You all may have been right all along, this game may not be for me. Getting killed when I didn't notice that I had stepped outside the Boston area for no reason other than that the guy that 2 shot me could do a dance over my KO's body before the final blow was more of a bummer than I expected it to be (fortunately, I had the good sense to not buy any silver before committing completely to the game).
I really enjoy the crafting, exploring, and character development aspects of the game -- I find they are much better than the other games in the "Crafting MMO" market. I look forward to even more features in the aspect of farming and crafting (tree culture, farm animals, more interesting houses, etc.). I will wait a few months before creating my next character.
I would really love it if the devs would consider having several different rulesets on the various servers they are supporting. I think that an alternative non-permadeath ruleset would attract players from the crafting niche while not interfering with the players who will flock to Salem for the hardcore PvP; I would expect we would not be allowed to move characters between servers with different rulesets.