Nocturnal Sonata being the name of the second expansion pack which was just released (aka patches 2.5 and 2.6).

First off, I have to say I love the new 100 Veteran Polishers.  Since I now have halfway decent armor, I can actually go into higher level areas and survive.  Before I struggled with DV, but now I can do it with ease and am tackling the Katovic Snowfield quests, which are rough but doable if I burn a lot of potions (and don't have lag).

Secondly, they upped the challenge level considering in the lower levels of the game. Those people who posted here about a lack of challenge should try it again. It's much tougher. Indeed, a lot of people are complaining it's too hard on the official boards.

Thirdly, I'm not impressed with the new UPC, Vicente.  I guess he gets better once you get an instrument for him, and I can understand why they didn't add those any lower (it's bad enough I've started getting intsrument drops at 60, since they don't sell for much).

Fourthly, no more Xtrap! Hopefully it stays out. My desktop computer only has 1 gig of ram, and when they used Xtrap, I couldn't alt-tab out without lots of hard drive thunking. Now I can do it much easier. (I know, I need 2 gigs, but I just bought a laptop and am broke.)

We're glad people are happy with the changes. A lot of the changes have been haggled and rehaggled a lot in the past few months.

I know Vincent isn't going to be everyone's favorite UPC, but he is important for battles right now (specifically Faction Fight). Fortunately there are 4 other NPCs coming before the end of the year (including Baek Ho next month).

As for X-Trap, our contract with them has come to an end and I am currently playing hardball with them to get them to fix a number of issues our players have had, specifically memory leaks and their refusal to support Vista. My hope is that in the next few months we will see MAJOR improvements on their end or we will find a better replacement for them.

I do like the changes, but still, I'm probably going to quit playing soon. Depends on if my new clan pans out or not.

I love the game as a whole, particularly the gameplay (it would be nicer if there were more story quests though), but the players are what's wrong with it. They are nice as a whole, but at the same time, they seem to be the most anti-social group I've ever seen in an online game. I think the nature of the gameplay (which almost encourages people to AFK) draws them.

I mean, I joined a small clan. No one ever talked. They all just AFKed on the beach/Fire Island all day and all night.  So after a month, I quit and now am in a much bigger clan, 3x the size. And no one ever talks (it's only been a couple days). Not that I'm the biggest talker in the world itself, but in my old clan, I could go 6 hours online without anyone else saying anything. So far, my new clan doesn't seem to be any better, but then again, it's a holiday, so I'm withholding judgement...

Beyond that, part of the way the game works, the need to get guys to Vet and then the long grind to Exp, that any time spent not AFKing is apparently wasted. So no one ever wants to do anything for fun.  Even the contests seem to discourage actually playing game - like the get Vicente to vet and get a costume thing.  My old clan leader specifically put off stuff they were going to do as a clan in order to AFK level Vicente to Vet just for the costume. (Another reason I'm glad I left) 

And then the biggest clan on my server seems to be made up of people who were thrown out of other clans for bad behavior. The sort that kill steal, steal spots, or spinelle low level people just for the heck of it (one of them did that to me once). Every time I run into one of them, I wish I were on a PvP server. (Although given they all seem to have top equipment and a huge colony buff, that would result in me losing)