As a newbie here (don't watch my joining date XD... i simply started last weekend playing actually!)
I'll add my 2 cents:
I Agree with the fact that paying 10€/month to get a buffer is way too much. But I don't blame the server owners, they need some kind of earning and this seems the best way (also because this mean that most of the people online is real people, and it is a good thing... no?)
Beside that, it is anyway a given choice to pay those euros to play (for example i tried the 7 days just to see how it was, it costed just 3€);
The main difference with Skelth resides here, in the fact that you can at least play without pay.
Free Teleports until 40 should be a must; It was really difficult to handle adena in the start, me and my gf had some issues to meet eachother (as she started DE and I started Orc). Fortunately our clan helped us out, or we would still be hanging in our starting zone ^^'
Newbie buffer is something I didn't feel the need of; Levelling i've got several rewards some of which are buff scrolls (and i'm just 30, i've checked and there are more yet to unlock)
Other than that, is true that at low level is difficult to find people, is also true that most of the people is waiting for the next patch, so i'm not worried.
In the end,
I'm enjoing my journey with all the calm and the time I need,
and I honestly appreciate the work of the devs here, as they give me the possibility to play this game