I am not trying to argue you on whats newbie friendly and whats not really since a newbie knows best basically, but while family estate would be inherited from Anaris's suggestion, it was not the suggestion exactly. Its really not about your family estate but your regular one. Your family estate has some advantages which can be more effective for you based on location (Proximity to your character's and that you can affect the region is why location would matter) its overall not that important about your location of your family estate. The proposed suggestion by Anaris is that when you start you pick an estate from a region to join into because without getting one as a new player you can't do much in the game and its rather vital for you to do things.
With an estate, you can a liege, someone who can give you advice on things and boss you around some which will help you understand the game, you will be able to put in an army which gives you something to do and has you interacting with players, and you get gold so you can pay your men so if you weren't doing things in your army at least you can still do some other things with your unit.
I must say I am curious where you were that players were having "unflattering" chat towards you? Do you mean on irc? And I would be interested in what it was that they said that you considered unflattering if you recall.
