Tehehe... really nice idea...
I do try to have my character out of the shadows when I see
anything resembling RP... though it's not always the case.

Sounds entertaining... To bad I don't run around insanely all the time

*a shadow slips past the plaza just outside the rign of mercenaires*

Dermott observes the needles violence and the death of an innocent.
"Such a sad anu worthless thing" he says to himself. "May nature guide
him safely to the end" is bearly heard on the wind.

*a shadow disapears among the nearby shadows*

When this crash happened I ran ps in gdb and a friend helped me debug it... found that something was being set to null but when we set the breakpoints to catch it it went through fine so I was acctually able to get myself out without any help...

you guys do realize that this is a  and is still in construction. This is also being made by people who are not being paid to my knowledge, and are working on it in their free time. i understand what you are saying but you are comparing this to fully developed games that have huge teams of people who are being paid top dollar to make games. I'm sorry but this is not one of those games (personally, i'm glad it  is the way it is. If it wasn't, it wouldn't have gathered such a great community).

Just remember good games take time to make, and even the best designed game can turn into crap with a bad community.

Hit it bang on... and this is the main reason I like Free Software be it games or any other apps...

Everything starts with the community and ends with it as well. It's the community that either supports it or doesn't.
Personaly I wish I could help out with planeshift development but my skills as a C/C++ coder are more or less non-existant beyond small
patches here and there...

I must say I have to disagree with some of the review...

The controls are very clunky. Mouse control is unstable, so most people use use arrow keys to move around, ala Tomb Raider from too many years ago.

I acctually like using the keyboard a lot. I only use some things like long walks(mouse run) or when initiating interaction with other players
i.e. trade, talk to an npc, use etc... with the mouse. The shortcut system is great and makes doing things easily.

There are no custom skins. Look around town... all dwarves look the same. All humans look the same. All human males even are stuck with the same beard. Rock-people look the same. The only difference is hair color. You could put on armor, which shows up on some races, but then you look exactly like all others wearing armor.

Hmmm I don't get that impression. Yes many look the same but so do in other games until they work more on it... There are some that
look the same though most noticably the Kran but from my perspective I've seen many different and unique characters.

There is only one world, and it is tiny compared to other MMORPG games, but since there are usually only 70 to 250 players online at a time, it is big enough to not be crowded.

It's slowly growing as the developers have time to make new areas. I haven't even explored it all and I've been playing for 4 days so far.

There are a few potions that can temporarily boost your stats, but these only boost one stat, and only 5 to 8 points at most, and they do not stack. So someone with a 200 strength can only boost to 205 at most, and the boost only lasts 2 or 3 minutes. Utterly useless.

I guess you haven't played many pen and paper roleplaying games... 2-3 minutes is ussualy enough to complete many combat rounds
in most of them and that's where potions are supposed to be used... To gain a quick, small and short advantage over your oponent...

I won't comment on the other points as that would be duplicating my existing post in this section...

I like your idea of theoretical training only every so-many levels.  The poor trainers would go broke though. 

Considering the amount of players I doubt it. And considering how quickly the price skyrockets...

also, I take great pleasure in slicing/dicing ever-stronger monsters.

I'm not such a fan of hack'n'slash type games... hell I don't even like first person shooters.. and frankly the click and wait for the chars to
fight it out combat is dull to me. I'd prefer something more like click to start combat and then have to move around and fight etc like in
mortal combat or some such...

Hence why I'm playing a spellcaster(Dermott a Menki){yes I pick somewhat odd combos for characters}. It acctually takes some time and active participation to combat with magic
while I could start hacking away at something with weapons and went off to make myself lunch or something...

but all training costs a lot of money.

Afaik low levels of training don't cost tons of money. And stats training isn't that much as well.

