Any player that is just starting an MMO that is 5-6 years into its life is going to face this, especially if they aren't playing regularly with friends. The feeling of not fun is because they are pressuring themselves to catch up on 6 years of content to be part of whatever cool thing players are talking about right now.

I will agree that some skills getting removed can change the low level experience, but you can't expect a company to redesign content that old or make drastic changes to it because people did not play and support the game as early as others did.

If lower level stuff make someone shy away from playing, then I hate to tell them that the mechanics have not changed so much that later game is vastly different. You just have more buttons to press. It doesn't mean that there isn't that time investment requirement that they are currently not happy about, isn't still there.