First of all, let me say that what you have so far is really great.
Speaking as a game programmer, I know what you have to work with as
far as the graphics and the networking, and I must say I'm impressed.
Definately a great job so far.

Some comments about the game player overall:

- I love the automatic combat. This was a big problem in Ultima VII and 
Ultima VIII. You had to find the tiny little spot to double click on
to keep fighting. I can now do it once, then go though my inventory,
get out and use my spell book, without worrying getting the tar
kicked out of me. Thanks for including this. My only comment here is
that I saw one circumstance while online of a two players who wanted to
group together. One jokingly attacked the other while in the city.
Unfortunately, he kept attacking him whenever they got close (we were
all on our way out of the city.)  There should be a way to designate
no target here, so this doesn't happen. Players online will joke around
and take a swipe or two at each other, not meaning it to become a
battle to the death. (Sort of like swatting a friend on the head with
a hat after he/she has made a stupid comment....)

- A circumstance I ran into last night was a player who obviously had
alot of magic items and was very high level, was beating up first level
people for fun. Even a gang of us could not take this guy down. The guards
were of no help because he killed them just as easily. Some safegaurds
need to be put in to keep this from happening. (Perhaps if a player does 
this too much, bounties are place on he/she. When they enter a town, if
they are wanted for crimes there, the guards automatically attack them.)

- Speaking of dieing, the whole 'lose all your equipment' thing sort of 
bothered me. I liked it, but I didn't like it. I liked it in the sense 
that there was a real consequence of dieing. That and you could kill
a fellow PC to get their equipment. However, if you die and don't get back
to your corpse, its almost like starting from scratch again. This was
a big problem for alot of people. There were alot of naked people killing
rabbits last night! They weren't happy either.

- The skills system is great. I like the idea of making your skill better by
using it. I like this as opposed to the instant jump in skill points by gaining
a level. The only problem here was magic. When I started out I had a very
large chance of failing to cast a simple healing spell. You may want to vary
the difficulty of the various spells. Something overtly powerful like a fireball
should be hard to cast, but something simple like healing or light should be
easy to cast, even for someone with a low magic skill. 

- Following another character. It seems as though the client handles this.
This is annoying sometimes because in one circumstance I had a fast computer
and fast connection, while a player who wanted to follow me, did not. I was
constantly forced to keep waiting for him to catch up, even though he
was set to follow me automatically. Is there any way for this to be
done by the server, such that he would end up going the same speed as
me, instead?

Overall a great game. I've become very addicted to it and I will be
sorry to see testing end. When you have added in the quests and other
nicities, I'm sure I'll be playing this alot. (Just go easy on what
you charge. You could easily make me into a very poor person, by charging
and hourly rate... :) 

Thanks for letting me test and I really hope you consider a public alpha/beta
test. I'd be happy to give this game another shakedown.