Some interesting news from Aventurine yesterday: 
 
In the next planned patch, scheduled for the end of this week, the developers intend to triple the speed of skillgain when fighting monsters rather than players and double the speed of skillgain with spells (for a total of six times faster when casting against monsters). This is most likely in response to a community outcry against the grind and bloodwalls (where players afk and let their clanmembers beat them up to gain skills). They also plan to address some damage bugs. 
 
However, what is more exciting are the company's plans for their second expansion, tentatively scheduled for the end of October, including: 

• Changes, additions to ship building, sea combat and objectives 
• The second phase of their character specialization system, focusing on melee and archery 
• The first step of local banking 
• Player owned vendors 
• A Barbershop 
• A Caravan system 
• New houses and villages 
• New objects for home decoration 
• Wandering monsters 
• More rare drops added to monsters 
• New free spawning objects to discover
• And certainly much, much more