Hi OP. Welcome aboard! You have a lot of valid concerns regarding interface and new player friendliness.

The User Interface forum may also appreciate your support for a quest tracker. There's the journal with the map button there that will show the quest-related NPC or location, but hide all other markers, but to me, couldn't that quest objective be incorporated into my regular map? Little touch ups like that here and there. It's not like a player knows where to go without checking the journal map, so ... why not?

And I think most of the folks here don't know what it's like starting from scratch with physical level 1 with 1.18. Unfortunately, the mages are some of the tougher classes to rank up. Chances are, your physical level is lower than your mage rank, so you don't have too many points to invest into Vitality and the like. Even if you did, as you said, groups of enemies unleashing their weapon skills or spells can take a mage down pretty fast which makes soloing a leve less sexy than advertised).

Better direction after the entry missions could be desired. And the cities aren't balanced in the sense that players have crammed their retainers in unsafe and unhealthy conditions that is the wards of Ul'dah with overpriced beginner and intermediary gear. Gridania and Limsa Lominsa across the servers appears to be less than populated.

I lost my train of thought, I post before I forget anymore, har har! But welcome aboard and thanks for the feedback!