I think, while the new imm staff is pretty decent and helps to keep the interaction between the mortals and the nons, that the game itself is not so newbie friendly. You cannot play a decent mage without abs knowledge, it just doesn't happen anymore. The only exception to this may be invokers, which take hours of spell-spamming which, despite how anal I am about spamming my skills, I am not that anal.

There's a definate learning curve that is very steep for newer players, which is fine. If you play a new game, you should expect to die a lot. But this isn't the type of game that you can really, roll a character and just go out and be good. You need to be a prep whore, or a rager, pretty much.