Empowerment:

Newbies need to feel like they aren't completely powerless. When I first started playing I was total meat. Anybody could kill me and I couldn't figure out how to stop them. I didn't know where gear was. I didn't know where a lot of areas were. I didn't even know what gear existed that I should be coveting, much less where to find it. This resulted in a feeling of powerlessness that, honestly, was pretty discouraging. I can handle being the low guy on the totem pole, as long as I have some vague idea of how one "moves up" on the totem pole. When you don't even understand how to "move up" then your current position of weakness starts to seem permanent.

Dio's item list is an (imperfect) antidote to the gear ignorance, along with the FAQs, world map, the ranking list I cooked up, etc.

Encouragement:

Non-newbie players need to stop being jerks. There's really nothing to be done here except apply social pressure, and that's never going to "reach" some people. But, in general, if you realize someone is a newbie, maybe go a little easy on them. I'm not saying don't kill them, but maybe...don't kill them if you know they've died in the last RL hour. Or maybe don't kill them at all if your role-play permits. Attack and just don't use any lagging moves. Stuff like that. Maybe don't take their gold/potions if and when you do kill them. Maybe throw them a RP "bone" after killing them, just to keep them interested in the game and offset the frustration of having just died.

Guidance:

I feel like newbies need to be guided in the right direction when they start out when it comes to class/race/align/cabal choices. The staff tries to do this when it recommends against empowerment characters, but I'm not sure that's adequate. Honestly, I'd recommend against mages (except possibly shifter or lawful-good conjurer) and would not necessarily steer newbies away from empowerment classes. They have a number of features that are handy for newbies:

1. Built in detect invis and word of recall.
2. Built in damage reduction, i.e. less reliance on preps.
3. Not as gear-dependent in order to be effective (paladins have wrath, healers just heal, etc.)
4. Built in immteraction.

If you're a newbie and pick a sub-optimal race/class combo as your first character then it can lead to a really negative first impression.