Feb 26th 2012, 3:24:46
Most of the above guys have handled it, but I'll restate it just to show how important it is:
1) If you decide to play on the Alliance, Free For All or Team servers, find an alliance/clan you can join, and to be honest, I'd recommend not starting on Team server.
2) Specialize. Most of the successful strategies in this game involve doing one thing really well, not everything a little bit.
3) Ask lots of questions and read the wiki. The wiki has a lot of very valuable information and the people here for the most part (especially on the Alliance and Free For All servers, where they can recruit you to be in their alliances) are very willing to help.
4) Generally, there are a lot of unwritten rules that you might find yourself breaking at the beginning, since this is a long standing game. If you end up getting killed for something, don't be dissuaded from playing, just try to figure out why you were killed and start over. Once you figure out those unwritten rules, they really make a lot of sense--in fact most of them are put there to ensure some level of fair play.
Good luck!