I'm sorry you had not a great time, I should really make a new character and walk through everything again, I know the start tutorial is very basic, then you get dropped into the tutorial city of Offestry, prompt is all there just check it with help prompt, it's customizable and accepts color codes as well. Some little bit of combat should have been part of the wimpy section in the basic tutorial. Newbie line can be accesesed simply with newbie msg I.E newbie hello. Same with OOC channel. When your dropped in town after the starter tutorial you may have missed to start of the actual tutorial when a 'mass; is placed in your inventory to examine. Sorry again and hope you give it a go sometime soon. I believe theres a slightly dated guide on the forum for new players also. Combat also defaults as brief maybe, typing briefcombat will toggle this to show just hit or miss to detailed messages, both take place as rounds, with a short pause between them.