I have only played a week, so I wanted to give my impressions as a beginner. I will probably show some ignorance in this, but that may be helpful as well to see what people may assume about the game. Overall, I am highly impressed. Lots of good design decisions and future direction from what I can tell. I find it a good roleplaying environment and a good background story (although I only know part of it so far).
Character Creation - I like the details and how you can use character points to customize a background. I was thinking of a similar system a few months ago for other MMORPGs. I can see this expandable in so many ways (faction adjustments, starting items, and family lineage (create children from existing players). One suggestion would be to turn the excess CP into money.
Starting out - I was very confused about where to go, what to do and who was a PC and who was an NPC. I skimmed the manual as I played to try to figure some of it out. Over time I did, but it was a slow learning process. One way to help this out may be to start people off with a simple quest like to take a note to a merchant that sells swords. This merchant will ask a quest of the player to kill some rats in the sewers. Kind of typical, but a good way to help a new person get their bearings.
Quests - I never did find someone who would offer a quest. Maybe I asked the wrong npcs. However, I really like the system where you have to talk to get quests as opposed to having them just handed out like candy.
Combat - Took me awhile to find out where rats were. I didn't feel comfortable fighting them hand to hand. I figured I needed a weapon first, so I was very reluctant to fight. Once I did, I killed a lot of rats. It is too early for me to judge the risk versus reward. I did notice one monster (torpor?) that did not fight back. His friend did though.
Movement - Took me awhile for me to get comfortable. I finally switched to first person and mapped mouse look to right click and context menu to middle click. That has worked well for me.
Loot - I got a lot of rat hides that I could not sell. Took me a long time to find out where to sell the other rat parts. I finally threw 100 hides away because I couldn't carry anymore. I asked around, but didn't get much help until today.
Exploring - I probably spent 4 or 5 hours exploring the plains out of the north? gate. I fould many interesting ways to fall to my death. My suggestion would be to show major roads a little better (if there are any). I got lost and never did find a city I was looking for. I did head out the east? gate but when I got to the forst path, I was stopped. I thought it was an invisible wall until someone told me it wasn't. I then realized I had to just try really hard to get on the path.
Grouping - This worked pretty well except for the other group member's life and magic bard going from blank to full. It was hard to follow group members because they kept disappearing.
Death Realm - I spent a few hours here until I found the way out. It was frustrating, but good in hindsight. I can't wait to see how this is expanded.
Spawning - Monsters just appear before you ina very predictable way. I think random spawns would help out some. Also, do not allow for spawns to appear in view of a player. I think this preserves an air of realism and gets rid of some camps.
Communications - Good standard communications. I like the range limit on says and shouts. It was odd to see large groups of people standing in a circle saying nothing (guess they were talking in guild or group). I thought they were NPCs for awhile until I finally noticed different color of names.
Graphics - Very enjoyable. There are a couple of places where graphics seem to be undefined like when you come out of the sewers and when you look at the huge waterfall from far away.
I am very excited about this game and can't wait to see what happens in the future. Good work.
