Anyone have any favorite abilities or builds yet? Here's some things I noticed:
Mage Armor is REALLY good. This might just be because we don't have access to good medium or any heavy armors yet, but for 4 Memory, you get 200 armor in every category, which is only about 20% weaker than hide armor, and allows you to use all the skills that are restricted to light armor. (Spell learned from Black Widows.)
Frenzy is absolutely insane. The movement speed boost is great for traveling and the attack speed boost basically doubles your damage output. It says it doesn't work with ranged weapons but I noticed that it was working on my bow, so that's probably a bug. Definitely a necessity for martial characters who have no other uses for mana. (Spell learned from Skeletons.)
There's a number of abilities that make your next attack an automatic hit and crit while also applying a debuff, and all have 5 second cooldowns. Not sure if these skills will be good in PvP but they are great for mob farming. When combined with Frenzy and the quarterstaff, you can pump out massive damage in AoE crits very quickly. (The Bleed attack comes from wolves, the Silence attack comes from Goblin Cutthroats. There's also one for Cripple but I forget where I got it form.)
Put a little time in this morning. It has potential and all the systems seem pretty cool and straight forward. I don't think I will put much more time into the testing phase, but I will keep my eye on it and consider playing retail.
The game has a very Ultima Online feel to it. I have to wonder about any possible longevity after the initial exploration / settling phase is spent though.
I won a permanent key from one of the contests in the last alpha, so I'll be participating in future tests. If anyone else will be playing, I'm down for grouping up.