I understand the reasoning behind the exploit stopper, point is, I was undamaged when I logged off - I was in the inn outside Wheaton at the time, there were no hostiles around, and as I was going to be away for some time, I assumed logging off was the thing to do.
As for the quests, from talking to a few players there, the ones you get at start up are apparently for when you are higher levels than a starting character - missing girl and a missing husband. My character has very slowly reached 5th level - I die a lot, even when playing with a friend. So we aren't really impressed with it.