The question is in the title. For me the alpha test has died a little, because of the PVP, and the time it takes to be flagged for PVP.
With only 20 hours before you are PVP flagged you have time to explore, do low level hotspots, build your house and make your stations. Now you are ready to have fun in the game! The problem is that there are only a few hotspots in the game and they are generally camped by large PVP groups, as it is their only chance to PVP. If you are a solo player, a casual player, small group player or just want PVE the hotspots are almost impossible to survive as you get caught by large groups of PVP’ers.

I don’t mind dying to PVP, losing my gold and loot. Risk vs reward. Loss of gear hurts, as you have to go back to base and get new gear then return to a hot spot if you want to continue.
The problem is that the good hotspots or some legendary creatures are not accessible to some players now due to PVP camps. This is the same as other MMO’s, but in this game there will be a choice of locations for different play styles.

If you want to PVE, the best spots and end game content is not available. I have been killed in a group of 3, 3 times in last two days at Bone Pit by very large PVP groups. We wanted to summon Crimson but it was camped. PVP’ers have to go where they know the players will be.

This alpha is now just a PVP test, some people in my city have left the alpha as they don’t want to get ganked every time they go to a hotspot.

I don’t think this will stop the big issues with PVP. In the Spring Alpha all the Points of Interest were “camped” by large groups of evil players killing everyone. In the Fall Alpha I don’t expect it to change. There will still be camps. The game became unplayable for solo or small group PVE’ers.
Alignment doesn’t change the end result. Solo players die lose 2 pieces of equipment and end back at their base.

@Prometheus this alpha had the chance for people to play for the whole month, unfortunately this alpha is over for a lot of people already. A lot of players are suffocated because they can’t access content due to large PVP groups killing anyone they cross.

Why not allow PVE players to play through all of the alpha testing without having to engage in PVP if that is their wish. I am in a guild that plays a lot of MMO's, and most of those players are not coming back to the game. At present in the Alpha testing phases since the "Spring Alpha" one of the main things that the dev's are doing is pushing people away from the game before it has even started. Is that a good business model? The fact that people are discussing it here, shows that people are leaving not joining.

The spring alpha was fun until your safe hours expired. If you wanted to explore and try the high end PVE areas they were constantly camped by Evil groups. No access to high end game areas for solo players or small groups. Do you want to spend 20 minutes of time travelling to a high end combat zone, spend another 20 minutes fighting to the fun content, maybe play for 20 minutes in the zone, than get jumped by PK'ers and get teleported home. 1 hour wasted, and nothing to show for it.
Has anyone played Albion? There is a large number of zerg guilds who control elements of the game, you can join them or just die a lot.

If the devs want to retain the playerbase they have to allow for PVE only in the test phases or customers will just leave.

So I know a lot players love their PVP, and with 20 hours of play you can flag yourself evil and start attacking other players.

A sheriff is meant to be the answer to the evil players. To become a sheriff you need 10,000 karma? This isn’t really an offset to evil players. I have 60 hours of play and only 7000 karma. This is not very balanced, I can get attacked by evil players yet can’t hunt them down until I have met a ridiculous PVE grinding goal.

Either make the sheriff ability easier to get to or increase the knowledge points needed before you are flagged for PVP.

So I have 60 talent points, been to all the mob locations, have a house , have a lot of 'stuff' and I am rich.
What else is there to do? The answer for me is not much else to play and/or test out. I am taking a back seat until more 'game' gets released. Most of Tasty Swords and a couple other alliance guilds are in the same boat and have stepped back from the game. Tasty Kaos and Farmville will decay and die.

Common Feedback:

1. PVE is easy, all the game content can nearly be solo'd. What to do next? End game PVE? Legends compete for resources with rare mats from gear. Too expensive to do legendary bosses
2. Would never go evil in PVP, as you can't afford to lose your gear. You die in T2/3 gear and you need 5 rare materials for another set that has less than 1% drop rate. Every death as an evil player in PVP requires at least 500-1000 high end mobs to be killed in a grind. PVP is very rare, and we need more. Durability hit would be fine, but don't take the gear!
3. Drop rates (enchanting / gear grind). The drop rates are so low on high end mats it is just a grind
4. Enchanting is not balanced. Some T2 recipes are easy others hard, no math has been applied to the stats on reagents to work out what combos can be used per enchant. Previous alpha's were good and cost a lot of money to take chances with it
5. No gold sink, all MMO's need one or rampant inflation kills game. New players can never get a foothold without a mechanism to keep gold supply down (plot costs and city upgrades are not ones, I can grind 2K in less than 60 minutes in bandit hotspots).
6. Advanced smelters please fix them
7. Why add weather when so many other things to fix?

