I'd like to share some things I've learned the hard way and hopefully provide some solutions. I've dealt with a lot of problems and think I've figured out what technically optional, but vital training I missed. I'll be doing some remedial stuff once the game's back up from today's maintenance. I've also got to unlearn bad habits I've developed because of perverse incentives.

Observations:
  1. Level 70 is a participation trophy, not an accomplishment. Levels don't tell you anything about a person's ability to play the game. I failed all the way up to level 70 SCH.
  2. Based on my experience thus far, players talking about who's carrying who are the ones who drag down newbies the most. Patience, leadership, education, and communication are skills, and often more important than the technical skills. Scapegoating a newbie is usually a convenient way to avoid the hard work of developing those skills.
  3. Look for the "kiddie pool" stuff, especially if you're new to MMOs in general. The first few tests might come across as insultingly easy or obvious, but it's still worth doing. There's a LOT of features out there, and it can be easy to miss some of these things when everything's so new.
    • Hall of the Novice: I found it good to go over. Earlier MMOs I played didn't have this kind of support.
    • Guildhests: This was the training I missed because I had a smorgasbord of other exciting things I wanted to do. Being technically optional, and having a lot of Duty titles that didn't include "Training" in their name made it easier to skip past.
    • Maybe other stuff?: Experienced players: Please let me know if there's another 'kiddie pool' I've missed.

Things I'm going to experiment with, that other newbies might want to try:
  1. Make a lot of chat macros for Duties. At the very least, I suggest having one something like this:

    /p Please wait a moment.

    Hopefully having a fast way to put something in the chat box will get more people to treat me like a fellow player.

  2. More HUD customization: I'm prone to information overload, and turning off or shrinking certain things has cleaned things up a lot. I'm going to create a second layout specific for Duties that gets the absolute bare minimum so I have a nice view of the battlefield.

  3. Preparation/Edge case hotbar: I have a hotbar on one side of my screen for summoning my faerie (and put it in "Obey" mode), casting Protect, and other things that don't merit an inclusion on my main hotbar(s). I'll be reviewing my options with some friends to get priorities straight.

  4. Experiment with targeting methods. Rereading stuff on macros, there are a lot of ways to choose targets I didn't know about. Picking out the right target was an early frustration, and I'm going to find smoother methods. One that probably goes much more naturally for playing a support class is /assist. I'll report once I've tried some things.