top ten ideas you should stop posting new threads about

[animary]

Winter must have come up before, surely?

One of the first guiding quests require you fill a kushka, but all of the rivers are frozen.
You make a fire by the lake to unfreeze the water, but you've not enough stamina to use a firebrand. When you do, the firebrand fails to light the fire.
I spent 40 minutes trying this the other day.

This is absolutely brutal for newbies.

Winter occurs roughly every three months and lasts about four days. So you can always log out, wait four days, and return.

Starting in winter is difficult. Look for a larger lake that isn't frozen completely or look for springs (resemble large rocks but have water flowing on one side, they do not freeze (set your icon options to show them on map). You can also explore caves, many have rivers and ponds, but be careful, bats can KO a newcomer.
Your survival skill affects success with fire starting, once above 50 or so you rarely fail; once you discover cat gold you can start a fire with two pieces of it, always works; and eventually you get a hearth magic option for starting fire.

[vatas]

Still, two significant problems:

1. Someone who happens to try out the game, for the first time, during winter - is going to have a bad first impression.

2. Winter being such a pause on player activity to the point of "just stop playing for 4 days" means it's a perfect opportunity to quit the game. There's hard data that ever winter culls significant portion of the active playerbase. Best cope I've come up with is that those players would've quit anyway and just end up crammed into the winter start, but it's hard to argue that's a good thing.

[animary]

Point 1 can apply, winter or not, to anyone first starting at the beginning of a new world. PvP and griefers during this time probably deter many prospective new players.

Point 2 is the opposite for me. Winter is perfect for exploring/questing; you can ride across lakes, up and down rivers, go nearly anywhere quickly, and no adders to deal with. Put a mound bed at the edge of the lake and continue fishing and/or tending the nets. Once settled with a pali I wish winter lasted longer. (But I prefer winter in RL also, lol.)