I am an old shadowbane player considering joining Darkfall. I played with KGB for a while back in Shadowbane's glory days and need some information about Darkfall from people who I believe to be a reliable source.
(lol, skip to the last paragraph to get to the point)

I was a member of KGB back on the vengeance server as a member of the guild titled "The Academy of Light and Wisdom" which originally owned the city named "The Academy" (something like that). I think the guy who lead that guild when it joined KGB was named Barrio or Warrio. Anyways, once our guild joined KGB we became members of "KGB main" and our city became your capital on Vengeance. My characters were named variations of "omniwizard" and I rolled some terrible wizards. The character I played at banes and such was a nephelium wizard who wasn't so bad. Enough with that, aside from the fact that was several years ago and nobody probably remembers me, I wasn't that good at shadowbane- I was terrible to be honest. I left KGB and bounced around in some other guilds then joined Mark and Cedrics guild called "Clan Black Fang" and "The Brotherhood" and "The Riders in the Dust" and various other names. We were the guys who rolled aracoix on the first lore server and lost our city to the ireki guild. Clan Black Fang still has a website although the forums are getting pretty barren and we rarely play anything together anymore- we just chat occasionally in the forums.

I had tried World of Warcraft a few times when it came out, but it never really appealed to me. When I took breaks from Shadowbane I usually played Eve or DAOC- wow was such a grindfest. The forth time I gave Wow a try, I stayed a while, flopped around in Karazhan raid guilds and eventually landed in a decent end game guild and cleared BT and sunwell when it came out. The new Xpac was on the verge of coming out and a new patch had came out that nerfed everything so end game raiding literally died overnight. Wrath came out and two months later I came back and reached 80. My guild had reorganized itself and I found myself becoming one of the top five enhancement shamans on my server. About the time Ulduar had came out I was already bored with Wow and took another break. At the beginning of the fall semester I reactivated my account and had a very brief stint in TOC raiding. Convinced that I would never be satisfied with wow and that the game was waisting my time, I deleted my characters (specifically my 4 year old main shaman with 100 mounts and like 70 pets and 37 exalted reputations and 6k+ achievement points) because I knew that I would never have the patience to sit through eighty levels of wow level grind and all of the rep grinds and gold grinds again.

With Shadowbane and Daoc dead and gone, and eve being a massive timesink, moving over to Darkfall seems to be my only option anymore. With that being said, this old dog needs to learn new tricks. More specifically, this complete newb needs tips on how to play Darkfall. I've read the wiki, but it seems pretty bare. I would like to have a general idea what the skills are so I can contemplate templates while waiting to get setup to play Darkfall. I've read that magic was pretty important, followed by archery with melee being the red headed step-child. Most importantly, what works? Also, what about crafting- I spend a large amount of time in most of the games I've played being an greedy rich enterprising type of guy. The type of guy who camped auction houses in wow in Orgrimar and Stormwind who made profits by playing the auction houses. Im my later years in shadowbane I usually always had a trainer or merchant city built. If I'm making money I'm happy.

I'm currently an undergraduate majoring in Information Systems but I graduate this month. I am completely broke and until I get a job or start collecting debts from family members I won't be able to buy Darkfall or broadband. I am going to grad school next fall so I should have plenty of time to give Darkfall a shot. If I like what I see and stick around, I may consider joining you guys. But until then, I would appreciate any information about character builds, skills, and stats you can give me.