Giving new characters the ability to start anywhere was a bad idea. It puts newbies one click away from starting in some dead city nobody cares about, where they will wander without a clue, never seeing another player. And for what reason? So some old-timers don't have to run two screens to the Haven moongate if they wanna go to Trinsic and pretend it still matters?
Also, the function that whisks a dead young player's ghost to a random city healer is just terrible. It SHOULD whisk them to the Haven healer. Instead it dumps them in Minoc or some garbage like that, where they have NO IDEA where they are or how to get anywhere they know.
[Party][Newbie]: I was killed by an ettin !!
[Party][Guildy]: Show
[Party][Meatbread]: Youngs get teleported
[Party][Newbie]: I DUNNO WHERE I AM
Looking back, I laugh now when I remember when this exact thing happened to me. Someone gated me to despise dungeon and while inside I was killed. I was instantly teleported to Britain, a town I had never been to, and had no idea where I was or how to get back to where I had been.
It has been about 14 months since I began playing this game and for what its worth, I believe there should be a dungeon like despise on New Haven Island.
Georox has made an excellent suggestion in having new players go to different towns. Either by foot or by recall/sacred journey, a quest-like mission requiring different stops in different towns might orient a new player a little more quickly.
Also, This past summer I got a friend of mine to try the game out. I had told him about all the different possibilities of characters one could make. He got a trial account and made a ninja. When he told me he made a ninja I sort of cringed. Mostly because, in my opinion, it is a very specialized template.
I tried to get him to make a mage, a paladin or a sampire, but he was stuck on this ninja thing. Anyway, he quit playing pretty soon after because he got bored.
Take the ninja template off of the new character creation list. Replace it with a bard or a fisher or treasure hunter or something that will hold the interest of a new player a little more than a couple of weeks.