I want to pre-empt this with a caveat: I would, and also would *not*, recommend The Isle to people for various, various reasons. I, personally, have a fairly complicated, love/hate relationship with this game, but have found a way to actually enjoy the game without maximizing my personal tilt to the point of uninstalling.
For starters: I played this long ago back in Legacy, where I easily logged about 100 hours into this game. Now, the game's actively being developed via the Evrima branch - For new players, or fresh installations, this is not immediately apparent: You have to actually select that version of the game at installation to launch, as Legacy is the default. At times, the anti-cheat won't auto-install, either, so you end up having to do that yourself.
With that aside, over the years there have been a number of additions, changes, tweaks, all with ups and downs. Ignoring the development hell, and with what I would consider a foggy smidge of an idea as to the updates they're attempting to implement via either gameplay or menu UI, I can't fault developers for pushback from the community (Unreal Engine is a nightmare and often feels like it's actively fighting you to get even what feels like rudimentary things done).
Playing on Official servers? Can't do it. I cannot will myself to rawdog the experience, especially without a more easily navigable map nor a scooby as to where the hell I'm going without even a pre-amble into what the compass's symbols mean. Over time, you figure these things out, but when starting fresh, it feels maddeningly unhelpful - but, as these things are uncovered, it becomes something of second nature. I have found my enjoyment derived almost entirely out of Unofficial servers, where community teams enforce their own little server cultures, and have all manner of tools and systems set up to help players - If you find one with sites, discord community attachments, etc, I encourage players to try and integrate into those groups, because it makes the game far more interesting when you have people you can play with.
