A few more thoughts:
Beastlords, Berserkers, Frogloks and Vah Shir should be available from the start. Vah can start in Halas(same classes available, doesn't require tinkering with racial factions too much) until Luclin launches.
Tinkering, Research, Alchemy and Poisoncrafting should have their race/class restrictions removed.
The more I think about it, the more I think epics should be radically re-envisioned. Something like the LoY newbie quest weapons should be the starter point, for every class, with quested upgrades along the way every 5 levels or so, with the epic quest being broken up into tiered(Crude/'normal'/Planar) upgrades to this. The crude version should be available in the mid-game, around the time that players can obtain their Temple of SolRo/Prexus armor sets - and be soloable, but a grind to get(requiring as much effort as the ENTIRE set of soloable class armor). The upgraded version should be available around the time that group class temple armor is obtainable, again requiring as much effort to acquire as the entire set of class armor, and the final, Planar, version should require 3 drops(we have a sizable picklist here: Vox/Naggy/CT/BB/SL/Inny) from end-game planar/dragon bosses.
This makes them epic, but also levels the playing field for classes trying to obtain them, no more rogues getting epic in 5 hours, while Pallies take 5 weeks to get theirs.
I'm not a fan of the tutorial bit, but perhaps the crafted deity charms(Golden Idol of XXX iirc) could be turned into a tradeskilling questline, you get introduced to it at level 1 when you turn in your starter note and get a simple charm of [your deity here/the agnostic] which has 1 ac, and instructions from your guildmaster in how to craft upgrades for it, with a turnin of the crafted upgrade and the current tier of charm you have, you get the next one in the series. We could even set it up so players could pick which tradeskill they want to grind out for their upgrades.
"Hello Adventurer, would you like to craft your next charm upgrade using [alchemy] [baking], [brewing], [fletching], [jewelcraft], [poisoncrafting], [pottery], [reasearch], [smithing], [tailoring] or [tinkering]?"
While of course adding in a final upgrade stage which uses a turnin token from a raid source.
Realizing that not all players will want to craft, a further option would be 'Hello Adventurer, do you wish to [craft] an upgrade to your charm or will you perform a dangerous [task] for me, to acquire your next upgrade?" The upgrades would be the same, the quests would be given by your GM, but once you had moved onto ToP/ToSR quests, I think class GMs should also be present in those temples, and a pointer quest should send you that way at a certain level, where you will continue the charm line from your class GM, who will in turn point you to the nearby NPC(s) to do armor quests.
Something like "Greetings Paladin, you've done well so far, but it's time for you to move on, Gwel Harnek in the [Temple of Prexus] could probably tell you how to upgrade your charm further, and would have information for you on more tasks as well."
You say "What Temple of Prexus?"
Dundar Palliessuck says "The Temple of Prexus can be found on the Isle of Erud's Crossing, in between City of [Qeynos] on [Antonica] and the City of [Erudin] on [Odus]."
etc.
For the Temple of Prexus custom zone, I would just copy the Temple of Sol Ro(can this be done?) and put the entry smack dab on Erud's Xing. Then alter the graphics a bit(change water to lava) and npc population(Prexus guards instead of sol ro guards, water elementals instead of fire elementals, you know, the theme of prexus is as watery as sol ro's is fiery). Both zones would need to be slightly repopulated, with appropriate class GMs and quest givers. And, of course, the quest lines would have to be revamped, and several new ones designed from the ground up(not too hard, there are enough Sol Ro quest lines as it stands to just copy/paste and change class/race restrictions for the majority of it).
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