What do you think Darkfall needs to attract more players?

Yesterday, I created a thread in Darkfall Forums with that same question and a little poll to see what people think about it. I knew what would people say in the thread itself because the real answer to that question involves all the option on the poll but I wanted to know which one of those would stand up. The results are:

Fix some broken mechanics/Properly balance the game		35	41.18%
Increase the noob-friendlyness: safe zones, bigger protected areas...		14	16.47%
Merchandising: box in stores, ads...		37	43.53%
Reduce the grind: faster character progression, increase the loot tables...		39	45.88%
Nothing special, keep improving the game, people will come.		22	25.88%
Other		17	20.00%

Not very surprisingly, the winner is "Reduce the grind", closely followed by "Merchandising" and "Balance". More people than I suspected has voted for "Nothing special" and even if I love the game I realize there's still some work to do before Aventurine can focus only on content. Actually, less than that has voted for "Increasing noob friendlyness" and I expected that choice to be among the top voters. Some ForumWarriors will call me carebear but I believe that if we really want Darkfall to become a very succesfull game, the niche needs to open up just a bit. There's no need to do great or essential changes but some little ones to make newb's life easier. I don't know how many people stops playing because of this and I know this problem is linked with the Grind but I think some more noob help would be apreciated. Finally, what I think would attract more players than anything is "Merchandising". Only if you are dedicated MMORPG follower will you know about Darkfall and the very big crowd of PC players is the real objective. Games like WoW, WAR or AoC have received extensive coverage by many videogames magazines and websites and that's what Darkfall needs.