You start out with 0 skill in everything (not sure about the kicking though), you need a GM to set your skills, or if you are able and a GM, this is how you set your skills: target yourself and type #setallskill 252, or the skill number you want, 252 is max. After you set your skills, mobs will also start hitting you. Hopefully this is a fix in 3.2
Seems some servers will be moving to self-lvling, so it does sound like it will be fixed. My server will probably be a self-lvling, seems blasting right to lvl 60 gets pretty boring.