I am brand new to this game and just wanted to say hi. :)
I have been reading a lot of these threads and see everyone talking about how the game is dying and all of that kind of jazz, but I have to disagree.
My girlfriend and I just started playing about 2 or 3 weeks ago. We hit 40 last night I became a bishop, and she became a blade dancer. We got lucky and landed in a good clan, they actually gave us all of our top end C grade gear as a graduation present when we graduated from the academy. I was so stoked. Of course the deal is we give it back when we get into B grade to hand down to the next people in the clan that needs it. That is a pretty amazing system in my opinion.
Anyway I don't know what compelled me to tell this story, probably all of the negativity I have been reading.
We had our first experience with bots last night. This guy must have had 7 or 8 with him, it was crazy. Yeah, it is annoying, but not game breaking. We simply reported them and moved to a different spot. A GM replied to us saying he would handle it in less than 30 minutes. We didn't go back to see if the bots was still there though.
I have played about every MMO out there and I have to say, this is by far my favorite. I could see myself playing this game for years to come.
And back to the game dying thing. Leveling as a noob from 1 to 40, I ran into several new players just like myself and made fellow noob companions. So, us new people are out there, just look for us in the lowbie zones. But, please don't kill us. :P
My character name is Zuy on the Bartz (<< I think I spelled that correctly) server. Look me up! :)