Well I did another long testing session, I got my knight to about 85ish. Now that I have seen how mob/leveling progression works, I will give my impressions so far.
Likes:More linear progression. No more, Reach X stat bonus and 1 shot mob Y, with weapon Z until 99. You simply have to move around now. This makes leveling feel a lot more satisfying, because it only takes a few levels until its time to upgrade to the next hunting location.
Less gear restrictions. At least at the early levels (1-90), it really isn't necessary it to make a gear setup for a particular mob or mob type because you move around so much. Specifically gearing for a spot is just as good as ever, but you no longer have to do it now. A crappy agi knight will probably do just fine with a couple elemental 2handed swords.
Agi gives you a lot of attack speed right off the bat and
you don't have to pump so much str for decent melee.I think these two changes bring some love back to the older style hybrid builds. Plus, Luk is an all around better stat now than it was before. So once you are looking at dumping 10+ stat points per STR or DEX or whatever, instead dropping some points into Luk doesn't seem like a bad idea.
Level 4 weapons are about as strong as they should be now. And they seem to make good all-purpose weapons with endows.
Getting to job 50 is not what it used to be.Even at j49, I was still getting 0.3-0.5% Jexp
per monster. After renewal, it won't be painful to get those mages and acos to j50 like they need.
Card rarity is going to be completely switched up. You will be killing mobs in your 40s, and 50s, that you otherwise wouldn't mess with until your mid 80s or 90s. Likewise, some low level mobs are going to be put in a much higher level bracket with renewal. In the end, you will likely have more personal access to the mobs that you need cards from.
Dislikes:Monsters have lost a lot of their individuality. This is a big one, all monsters are just about the same now. A strouf and a merman are basically the same thing. Just like how an evil druid and a wraith are the same. You will find yourself on a map with 2 or 3 different monsters that might as well just be the same. Also, I'm not really sure what elemental/size differences have been made, but I swear it feels like the whole mob Z is vulnerable to to elemental X has been toned down somehow.
Varying EXP. The fact that you get an EXP bonus/penalty depending on your level makes finding the "best" spot difficult. Also, just rolling up on a map and killing a monster is not enough. You have no idea if that 900exp is going to go down or up when you level. You literally have to have some kind of directory open in a browser.
Drops penalty. This has the potential to really, really suck. Some have said that it is not that bad after all, and others say it is terrible. I put it to the test by jumping on my 80 knight and AOE'ing down poison spores. I killed several mobs like this:

...And was only getting 2-5 spores
total. They drop 2 different types of spore items and one of them is at 90%
Edited by Pepperoncini, 12 September 2010 - 12:53 PM.