I worked for Origin back on '00 on the Renaissance Edition, and have worked on other games with "legacy" issues, thus I can appreciate the challenges here. You have, in essence, a Massively Single Player game with too many long time players who resist change with a religious passion while too many others become more obsessed with the buying and selling of UDIs than with game play. All quests are single player and most are Fed-Ex quests. Plus, culturally, it's actually considered an achievement to solo bosses, which is understandable but a sad commentary on the state of the game. Thus even people of good will, intelligence, and fine intent will need to take significant risks to make this game enticing to new players.
In the eight months I've been back, after ten years away, I've seen one major expansion and at least six major patches - or "publishes" as they like to call them. I've seen Thanksgiving gifts, Holiday gifts, Anniversary gifts and even Valentine's day teddy bears given out. Yet there has not been a single upgrade to the new player experience or to the woefully out of date gear new player quests deliver.
In UO - and I don't mean this as sarcastically as it sounds - it's a "You have to have been there to be here" game.
Twenty fewer skill points
Shy five stat
You can't use this
And you can't use that
This is the new player experience. It sounds harsh but I know the team is small and the demands placed upon them are enormous. Thus I do not mean for this to - in any way - imply that the current development team is inept or stupid. They're not.
The UO free trial page give you two choices: a Classic client that would look dated to the grandparents of most new prospects or an Enhanced Client that you're told remains in beta. Sadly, quaint doesn't play in contemporary computer gaming and the word, beta, is an off-putting prospect for anyone starting out.
You get 1000 gold in a game where anything useful costs millions and the street price of UO gold is fifty cents a million. Oh, and you get a candle, a fireworks wand and a blank book.
There is no checklist provided, based on the character type you've created, for the character advancement quests that are available to you. Instead there is a bot outside the bank that repeats "Click on me for help" ad nauseum but provides little when you do.
Oddly, the first step in most of these is to pay 400 of that 1000 gold to get the first 40 points of skill, with the next 10 coming from a quest. Why in blazes those first points are not part of the initial character creation process defies understanding as does the price point. At the end you get an item may have been useful prior to the most recent major expansion.
Clearly you need more information. If you go to the official site you get a message that its content is being "updated soon." Stratics, the site most new players are told to try next, has information that, in some cases, has been out of date for up to a decade. Go to the forums and you're told to read a readme before posting, basically saying that you have to earn the right to ask questions and nobody wants to hear a question that's been asked before.
Many players in-game try to be helpful but most are so steeped in the lexicon of the game that they do not know that their answers make no sense. How do I train archery? "100% poison wep on a Gollum, Enemy of One." Yes, that was an actual answer. I asked the player who posed the question if he understood a single word of that. Of course his answer was no.
Scroll over a weapon and you'll get an incomprehensible list of attributes, such as Hit Lower Defense, Hit Poison Area, Use Best Weapon Skill, Repond Slayer....sorry but it simply makes no sense at all.
You're trying to hook up with another player who tells you to go north. Good luck with that. The UO compass is canted 45 degrees to the east. You have a positive experience with a player and want to see that player again. Good luck with that too. There are no friends or buddy lists in UO. There are Guilds and your Client has Guild invitations set to Ignore by default. There is not dating in UO, only marriage.
My apologies. This is getting too long and a bit tedious. Allow me to summarize what I believe the new player experience needs to be:
One client and not the Classic one on the free trial page. This means getting the EC out of beta which should happen before any more updates, expansions, or even gifts are delivered in the game.
More points given during character creation
More information, if the player wants it, on the character creation screens
Dump the part about customizing the template disqualifying you from new player quests. It's not true.
Provide players with a checklist of quests based on the character they've created along with a "Take me there" button next to each, and save this to the player journal which is highlighted until either the player's young status is aged off or the player declines the quests.
Spot new players at least 1 million gold. Yes, players will create new characters just to get the gold and a veteran player could start on any shard with 6. So what? 6 million UO gold is worth 3 dollars. The million gold is worth fifty cents. The games costs 13 dollars a month for the subscription.
All players begin with the 720 skill point cap. The 5 extra stat points can remain a six month veteran reward. Other veteran rewards should be cosmetic, not tactical. It's okay that a 13 year veteran player can ride around on an ethereal armored Boura (a cross between a water buffalo and a Ice Age ox) or wear dazzling clothing, but it's not okay to put new players at a fundamental disadvantage from the start. Lots of these folks will want an actual game, after all, and all games since the beginning of time are based on human competition. Even Solitaire is PvP.
Players leaving the new player island of New Haven should depart with at least a 100LRC/70s suit (no ingredients needed to cast spells, maximum armor protection is 70 percent). Nobody is going to farm this stuff because, as players advance, they will get equipment with more tactical attributes. Mages should have full spellbooks. Warriors should have at least one weapon with the fundamental capability bonuses. UO relies heavily on tactical bonuses added to jewelry - up to five for each piece (ring and bracelet). New players should leave New Haven with a ring and braclet with at least 3 bonuses of medium intensity each. And they should leave with the skill level currently provided by the Advanced Character Token - not enough to be deadly but enough to make the journey to become deadly more interesting and congruent with the game activity they desire.
There should be a matchmaking service if guilds want to register for it. Siege Perilous (the forbidding sounding server where the old, Hobbs State of Nature rules apply) has a guild called NEW that players can join for up to 30 days. It has players who have volunteered to help new players with basic gear and game help. Yes, some will make up griefer guilds and can do so in minutes, but that can be remedied with a few checks for guild age and history of harassment complaints of guild members.
I'd like to suggest a one year feature freeze with bug fixes only but that's likely outside the realm of what the team can decide on their own to do.
Oh, and lastly for now, stop telling new players, every time they log in, that they are too young to receive a gift. Just stop it. Rather, give them a gift if it's a genuine new account, and the player has completed the quests he agreed to take.
The rest falls into realms of SEO and guerilla marketing. I doubt there is much of a budget for much else, but that's another matter entirely.
If you've made it this far, thank you.
Jonathan
We as players deserve to know whats going on with the game.. not be left in the dark wondering gee are they pulling the plug tomarrow because it's so quiet? It's ridiculous how a company can work like that ... I seriously don't understand it... you want people to like your company and stick with them not go and find a replacement. 
