I can't say much about the raids/dungeons, as I've not done any of them yet. I have one for a story quest, though, so hopefully it won't be long. I have, however, been doing solo, duo and "light party" (minimum 4 players) fighting, and have done a number of the new quests. My thoughts are...

- Battles are far, far better. The new system works extremely well. I find myself using actions so fast that often the previous action's animation cuts out to start the new action. Hate-management is something that Danielle and I have picked up on quickly and although we still need to practice certain things, it's much easier than it ever was before and yet obviously other people we've partied with have had no clue whatsoever regarding it and ended up dying. When partying with around 3-4 people, tactics are a must. I understand it's not so much the case for parties of 8 players, but that's hear-say and I imagine they still at least try to make things work nicely rather than simply spamming attacks.

- I really like the number of quests that are steadily piling up. The big problem with them is that they aren't repeatable, though, and this is a concern of mine that I hope is eventually addressed. They don't need to make them all repeatable, but some of them should be. Oh well, either way - the quests are still great, there are cutscenes and whatnot in a few of them too (not FMVs, but at least storyline). The Grand Company quests are good so far.

- I miss level sync. Danielle parties more often than I do and is therefore a higher level with her main class (Conjurer) while both of my two main fighters are rank 26, the same as her secondary class. I want to level with her conjurer backing me up, but the higher the level difference, the less sp bonus you get. I only voice this concern because it will become a gamebreaker for me if it is not addressed. If eventually Danielle and I can not effectively party together then I will find myself in a position where I simply have no desire to continue playing - almost all my time is spent partying with Danielle and I don't want to have to commit to further leveling on my own just to catch up. I have other things to do in my life, shockingly, so I don't want to have to spend every living moment I have available playing this game.

- Some people have complained about the higher MP cost, but we've had little downtime when battling. Some mages obviously haven't mastered the art of syphoning MP every 30 seconds, nor caught on to the idea that when doing leves, every time you restart leves you get your MP regenerated and, perhaps more importantly (considering the 10 minute recharge on a MP regenerating action they have) all recharge timers are set to ready for cast/action. Perhaps when grinding you could run out, but other than that mages should be able to manage their MP well enough. Danielle only struggles when things get out of hand, ie we fight something above what we should really be fighting. Which admittedly we did a lot of last night. xD

- The new repair system is a godsend. The durability penalty on return, however, is possibly too much. I have to repair far more often than I ever had to before (admittedly, again, due to fighting things of too high a level last night and subsequently dying four or five times). I think a reasonable solution to this would be to slow the overall degradation of repairable items so it's a little more balanced. And for me to not get so cocky with the difficulty levels. But being able to repair every item I wear, and almost every item other people wear (note: people need to stop wearing things so far above their level, it's no wonder they have a constant need for repairs as they degrade fast and have worse benefits until you actually reach the reccommended level for the gear)... that's fantastic. I hated having to carry so many repair items on me beforehand, not to mention the need for really obscure items. Now I carry four different items and in retrospect could have got away with carrying two or three different items, given that hardly anyone wants a grade 1 item repaired and that I'm not a high enough level to do a grade 4 item.

My experiences have been exaggerated by the fact that we've found an extremely talkative linkshell that is often on at the time we are. We aren't part of their linkshell and many of their members are not quite up to speed on what should and should not be done in battle while others were very clueless about how to do anything at all... but overall, they're great for the social side and that's very important to me. There are a few really good fighters in there, too, and most of the others are very willing to learn. We've partied with about five of them over the various days recently and they all know us now. I'd invite a few of them to our LS (but not all of them... as said, some just don't understand what is good for battling and what isn't eg. "buffs are for wusses" and charging into battle and getting us killed etc.) but they're all very close so I don't think it's worthwhile. But we don't need them in our LS, we just chat to them anyway by partying up. xD I'm almost certain we'll end up in the same 'private company' together at this rate, though. Whenever private companies are implemented.

Finally, as for the feedback in the official forums, for once the "thanks" and "I like this stuff!" are outweighing the "this is horrible!" stuff. There have been various polls and it always ends up favouring the positive viewpoint now, so that's great. Obviously there is still a lot of work to be done but they have definitely made a step in the right direction. Despite this, the changes are polarising views perhaps more now than ever, but I think that was needed. There was too much of trying to please everyone and it was never going to be a successful model that way - they need to latch on to the majority viewpoint and stick with it rather than wavering all the time. Sadly, the last letter from the producer showed signs of wavering, but hopefully they won't last and we'll still see the game continue making progress.