Ok i've been around for only a few weeks, and I just wrote a massive post to talk about the experience, but my post didnt go through and i lost it all so i'll truncate to a few points.

A) It really sucks the big one when people tell you to play XXX class with YYY race or you'll never get the hang of anything. That's just truly a really bad mentality to have.

B) That being said, the community is superawesome and supportive of newbies in my own experiences, its really encouraging when a level 51 gives you some kind of equipment you've never seen before.

C) What's not cool and doesn't encourage me to play is when I have my ass handed to me ten minutes later and my awesome piece of equipment is taken. This is NOT encouraging as a newbie.

C)a. It's fine to die every half an hour to SuperOldbie, I can deal with that, part of the game etc etc, but it makes it really hard to learn the game etc when they take all your #### too.


My suggestion would be to make it unable to have your corpse looted till a higher level, about 20 or 25, trust me, your newbie retention will skyrocket.

EDIT: Clearing up some semantics