I like the game, I do. But as with all MMORPGs it's inevitable that players leave the game for whatever reason and that new players need to join to keep the numbers up. Therefore it's necessary to think about the new player experience.

Now, with pre-launch it's less of a problem, there are huge tribes from beta and there are many pre-made guilds that come from other games, notably from Darkfall and Mortal Online (that in itself could also become a problem, but that's for another thread to discuss ). That part of the new player experience is no problem. The problem is when a new player joins the game in a few weeks or months. He/she doesn't know anyone in the game, knows no guild, has no friends in the game and has to figure out how to get things going.

He gets probably killed the moment he steps out from the (safe?) spawn point and there's a fat chance that he will start the game in his undies and will have lost his weapons too. I've never lost my starter crafting tools through a gank, thus I assume these are somehow safe from looting.

Suggestion No. 1: Make all starting equipment unlootable and untradable. Not that I think this will in any way cause the gankers not to gank but at least the new player doesn't have to immediately reroll his character after he spent 2 minutes in the game and it gives him a chance if he makes it past the gankers somehow.

Still not a very good new player experience.

Suggestion No. 2: Make a max-size tribe at all starting locations (leader of the tribe is a GM) and make a player autojoin this tribe when a new character is created. New players are free to leave this tribe whenever they want, additionally they get booted from this tribe after, say, 5 levels. That way a new character is safe within the land of the tribe and has a chance to get to know other new players via the tribe chat to organise themselves before they venture out.

Suggestion No. 3: Give this autotribe a small junk heap.