Since I've only been playing on the server for about a week now, I think I can add some input to this from a brand new player's perspective and maybe some ways to hold onto those brand new players.
Things I like currently:
1.A good number of quest NPCs that are relatively easy to find due to their purple name text.
2. Well designed areas that are interesting to visit.
3. Crafting system.
4. I also like that the current set of players don't seem to just stand around in town at the tavern talking. This seems pretty prevalent in other RP servers that I've frequented. This is likely more due to the players themselves than the server, but worth mentioning.
5. The travel system is pretty neat and actually makes it feel like you're going somewhere as opposed to just teleporting over to a location.
Things that might be improved:
1. The quests being restricted to certain levels make it difficult to do them with characters that aren't min-maxed at least slightly, or ooc knowledge to know to choose certain feats when leveling. More non-combat quests would be cool as well.
2. The ability to repeat quests only after a server reset is kind of annoying. If they were just on a timer or something this would be better. I've logged in a couple times to find myself with absolutely nothing to do if not many folks are around.
3. There isn't much in the way of gear progression early on (perhaps later on too, but I haven't seen it yet). People like to see their characters improving in some way. So assume that after a couple hours of playing the game, they should be able to get at least 1 new piece of gear (I like shiny things!). It doesn't have to be a radical improvement, just slightly better, or maybe they can upgrade items they already have. I've seen item socketing work well in other servers to do this. Both of my current characters are wearing mostly equipment that they had when I first created them after a week of play time. That shouldn't happen if you want to keep a new player's attention.
4. The death system is pretty brutal right now, coupled with the fact that you can't inspect monsters to get an idea of challenge rating. As a new player, I'm not sure where to go past the main starting location. Quests that can point me towards a new quest hub would be great. As it is currently, if I go wandering around, I'll likely just die to creatures that I don't know are too difficult for me (this happened a few times) and then suffer massive consequences. Basically, I'm being incentivized to NOT explore your world, which you don't want to do to new players.
Just some constructive criticism (I hope). For what it is worth, I do enjoy the server and I've seen some pretty quality RP from folks on it, which has made me want to stick around longer (whether or not my RP is quality is totally up for debate lol). There might be other things, good and bad, but this is just what came to mind when I saw this post.