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Since this was brought up, I think I will bring up my two cents. I feel I'm probably a bit of a fence-sitter where it comes to this.

Overall, I like progression being slowed down, and I like for there to be a requirement to either stick around and RP or to participate in more involved content (quests, events, etc.) in order to progress. Those premises I am thoroughly behind. I will also be the first to acknowledge that this system has the merits of being largely automated and fair, which is very important for long-term community RP.

I do have things I didn't really love, though, so here goes:

1. Initial progression to level 11 is just a bit too fast. I may be the only one who feels that way, but my character went from level 3 "I'm just a farmgirl with a sharp stick" to level 11 "I take on entire warbands of trolls without breaking a sweat, I could have saved Nesmé by myself" in a couple weeks. I may actually prefer lowering the level at which RPXP becomes required back down to 8, or to add some kinda soft-cap mechanic that penalizes combat XP after you've had a ton of it in a single level.

Of note, I am aware that there is low-level content I've never even seen, and probably never will because you just blast through those levels so quickly by going to the familiar places.

2. More long-term progression past 16 is a bit too slow. With very few quests and the required RPXP per level continuing to increase, you go from having a level every week or so (which is a neat pace) to going quite a few weeks without. If I got under the hood here, I'd experiment with fine-tuning the RPXP requirements to make a slightly more even increase (as this is the lower-effort alternative to making more quests), and aim for making the average total time to level 20 about the same as it is right now, just more front-loaded.

3. Incentivized idleness. I don't know a fix for this one, but the current system creates a nefarious incentive for parking your characters and doing an emote every few minutes, while tabbed out of the game. I know most people fight this instinct successfully, but incentivizing undesirable behavior isn't awesome. The only thing I can think of that would reduce this effect is if the faerie front-loaded more of her XP. The first half of the XP ticks being bigger than the second half or so. That should reduce the incentive for prolonged loitering, maybe? This is a tricky one.

As someone whose only major character is an UD, I like all of the suggested changes, and also all of the ones mentioned as already being considered.

Narrowing focus onto different parts of the discussion here:

Defensive Stance: Fixing it the same way as Barbarian Rage was is kind of just necessary. I presently keep my UD's STR buffed to only +8 just because a part of my brain doesn't want to miss out on the bonus from her class' keystone ability. I realize it's dumb making her less effective 90% of the time so that she can be a little bit more effective in the remaining 10%, but that isn't a fun trade-off to puzzle around.

Where it comes to uses per day, either substantially increasing uses of Defensive Stance or making it at-will would work well to actually make it more usable. If you want to keep it on for a substantial part of any one major fight, you will generally have to activate and deactivate it multiple times within the scope of that single fight. I do feel that either pushing it a few levels off or spreading the increase in uses over more levels will serve to make it more desirable to take many levels in the class, as opposed to just dipping into it. I do like the idea of making it at-will at high levels. Having 8-ish uses of it or an at-will are functionally the same thing for all the more challenging fights in any one dungeon, the only difference is an attentive player will be able to occasionally use it in the non-major fights, too. And also a reduction in stress for resource hoarders like me.

Defensive Potential: Part of it is likely lack of skills on my part and the fact that my character isn't min-maxed, but characters of other classes seem to out-tank my UD pretty consistently. A part of this is the fact that any UMD build will be able to self-buff, but final defensive stats seem underwhelming even when that isn't a factor. A lot of classes have either straight AC bonuses or stat-to-AC mechanics, and also many classes have substantial immunities or save boni. A class that is built around being the tankiest tank should probably get more of those things.

More broadly, for D&D in general, in order for tankiness to be a significant benefit it tends to have to be scaled somewhat higher than equivalent increases in offense. That's because killing an enemy also serves to mitigate all future damage that enemy would have caused. So a class focused on defense to the detriment of offense (by forgoing movement, for example, or through the opportunity cost of not having taken a dmg-boosting class level instead) should have some really substantial boni.

That does sound way cooler than just saying "it's slowly going poof between scenes"

As a person who loves half-elves, I'd love for this to be a thing. I've played them a fair bit, but it was always a choice to be sub-optimal, giving up raw character power or usefulness in exchange for the benefit of getting to RP one of the most interesting races in the multiverse.

The +1 stat boni would be excellent, if it can be done without investing time from DMs. If all elven races are considered, there would be options for most stats, with the only exceptions being Wisdom and Constitution. Of course Sun- and Star- elves tend not to make half-elves, but at that point it is up to a player to come up with a good background.

On that subject, by the 1380s Sildeyuir should be close to total collapse and the Star Elves having to flee back to Aglarond in increasing numbers? Just - random lore fridge moment here.

My first instincts, given my overall experience with online RP, would have been to vote for player-driven content, be that faction- related or otherwise, but.... in the first two days in the server I had several instances of NPCs reacting to the existence of my character, or talking to each other around her and that was so cool that I have to put my first vote there. I'm not sure who it was that did it, one instance being a guard who gave Jeanette directions, another being two commoners talking about kobolds by the road. Whoever you are: you are awesome and appreciated.

That said, though, I think players being able to cook up things with minimal or no DM intervention is great. It creates less burn-out all around, I think. The tricky part is setting things up for that to happen, of course.