The leveling system, grinding, and crafting have all been given a different spin to offer an alternative experience. Leveling will happen as you earn experience from completing quests (not killing X number of fodder), but won't work quite the same as in other online role-playing games. The three classes will level up with roughly the same attributes for the early levels but, after you've hit level 6, you'll find three different specializations for each class. For example, rogues will be able to branch out into trickster, poisoner, or phase dancer. Each specialty will have its own unique set of skills that will differentiate them from each other, even within the same class.
Grinding is essentially gone, for both leveling and crafting. The quest-experience system eliminates the basic grinding of role-playing games, while crafting is kept simple by requiring you to bring materials to non-player characters that'll make items for you. Items are the other aspect of the game that's radically different from your typical online role-playing game in that they will be more cosmetic than functional during battle, as skills will determine success in combat.
The visuals in the game will rely on the Unreal 2.5 engine, which is churning out some unique MC Escher-esque visuals that represent the twisted landscape of the shards. As far as the character models go, you'll find a fairly detailed character editor that you can log some time with to create a custom character, or you can simply choose to go with a randomly generated one if you want to dive right in. The nice bit on the creation side is that the character types aren't limited by their class as they are in other games, meaning you can have a frail-looking stick be a mighty warrior, or have a burly type serve as your caster.
Here is what I find scary about this game. They are using the same class based splitting that EQ2 did......and they are using the same graphics engine that Vanguard did.
The requirements for an engine to be used in a MMO aren't specifically more demanding than a regular game, although there are issues that you solve with smart content. If you need to have 100 people in an area all at once you need to make sure your player models and textures are designed to work within that constraint. You also make your mob models and textures to fit those guidelines as well. Outdoor areas are hard on many engines, but there are ways to solve those problems if you build them correctly.
It may suck ass, but if it does I'd blame the developer and how they used their underlying technology and not the technology itself.
