First all-call since being invited (at the end of Alpha Testing Stage 2) and subsequently my first real feedback post. For the all-call, I FRAPS'd the entire thing (minus ~20 minutes somewhere in the middle when my client froze and I forgot to turn FRAPS back on).

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[b][u]All-Call Details[/b][/u]
[list][*]Date: [i]2012/03/16[/i]
[*]Time: [i]6-8pm PST (9-11pm EST)[/i]
[*]Location: [i]Wayfarer Foothills (Norm starter area)[/i]
[*]Focus: [i]Experience and Scaling[/i][/list]

[b][u]Results after 2hrs[/b][/u]
[list][*]IGN: [i]Valhalla[/i]
[*]Race: [i]Female Norm[/i]
[*]Profession: [i]Warrior[/i]
[*]Level: [i]6.4[/i]
[*]Hearts: [i]8/16[/i]
[*]Waypoints: [i]9/17[/i]
[*]Points of Interests: [i]13/26[/i]
[*]Skill Points: [i]2/8[/i][/list]

[b][u]FRAPS'd Video Capture[/b][/u]
([i]Sorry fellow forum-goers, for ArenaNet eyes' only![/i])
[list][*]The video is actually 2hrs long (with the missing footage dummied) so times are roughly accurate
[*]Ventrilo audio is mixed in to the video but it was oddly quiet for the most part (I personally am a very quiet person so you might not even hear me)
[*]Framerate in empty areas was a good 40+ FPS, but whenever I encountered people, it dropped to ~20 FPS. The graphics settings in the options panel seemed to not affect the framerate much (only the video memory), with player count being the biggest factor.
[*]There's a bit of time at the beginning wasted trying to follow the main quest, but I stopped upon realizing that the quest goes into another map.[/list]

[b][u]Feedback:[/b][/u]
[list][*][b]Eye colour customization[/b] (while not yet fully implemented yet it seems) is a very welcomed customization ^_^
[*]The [b]yellow splash combat graphic[/b] that's added behind the skill bar to indicate entering combat is an interesting/useful idea, but the colour yellow doesn't seem right to me. Yellow I somehow associate with boons/accomplishments/positive reward, not entering deadly mortal combat. When I first saw it, I first checked if I had walked over some odd terrain (since it resembled the water splash) or had some kind of buff cast on me (like the "next attack will inflict burning" boon). It took me a while to realize that it was combat indicator since I associated combat with the red perimiter glow from being attacked. Red indicates aggression and damage and blood, but I honestly can't see yellow being an indicative colour for combat (unless it's just a placeholder for now of course).
[*]The [b]world events difficulty scaling[/b] make them REALLY long and hard to finish. Events that would have taken me no more than 5 minutes to solo took over 15 minutes to finish since all the mobs had highly-scaled HPs (and not all players in the area were attacking the mobs of course). For the item-based world events, it was even worse since there weren't enough Doyaks, for example, wandering around. For the bunny food event, whenever I dropped a bag, someone else would pick it up. I assume that world events are meant to be highly cooperative, but I ended up walking away with the feeling that I would have preferred far LESS people participating (due to the over-scaling/limited resource factor, which resulted in extremely long event times). Not to mention seeing 20 other players slashing around at a tiny mob-sized boss gave more a feeling of insignificance (as opposed to teamwork). Consequentially, I found leveling much faster via hearts (instead of events) and best when there weren't many people around. Although the escort trains did look quite funny.
[*][b]Pointer arrow-losing[/b] during combat was a very frequent event, especially with the added choppiness from high-player-volume-induced lag during world events. For the hearts requiring mob kills, this was particularly annoying since I would always struggle to find where my pointer was to click the next mob and hope I could make it to that mob in time before it dies to other players. Tab targetting and auto-targetting I've found generally unreliable compared to camera-rotation-focused targetting (combined with skill-target-promotion). A more distinct/stronger outlined pointer graphic would greatly remove that frustration.
[*][b]Character leveling[/b] purely on the world map via hearts and events is definitely not fast enough without the help of the main story quest. I didn't keep exact track of my leveling speed or EXP numbers, but you can analyze that in the above video. What I did notice was that with the sheer number of people at all the events, it was far more time-efficient to just do hearts slightly above the current average level (such that there aren't as many people around to compete with mobs and generally less lag).
[*]For [b]map completion[/b], figuring out what exact areas to explore/already explored are a bit hard to tell sometimes. On the world map, in some areas of flat land, I can't tell the difference between it and adjacent unexplored land. While I really like the newer unexplored area map artwork compared to the block-blured old map graphics, I have to say that the old version was much more useful in terms of figuring out what parts have yet to be explored. The only idea that comes to mind is having the unexplored area be slightly darker (compared to the normal land colour) so it's more easy to see what places have yet to be explored. On an unrelated side note, semi-transparent/overlap map, pretty pleaseeee? It's very nice for exploration as well as long distance travel without having to constantly worry about either aggroing too many mobs or running into a ledge/cliff/something that stops you (but isn't big enough to show up on the map).
[*]I ended up [b]NPCing everything[/b] that I picked up (except gear I could use) an hour in. With NPCs selling decent +POW gear, the general fast pace at which you outlevel your gear, and the fact that some pre-insignia'd gear are sold by hearts merchants, I'd prefer to save my inventory/bank space for other things or mats at later levels. That might just be my mindset, but I did not have the urge to go farm mats that I came across purely due to the fact that it'll just fill up my inventory space super fast.
[*]At ~1:50:00, I meet a cute fluffy white bunny. It winds up its feet and kicks me, knocking me down. Off a cliff. Killing me. The cruelty!!!
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Overall, my first large-scale PvE test: a fun experience and great anticipation for the optimized and balanced future versions ^_^

~Phil