It's actually fun? Wow I've been banging my head against the wall trying to find an mmo I'd enjoy, and the only thing that was scratching the itch for me was Ragnarok Online, ah but the grind in that game stinks, don't like it.
So we have UO where you work on training your skills that's where the progress is on your character. And the server I play on they sped up the skill gains so you rank up faster. Normally by now I would have given up on a game due to low attention span but I'm sticking with it and making a character that can do things outside of the newbie zones. The furthest I ever got was halfway to levelcap in WoW and that's because I was playing with a friend.
Okay enough rambling, I really enjoy this game. And I felt some achievement when I had enough gold saved up to build my cottage and now buy an imbued set of craft resistance armor.
Back in the way back i really liked that brand new players could go to dangerous places with experienced players and help out. Like, even if all your skills sucked, you could stand in the back-line and help by bandaging fighters, and that would help the party bc there wasn't any party size limit or anything so you were just contributing healing and not causing any problems. So folks who just started could go and play with their grandmaster wizard friends.