that everyone's busy hunting, training, etc....sometimes you can't even get a response back. Not to mention, the response you get is limited by the knowledge and bias of the person you're asking.
Here they have the option of exploring and finding these things for themselves, plus if they discover a way to identify if they don't already have it, they've learned even more.
I don't want to spoonfeed anyone. I want the newer players to learn enough in a few months time and not have to invest thirty hours a week for that time period to keep them interested. Out of 100% of newbs that come, I still predict us losing roughly 15%-20% due to lack of interest or wanting to go back to their more familiar mud. We'll never get 100% retention. But this is going to be a huge boost to keeping people around.
And why do we still have this "veteran" "elite" statuses? I just consider myself experienced these days. These terms are ssa backwards and are just a version of old school/new school. We need to overcome this. SOON.