RPC Hands-On information!

(slightly edited for content and readability)

Look and Feel:

The build they ran was DX 9 and Graphics looked splendid. Funcom said it was a bit less demanding than Oblivion. The gameworld is absolutely HUGE, I bet you would need at least 300 hours to "explore" it , and it seemed to resemble Africa. By explore I mean rushing through the world like a Japanese tourist who wants to see Rome Paris London and Berlin in 1 hour. There were destructible objects, he showed me a gate that shut of another area, you could not open it in a conventional way but had to smash it with your sword instead.

There was no Mages or Archers in the build they showcased.

Character customization and feats:

Char creation is really awesome, there are sooo many sliders to adjust that you will be busy for quite some time, however you will not see chars who are fat, just a little puffy at max. The Feats System is going to provide us with some very individual characters as you will have to choose carefully which feats you want to take since you cannot have them all.

Combat:

You start with a pretty sturdy Piece of Wood thats about as big as a two-handed sword but proved to be quite deadly. You can take out groups of enemies in a few seconds and when you get out of combat you automatically heal up to full in a relatively short time(about 3 seconds from 5-100% on the starter island). This regeneration will get slower as you level up though.

The directional fighting system is very intuitive, you have a circle at the bottom of your HUD with 6 arrows that represent attack directions, these flash yellow when there is a combo available and you have to then push the flashing button with mouse or keyboard to trigger the combo within about a second.
You can also dodge or block enemy blows, and of course the AI can do the same. You need to exploit the AIs weak spots to do lots of damage, for example when fighting an NPC with a shield his shield glows green indicating that itīs a "protected" spot so you need to hit some other body part(which is coloured red), for example his weapon arm.
But the AI is smart! They will realize you`re exploiting their weak spot and switch shield and weapon.

NPCs/Enemies:

On the starting island there was a variety of monsters (Humanoids, Bats, Crocodiles, Gorillas and Zombies) and if Funcom hadn`t used the GM-Cheats to powerlevel his char a bit he would have prolly got his arse kicked by the Bats. There was a "Mother-Bat" that constantly spawned more Bats and after killing about 30 of the "Minion-Bats" I pointed out that the other one might be spawning them which proved to be correct.

The mobs even fight each other, which I really dig , though we didnīt get to see that. They drop "realistic" loot, you wonīt find a crocodile carrying a sword but rather just skin, teeth and bones. Additionaly there will be plenty of unique mobs that drop better than average loot and have a longer spawntimer.

Raiding and Gear:

PvE is supposed to be tons of fun and easy to get into, so you will not need to farm countless consumables (although they do exist) to beat a raid encounter (like in World of Warcraft), and there will be encounters like Tarasque in AO that combine PvE and PvP.
Gearwise there will be no uber loots, your character and his feats will be the real weapons. This is also used to try and prevent goldfarmers from ruining the economy as you will not really need a lot to get gaming seriously, apart from Battlekeep-building costs but thats a guild effort anyway.

Battlekeeps:

Building them will need the Guildmaster (might be officers too but i didnt ask) to have the Architect Feat.
You will be able to choose pre-defined buildings and place them as you see fit, so you can shape the actual layout of your BK but you will not be able to design buildings.

Sieges will be taking place once a week at maximum, and they are consensual. Meaning the attacking guild challenges the defenders and then they agree on a time for the battle to take place. You CANNOT deny a challenge. You cannot launch people with catapults, only rocks.

Apart from large battlekeeps there will also be smaller towers, so the smaller guilds will be able to hold something as well.

Hell:

Hell will contain monsters and even bosses and you will have to fight your way out, but I didnt get to see it.

Well thats all for now , we talked about lots more stuff and Iīm sure the guys from Gamona.de will give a very detailed report as soon as they can. They even recorded me and FC-Guy chatting about the game so you might get to hear our voices.