We want the game to be a success and I am keeping my fingers crossed. I will be back when new content comes out, along with a lot of others no doubt!

I have had issues when trying to use the Orbs of Proficiency when ranking up.
All 3 times I wasn't wearing any proficiency enchants which don't stack.

First issue:
Trying to rank Venomancy from rank 1 to rank 2, the pop up said you need 1 orb, which I had in inventory. I hit accept and the orb disappeared and I didn't rank up. It happened a second time. I did report that to discord.

Today (Orb of cryomancy)
15.21 game time in Ravens Crest, I tried to rank from rank1 Cryomancy to rank 2, again the orb of cryomancy disappeared without moving up rank. I was mounted for this. I took screen shots and spoke to Maltos. I had an orb of restoration which per Maltos I tried to rank up standing only (no inventory or bank open, and not in combat) and it did work.

Not sure what happened with the first 3 rank up attempts.

I saw something interesting on the patch notes about how mage is still the most used but not so much staff.
I take this another way.

A lot of players I see are using typical mage spells but are not mages. They are melee but they drop totems and use mage cc.

I posted this on reddit also:

Mage Build

No builds out there yet, and there are no proven meta builds so here is my best mage build.

General Advice for early game

I would advise to start as a pyromancer, as fire is good for early game. You can add different builds later as you learn more spells.
Wherever you plan to live (Aehern or Terra), I would advise spending your first 40 hours of game time while safe on Aehern. Build knowledge, and specifically clear all the goblin camps and complete the knowledge for the Goblin Shamans (the goblin camps are just South West of the stargate on Aehern). The goblin shamans give the totem spells at 100%, which are key to being a good mage. By the time you have done your safe hours in Aehern you can head over to Terra.

You can have several mage builds (fire, ice, shock, poison, acid). I will concentrate on ice, but the talent tree is the same for most builds:

Talent Tree
Intelligence Tree:
4 points in +2 mana regeneration
+1 intelligence
4 points in either +2.5% Cooldown reduction or +5% mana regeneration
+1 intelligence
4 points in cantrip expert (5% cooldown reduction on tier 1 spells)
1 point cantrip master (20% spell dmg increase tier 1 spells)
Perception Tree:
4 points in 1% critical chance
+1 perception
4 points in +10% critical dmg
+1 perception
4 points in true striker (ability advantage)
1 point in Inevitable (first attack cant be dodged and crit attack)
4 point in sharp caster (+3 crit chance – between int and perception)
1 point in overcharge (+25% crit dmg for magic abilities)
Constitution Tree:
4 points + health/magical armor
+1 constitution
4 points +magic armor/health
+1 constitution
Strength Tree:
Health regen/physical armor
whatever you feel like for the rest

Gear
Scholar armor (made with primal weave) for high resists on magic
Imbue / Enchant = T2 Evasion + T2 health regeneration on all pieces
Ice staff (T2 evasion, T2 crit chance)

Use www.fracturedtools.com for help with reagent and enchant needs

This caps evasion at 1000, with high armor on scholar you can take a beating (using healing and bandages too).

Spells
Frost blast
Magic missile (this can be replaced, I use it to keep scholar bonus up)
Frost Nova
Totem Of Winter
relocate
Minor healing (change for higher heal spells if needed)
Globe of spell protection / Beast appropriate armor (fire armor for fire elementals etc..)

Drop totem, open with Frost nova, Frost blast, Magic missile (or other) to keep scholar bonuses up. You can keep enemies frozen and dps hard. This build is great for the volcano areas on Terra with sulphurate and blazium deposits. You destroy fire elementals and greater fire elementals. Storm totems are good for earth elementals and trolls. For other builds swap fire skills and fire totem in, etc..

No idea about PVP viability, but for PVE with really high defense and good dps I can solo an ogre easily

Let me know your build thoughts

There is a full PVP planet coming in the future. Like other games a lot of PVP'ers will stay on Aehern as they like to attack people who are not PVP.

The crafting system is much better than it used to be. In early beta's you had to own the right recipe which made it almost impossible to get the set unless you were part of a big guild/town who could farm the big mob camps or purchase out right the recipes.

Now anyone can make Tier 2 gear, the cost is essence and gold. I thinking crafting has reached the point that crafting is for personal use, as intended.

