Everyone I have ever convinced to try out SoD has quit after a short time. Most of them had similar, if not the exact same, grievances and suggestions:
THINGS THAT MIGHT BE CHANGED:
-Combat lvl 1-? is a miserable experiment in misses and hitting for crap damage (without a twink weapon). The default weapons are bad and saying "its okay, just deal with it until you save many plats then search through dozens and dozens of vendors and hope one is selling [mastercrafted silver?] weapons (they aren't)- then you only have to deal with constant misses" is worse. Nothing screams high adventure quite like missing a rat 9 times then hitting it for ~10%.
=Give a better default weapon OR make really low level all/all quests for decent weapons
=Adjust miss rates. Yes, lowbies are supposed to be learning and not very adept at fighting, but it is terrible design from a "games should be fun" stand point and an instant turn off for new players so that... grass snakes can seem more formidable?
-Soloing and duoing with certain classes is boring/frustrating/impossible
=Those new cleric spells? Yes please! More new leveling stuff like that for other classes.
THINGS THAT PROBABLY WILL NOT:
-There is something utterly soul crushing about spending hours and hours and hours completing your newbie armor quests (if your class/race is so fortunate) then seeing someone /auction a long list of items with no lvl req. that each individually have more stats than your entire armor set. The relative ease of twinking for established players, especially since Iksith, versus the required time investment, wiki research, and /fingers crossed for drops (and groups) for adepts has grown totally out of balance.
=Bump up the stats on newbie quest gear, or quest gear in general.
=Adepts should drop more items. With respawn times and the difficulty in getting adept groups together you will probably get one shot at any given (<55) adept without using explock- /vomit. Having Adepts drop most, if not all, of their loot table every time would make adepts more popular/fun and not at all even the twink v. new player playing field.
-Zone internal level ranges are not smooth. This is directed at zones like SI and BB where we would be clearing light blues and green placeholders outside and up top respectively waiting to ding because going inside and getting gang banged by yellows or downstairs so 'red-evoker-kills-everyone-lol' sucks. The other option would be to run to another zone for two levels then come back or log out for a while then hope respawns were on the lower end of the level range. Both "solutions" suck almost as much as the red evoker.
=The problem is in lower level dungeons where spawns have too large a level range. The difference between 8 and 12 is really flipping huge compared to 48 and 52. Also, if area one has 5-10 and area two has 10-15 you can easily run into an unclearable mess of 13+. This is really only an issue in a handful of zones, but impacts low levels (read: new players).
THINGS THAT WILL GET ME RIDICULED AND SPIT ON FOR REPEATING:
-XP rates are too slow. Claims that leveling is faster here than on another somewhat related game have been universally denied by everyone coming over from that other game. Additionally, claims that repeating the same action over and over and over (aka, grinding) somehow equals skill were not received well.
=Make double xp weekends a thing that actually happen with reasonable regularity. The Facebook 500 weekend happened at a great time as my brother was playing and really enjoyed "slightly too high" xp and the ease of finding groups. A few weeks later, when it became readily apparent the criteria for the next double xp weekend was ridiculous and months if not years away disillusion quickly set in.
=More xp potions. Quested (cannot just buy), repeatable, and only good up to 51 or 64.
-Whereas WoW creates an inflated sense of accomplishment by showering the player with phat lewtz and awesomeness, SoD creates an inflated sense of difficulty by showering the player with scarcity and meaningless inconvenience.
=I have no idea. This seems to be a general design philosophy that some people like (douches? masochists? respectively) and some people spend an entire evening drunkenly berating me about like I made the games.
=Here is a question that I could not answer- "how long would it take a new player who does not have: twink items, friends to port/buff/PL them, intimate knowledge of the best leveling spots/gear/quests, or the ability to box to get to 65? codex? and how contingent is your answer on lucking out with getting groups and falling in with a good guild?"
Again, this is what my friends that have tried SoD said. I am inclined to agree with them on many of these issues, but that is besides the point. What is the point is that they were "new players" and had these problems with the game. If the goal is to get new players to come and want to stay...
