I was able to grab a key and played a bit. It's still rough, as you would expect a Beta to be, but I was impressed.
First, installing the game takes a negligible about of time. You just load a browser plug in that takes, what, 5 seconds to install? After that, everything loads very quickly in the game. Plus, on a fairly old machine here, I was able to run it maxed out on graphics with no problems at all. And, the environment is very nice.
They didn't have a whole lot active the first CB, but what was there was pretty fun. It does feel a bit Diablo-esque, but I like Diablo so I guess that's OK.
Definitely encourage everyone to try the next round of CB if you get a chance to grab a key. They should have more quests and such online this time, so I'm looking forward to it.
Yep, it was disappointing that they did not enable quests after the intro levels. Bad move for the first CB I think. Next time they are enabling a lot of quest lines, both class based and story line. This time round though they wanted to test in particular the dungeon system and PvP which is why the content was highly limited. So roll on November 30th. 
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To reiterate what has already been said - the game setting is industrial age fantasy heavily based on the New Epoch RPG.
Anyway, the first CB has just ended. Next CB on 30th November with a new race and plenty of quests will be implemented for testing. Plenty of CB keys still available.
On my first look this weekend I have to say that I am totally impressed with what I saw. The game play is brilliant, almost as good as CoH and much smoother. Chrome is recommended for best result in my experience to get max settings at smooth FPS (50 max for this CB). It seems you can choose from 3 power sets per archetype (class) and the stats of your race give much diversity to those. Choose from 1 set at first and as you level up you get to choose from the others too, or you can specialise in just the 1. There are dungeons-a-plenty with various daily challenges where you can win stuff to wear, break down, mod up and tokens for the chance to win high value game features like the steam bike (mount) and combat active pet. The class I played reminded me of the MM here. A pet came as a class power plus the combat active one which spawns outside of dungeons.
For crafters there is a plethora of items to change up and/or break down into other items for mods, plus choosing the mods for your equipment along with the system to learn how to craft, which was confusing at first. With the massive amount of items the storage seemed way too small at 100 items per character (materials are stack-able but many, many items are not). I'm hoping the inventory increases at least 100% before the OB goes live. The market (auction house) only allowed 10 items but I have a feeling that will increase.
What I was most impressed with was the combat. After a little experience it becomes as intuitive as CoH. I can't really say that I was disappointed with anything, including all the limitations put on the GUI, the lack of quests and all the missing text and stats as the experience as a whole was quite refreshing.
IMO the game is "recommended" but, it isn't for everybody and that is fine.
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