The folks over at SOE really love the players. In an effort to make the game less intimidating to the truly new player, they've eliminated some of the more complicated newbie quests.

There's more than a little misunderstanding going around about our reasons for the removal of certain quests in the last game update. It isn't that we wanted to downsize the newbie experience or remove content on some whim; we want the quests in our game to provide a consistent level of quality and not cause players (especially new ones) needless frustration.

Read the rest of what Moorgard has to say here.