[BlackSolider]

What's a better first impression:

1) Brothers house + bunch of people idling in lvl 14.

or

2) A giant castle with a (hopefully) compelling storyline.

Either way, my opinion is that you need to do something on the server story-wise before you actually go to the overworld. A good example would be the game Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. You start out in a jail, go through some storyline stuff, set up your character, etc., and eventually make your way out of jail into the real world. From that point, you can either follow the arrow on your map and start the main story, or you can wander around and do the hundreds of quests, join a guild, etc.