Looks like they had a showing of this at DragonCon recently. There were some interesting tidbits posted by people who attended
here on the official boards.
On mounted combat and formations:
Mounted combat is a major thing to these guys, with formations and all that jazz. The video we got to see had about 20 people riding in formation with the leader of the formation [ he had his colors/standard as well ] deciding where the group went and the players controlling their weapons.
Pvp, large scale combat was also discussed and the technology being used to prevent “lag” looks promising. Part of the movie showed “group attack formation” on horses (can’t wait for that) and yes you will be able to break away from the formation and will be in control of the direction of you attacks, one person will be able to direct the direction the group is going but that is all that person can do with the group formation, everybody is responsible for their actions while on formation
On ranged combat (including magic):
In the same way that fighters will use their swords to slash at certain places on their enemy's body, so too will the magic user, or the archer, have to learn another skill when they need to fight. They'll trying to either do a shoulder level, or an fps style thing. Well, I can't really describe it the way he showed me, but it makes it sound like I need to reup my Planetside subscription. (Of course, I said, well, what if I'm not very good at that, and someone yells, "Better start practitcing!")
On character appearance:
Characters will change over time. You can get battle scars. There are other details that went up on that screen about how amazing the character models were, how they're using motion capture to generate them, and it went so fast, I couldn't get it all
The character creation system is going to be FAR more detailed than AO's.. and yes, that will include sliders. weight, height, skin tone, those are just a few that were mentioned. They didn't mention what could be changed on the face or anything, but I tend to think some changes will be available.
On Player Cities:
You can build your own cities. NPCs will build their own cities as well. These can either be in the border lands, or they can be further in, for more safety, and roleplay.
As far as cities go, it was mentioned that you will be able to “rent” npc’s to guard cities, homes, etc (not quite clear on this). Don't remember what different kind of npc's they said you could have.
On Mob AI:
Mobs AI will be very intelligent reacting to your level and situation. A single wolf might not attack you but a pack of wolves will come after you. What I gather from that is that agro will not necessarily be a result of level, area, location, etc but a combination of all. Mobs will react to your position, so a mob that is attacking you will try to get you even when you climb a rock a wall or whatever. Also mobs will be able to "hear and smell" you.
Jorgen briefly mentioned how they were aiming to get rid of the static mob mentality [where you pick off one in a flock of three and that one charges and the rest act like nothing is happening]. Things thrown about were NPC's having social cycles, sleeping, eating, raiding, partying, drinking, killing for plunder.. etc [ maslovian need pyramid was thrown about with much familiarity].
I like the sound of archery and magic have a bit of twitch to them. The mounted combat and formations sound good as long as the leader doesn't have too much control of things. I imagine things like battle scars and player cities will be the kind of things that end up getting cut due to time contstraints (I don't really care too much about scars but it would be nice to see cities make it in). The mob AI doesn't really seem to be anything all that new, but at least they're putting some focus on it.
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