Here's an idea i came across while discussing with a friend the diminished
playerbase and all that. We have too many continents. Areas are sprawled too
far away from each other for newer players to reach them. For example -
Mithil, Revelstone, Foul's Creche - they're so far away that newbies don't go
there. Even though it's the site of a newbie (lowbie) quest. Essentially
newbie areas. There are lots of others to name on various continents. So
newbies are kind of forced to run the same few areas around Arelium for
exp/cash/whatever. That gets tedious.
Now here's an idea - why not re-institute navtrees? Maybe it doesn't need to
be a guild. Maybe but a few navtrees on each continent - so it could be
possible to reach let's say southern laenor from western laenor etc. It would
cost the same 250gp for example. Or maybe even 500gp. But it would ease things
tremendously.
Why is the idea good for newbies? Because newbies don't have ships. Newbies
don't have mounts. They run out of ep very quickly and have very limited ways
of regening it because player cities and crystals are also far between and
mostly around civilized areas.
To log on and start to explore (which was one of the reasons for big
continents too wasn't it) only to have to spend half of your game time
regening ep.. i think that's unfair. Anyway, there's my two cents. Flame away!

Or maybe put more signposts to roads and modify travel command so that you can
use it 'travel nmines' 'travel orctree' etc and you'd end up to entrance of
that area pointed on signs. -Z-