Experience, wealth, communities, friendships, knowledge, memories, etc.
If these things aren't enough for you and you need further advantages over a n00b, then you're the one truly missing whats important in the game.
That sounds like "motherhood and apple pie", and in a way it is, but I'm also a gamer that plays the game for the sake of the game itself. I want to have items and achievements that are worth playing for. If everyone can get everything within a week of joining, the gaming part of the equation becomes meaningless and empty. And really gold by itself is also completely meaningless unless you have something worth spending it on.Those who stick around get other rewards anyway...resources, money, community, friends, experience, memories, fun times, etc.
If that really isn't enough for you, but also need an content-wise "one up" on returning and new players, then there's something really sad going on with you.
Not only that, but those good things you list, "community, friends, experience, memories, fun times", those good things are built around the game, not the other way around. There wasn't this massive community of friends, laughter and sunflowers and someone decided to build a game around it.
No, the game was created, and all those good things happened because that game was created. If the game isn't worth playing, if there is no point to playing the game because everything is simply handed to you, all those good things disappear, or fail to be created in the first place.
At the heart of this discussion is pvp. Great, if everyone can get everything easily, then we can all go out and pvp and have a good time. Newsflash - There is much more to UO than pvp. I love pvp, but I also happen to love pvm, and I also love building suits for both of them. And if everything comes easily, and there is nothing that is rare and hard to obtain, that is actually useful, then all that fun I have planning for, working for, and creating suits disappears.
It's hard to argue against someone who starts throwing around words like, "community, friends, experience, memories, fun times". But the simple truth is that those things simply don't exist without a UO that is worth playing, and at the heart of a game worth playing, is challenge and the struggle to become more than you are, and in UO unless there are items worth having that are a challenge to get, much of the game is destroyed, along with that essential impetus that results in "community, friends, experience, memories" and "fun times".