Here's some stuff I think should be improved and I know some are already being worked on.

magic system:
     at the moment magic it's just there for show... though I am and will be playing a spell caster(no specialisation in any way).
     The stuff that I find absurd:
     To get any spells above the basics ones you need to spend tons of trias and PPs to acctually get anything done. Unless either
     the usage changes or a lot more spells get added so that players can for example use lvl1, lvl2, lvl3 etc spells and making them
     balanced with the rest of the combat system would go along way. Having specific skills that you can train that allow for example casting
     a spell that is lvl1 at a higher level which of course alters certain properties of the spell. I.e. duration get's doubled(+1level) power get's
     maximized(+1level), area get's doubled(+1 level) so to cast a level 1 spell that lasts for twice as long, has double the power and
     double the area would have to be cast as level4 spell. Other possibilities include range, max damage and others.

quests:
     you should get quests that give items only once(i.e. ring of familiar and others), any simple quests like: bring me some gold ore
     or such would bo possible to run multiple times.

npc interface:
     I like the freeform way of doing things but make the following command and interface available:
     /dialog command that will provide possible phrases(not only the needed ones for the quest)
     basic idea:
     come up to the npc and start talking to him you or he can't get through to the other so you switch to the /dialog
     it would bring up a selection of pharses some that include the keywords for the quest in the proper way or some that
     are completly irrelevant. Also this should not be limited to the quest npcs. You could ask any npc about quest keywords.
     some might even give you a clue.

new characters:
     provide starting packs for players. For example:
     1000 trias, some plain boots, plain pants, plain shirt, plain belt, plain hat, and depending on some combat/magic/etc stats:
     either one base glyph from the way the charater is most skilled(if more than one are equal random of course)
     or daggers(if skilled with knives etc...) or other weapon depending on the skill. An interesting ingame way of doing this might be:
     Character start in:
     Training school for adventurers ran by guild of adventurers
     Get's assigned an NPC mentor that guides him through some initial things.
     Movement, combat, spell casting, crafting, etc... All training tools would have to be returned or character couldn't proceede OR
     they could be kept as a starting pack. At the end of the training school the character would then have his starting pack or be given one.

npc interaction:
     npc's should be able to respond to:
     about magic or about craft[ing] or about training skills etc... of course not all would know the same information but this way the
     characters would be running around and asking about things. They would either get directed to the trainers refered to other people
     or be given the infermation they need. For example:
     I ask the Kran at the plaza about magic and he points me to the north gate saying the guards there might now.
     So I go to the north gate and ask one of the guards about magic and they direct me to the magic shop(give me directions).
     When I arrive at the magic shop I ask the owner about magic and he explains to me about the basic ways of magic and if I wish
     I can train under him(quest). If I agree he would then first direct me to get some trias so I can afford the glyphs. He might say that I
     might want to mine some gold ore first and he would generously purchase 5 ores at 240/ore. So then I need to learn how to either
     mine or I can ask him about money and he could tell me some other ways on how to earn money. Then when I have enough I would
     come back and buy a glyph(if I didn't already have him). I would then tell him I have a glyph. He would then instruct me on how to use
     it properly.

mines:
     I don't really like the current way of a mine is just an area you dig in. What I'd like is a mine dug into the side of the muintan(doesn't
     have to be huge network or anything... It could even be just an entrance and like 5 steps in. They should also have a graphical
     representation of what one can mine there a little sign with a picture of gold for example. Also I think a player should be limited by
     the ammount they can mine for themselves in a day. For example: you can mine 30 ores per day anything above that is taxed.

economy:
     self sustaining ecenomy ussualy requires the money to circle. So having some way of taxation would be nice. I'd say you can have
     N thousands of trias of gear with no tax(general tax exemption) anything above that you pay 10% of the extra as tax. Of course you
     would have to come to an official building to pay your taxes and if you wouldn't pay them within N time slices of due there would be
     a bounty on you and you would be fair PvP game for players to find you and either bring you in peacfully or kill you and collect the
     money that way(it would auto-detuct from your inventory) or if you have the money in a bank/vault it would be auto-deducted from
     there.


Just som eof the things that itch me I might post more later...

If you read the mail text carefully you'l see it reads tat you don't need to enter the code as the link already includes it and by clicking on the link you are confirming it. The code itself is just for your own refernec(I guess if something goes wrong)..