Set up location at a town, use bank for gold and material storage
Farm grokos/goblins camps
Farm human bandit camps
When have about 4K gold, build house (2x2 is easiest to make in terms of materials)
Get a forge (inside house), smeltery outside house
Farm harder camps with guild or friends
Build distillery, essence extractor
farm crystal mats
Make t2 gear (by the time you have all the mats gold isn't an issue).

Use the wiki, and fracturedtools.com to help as guide to stations and imbue/enchants

If you have cleared the Groko camps, move to Human bandit camps.
In an hour you can easily make 1-2K gold/hr. Also the loot drops can be sold at the auction house (The Shire town near the Stargate has a very active auction). I would advise that you keep all reagents you collect as you will need them for upgrades later in the game.

If you are early in the game and still inside your 40 hour safe timer, I would suggest you get over to Aehern when someone opens the stargate. Through the stargate near the town of Hangover is the goblin mob area (South west of Hangover town). If you want to progress in the game as a mage you will NEED to complete the knowledge on the goblin shamans as the totem spells are the best in the game for mages. Stay in Aehern until this is completed, collect all new knowledge on plants.

Only move back to Terra (with all your good reagents) when you are near the end of the safe timer.

The old tutorials starting at the 'starter' towns were a bit better. It walked you through food, killing things, armor and crafting and then sent you out in the wild.

Tip for the future don't leave the tutorial island until you have killed all the mobs up to 100% and spent the knowledge points.
If you skip the island you lose out on about 5,000 knowledge points which is a big deal. It is bad that it is not really clear.

There are a few problems with recipes, durability, drop rates and the economy.
The current bottle neck is on the drops for rare items to make the armor. I personally or my guild would never sell any of the rare items (will stones, death crystals), as they are too valuable. I don't see much more items hitting the market as the respawn times means that people will fight over those resources so they still wont make it to the market.

The durability on gear is so high that there isn't or won't be much of a player economy when the game launches. If a poor set doesn't die after 4 weeks why worry about trying to become a crafter and work on the economy. Cut the durbality of poor and normal items way down.

No gold sink in game, gold has a meaningless value. Crafting costs are not high as you can solo farm 2K gold in under an hour at sea trolls or bandits.

The recipe drops are weirdly random and once you have them all as a guild what do you need from the economy?

Enchanting system is broke for materials. Some enchants super easy, some impossible or share resources with gear crafting items.

My rant over too!

So I have 60 talent points, been to all the mob locations, have a house , have a lot of 'stuff' and I am rich.
What else is there to do? The answer for me is not much else to play and/or test out. I am taking a back seat until more 'game' gets released. Most of Tasty Swords and a couple other alliance guilds are in the same boat and have stepped back from the game. Tasty Kaos and Farmville will decay and die.

Common Feedback:

1. PVE is easy, all the game content can nearly be solo'd. What to do next? End game PVE? Legends compete for resources with rare mats from gear. Too expensive to do legendary bosses
2. Would never go evil in PVP, as you can't afford to lose your gear. You die in T2/3 gear and you need 5 rare materials for another set that has less than 1% drop rate. Every death as an evil player in PVP requires at least 500-1000 high end mobs to be killed in a grind. PVP is very rare, and we need more. Durability hit would be fine, but don't take the gear!
3. Drop rates (enchanting / gear grind). The drop rates are so low on high end mats it is just a grind
4. Enchanting is not balanced. Some T2 recipes are easy others hard, no math has been applied to the stats on reagents to work out what combos can be used per enchant. Previous alpha's were good and cost a lot of money to take chances with it
5. No gold sink, all MMO's need one or rampant inflation kills game. New players can never get a foothold without a mechanism to keep gold supply down (plot costs and city upgrades are not ones, I can grind 2K in less than 60 minutes in bandit hotspots).
6. Advanced smelters please fix them
7. Why add weather when so many other things to fix?

We want the game to be a success and I am keeping my fingers crossed. I will be back when new content comes out, along with a lot of others no doubt!

We have had plenty of discussion on how to handle permissions in a town. When the game launches you are likely to see 100's of residents in each town. Some may be helpful, some may be agents, some may be thieves, you have no idea.
We discussed in TK having a town with set blacksmith tech but no smelters (minimum) in town and we would do all crafting in our own or housing plots (too much time and resources to be wasted).

For farming if you have no control over the residents the town (multiple towns) can easily die. We are in BETA with limited numbers yet people have been sabotaging or stealing the farm produce. There needs to be permissions for farming at least. Leave the town Blacksmith and Tannery alone if you want (I would use my own plot for mats anyway).

Permissions for farmers!!