MOTD directs you to the forums, where you can find a wealth of info if you just take a few minutes to read. Sadly many never will, either because they think they dont need the info ("I've been playing EQ since beta!") or because they're just too goddamned lazy. Changing how they are directed to that info really wont help. Typically the P99ers I encounter disdain any type of direction to knowledge....they want it lined out in tells or they dont want it. Only the last wave or 2 from P99 and THF have I seen players actively request forum info....its rather nice (some VERY good people the last month or so from P99 and THF).
And people here are VERY social, Hunter....just not in a conventional EQ manner. We DO group together to help each other....but we do it bringing groups of players for a raid, not single players for a group. This allows us to work together to achieve goals faster and/or easier, and still allows us to do things alone without our characters we box being "left behind" content and gear wise. And thats one of the great things about EZ....you can socialize and cooperate, but you can still get things done if you only have an hour to play without spending time finding groupmates, or without the feeling that when you leave in an hour you're leaving friends hanging without a tank, healer, whatever.
My original issue that seemed to set people off was the disparity of difficulty for the first 20 levels. It does put some new people off, because killing is so much slower than even P99 or live for those levels if you are a melee. Regardless of what high level help may be out there, its still an issue for some: the fastest you can hit with any weapon is about the speed of an old world 2h weapon, or slower, and the max hit you can do is 20 damage before lvl 10, and 40 damage before lvl 20. As you know it really makes no diff for me....I can do 1 to 70 in no time with my characters buffs
But some newer players seemed perplexed as to why it was so slow at first.