Tom, my thoughts have been the following, since I've returned.
New players only get 2 nobles and 1 advy. As the game is primarily social, I think having one of your starting characters be an adventurer, which is a much slower game, is a poor decision. Nor do I think reducing the noble count from the historical 3 starting nobles is the best idea either. Especially with player density as it is, new players should have as many opportunities as possible to find a talkative realm (Delvin's changes will help with this) that will teach them the game. Thus, I think an immediate change to a default of 3 starting nobles and waiting 30 days until one can play an adventurer (as a 4th character) would do wonders.
I also think that the game has changed a lot from the early days in the department of war. I remember when there was very little downtime between wars. Now, it seems realms can go weeks and months between wars, in a game called battlemaster. I think this may have also affected the military capabilities of realms, which gives an advantage to numbers over tactics and strategy. Thus, I think a War Island should be reopened, with everyone having one character locked into the island, unable to immigrate or emmigrate and independent of any other character limits. This way, at least everyone always has an option of having a war to fight and builds experience and innovation in fighting those wars. Of course, characters would still be pausable because we can't force people to play where they don't want, but I do think many would be interested in this and new players would be likely to find someone from one of the four realms to mentor them, since so many players will be on the island. As it is, I suspect many new players join realms and never find someone to mentor them in the quirks of the game (like the hours system).
I absolutely echo Geronus' ideas (I've been mentioning them on IRC for some time) about every continent facing an invasion. Let the players, realms, and islands survive via merit and those who can't survive, have their regions blighted. This would remove regions from play in a fashion that gives everyone an opportunity to affect the outcome. The maps can be saved and if the playerbase grows, a storyline about reconquering lost regions can be created and the regions expanded. But until then, the geographic changes that occur from losing regions will be allow new continental shapes, which should be about as interesting as a new continent itself.
