I've wondered about that attitude, and you might be on to something there. For me Ryzom was my first MMO, and the only prior experiences I had to compare it with were singleplayer RPG games. In those singleplayer RPG games, generally it took quite a while before you got from the starting city to the second city. You'd spend a lot of time just adventuring around the starting city first. So I thought nothing of spending my first several weeks in Ryzom being constricted to just one capital and it's surroundings.
But as far as I can tell, MMOs these days mostly always have all their starter cities easily linked, either by a totally safe road that even lower levels can travel or by some form of teleportation. So it's not surprising if newbies come into Ryzom expecting to be able to see all the cities in one day, and when they can't, they feel as though this game is horribly slow. "It takes weeks to do what only takes a day on other MMOs? Sjeesh!" It's all about expectations.
But as far as I can tell, MMOs these days mostly always have all their starter cities easily linked, either by a totally safe road that even lower levels can travel or by some form of teleportation. So it's not surprising if newbies come into Ryzom expecting to be able to see all the cities in one day, and when they can't, they feel as though this game is horribly slow. "It takes weeks to do what only takes a day on other MMOs? Sjeesh!" It's all about expectations.