1) My first days of LotC were alright. It was surprising to see myself so committed to the community in such a short span. Whatever it did, it made me donate about 30 bucks for the crowns, maybe because despite the existant faults (every server has faults, remember that, no matter how perfect someone says a server is) it is still a really great server and something that could actually work for my taste. I have already met lots of nice people that assisted me with the basics and advanced.
2) My favorite experience so far was the conversation in general. Many people have the ability to converse both in and out of character with little to no grammar issues. The more interesting part is the in-character conversation, since as a non-human race, such matters are taken from another perspective and style.
3) If we're talking about LotC, then as a fresh player there is nothing that makes me want to quit yet, I would have to see for myself if there is anything that would make me call quits.. but let's hope that it is not reaching such point.
If we're talking about the former server I used to frequent however, that is another story. It was a roleplay server, indeed, but with no whitelist restrictions and with rules that are, in my opinion, less enforced upon the community. As such, players may have had less stress because of an inexistant whitelist requirement, but rulebreakers were much more frequent. You had more trolls, more FailRPers, you even had XRay hackers.. on a roleplay server. There were many faults that just made me leave the community and look for a more serious one, and that is when I found you guys. If you want to hear more about my experience on the former server, talk to me on Discord.
4) I should mention that I have come across LotC in February, and I was going to apply much earlier, but I was unable to access the forums for some reason. That means that I have read about the races way back. At first, the Human race seemed like the one I should start with, but after some minutes of thinking, I decided that I should choose something less generic. As such, I have looked at the other races, the Orc, the Elf and the Dwarf. Dwarves were something I was not yet familiar with at that time and I wasn't going to pick the Orcs due to their warfare lifestyle, so the best bet was to go for the Elves. But then I had to pick a subrace, and out of all subraces, the High Elf was the most interesting. In my opinion, they were simply the folk that just wanted to mind their own business, away from the other Descendants and even their brethen, keeping to themselves. That automatically translates to a Switzerland-like civilization, so that meant peace and enlightment for the most part, and I was right! I enjoy the race, the only problem is the timezone since most High Elves are players from the U.S.
5) I would only recommend a better availability of players due to the differetiating timezones, so that overall RP would be much more frequent. Toxicity is never inexistant, but it can be kept at an insignificant value, and for the most part it can be controlled as far as my experience has developed.
The community is newbie-friendly enough, something which I respect, so there is no issue on that.
Roleplay wasn't very frequent, again, due to my unfortunate timezone, but it had quality. I hope that in the future, once the summer break begins, I will be able to frequent much more than I already do.
The voting system is somewhat generous, keeping you motivated to vote everyday.
The price tags for crowns, considering the VIP rank values, are hefty. Yes, Aether rank is cool indeed, you can spit, you can puke, you can set your prefix to a red and black edgelord signature in place of the VIP prefix, but I would see about 200$ (worth of crowns) as a pocket-friendly price, over the gargantuan 500$ (again, worth of crowns). I don't know though, maybe due to overall quality of the server, big expenses are needed to hire the best of the best? Or perhaps to keep expensive servers up. I really don't know, but in my opinion, the crowns required to reach the top rank need an exorbitant amount of money. If sales are frequent, then there is little issue.
+1 because I enjoyed answering your questions.