I love the text bubbles, it reminds me of the older Final Fantasies before we had voice audio. So +10 Nostalgia points there SE!

And as others have pointed out, the quests look so much easier to understand/follow now. Even though I'm an experienced MMO player and a veteran Final Fantasy player I had a hard time understanding where to go, and what to do in 1.0 at first; so it wasn't very user friendly. This may be just an aesthetic preference but I didn't exactly like the "Quest tracker" on the UI that appeared after starting a quest. For me it felt a little "WoW" ish, and tacky-looking.

I did enjoy the Mage spell animations, but again as others have pointed out there was a stark contrast in "display" between low-level casting and low-level Lance melee. I'm not sure whether or not those Leech's just made the battle seem more engaging because they were shooting those spouts all over the place to make combat seem a little crazier in comparison to the Hogs that just reared up on their haunches to tackle you over and over or they're just trying to get more people in melee classes by flashing them up.

Another note on the same page, I did enjoy the sped up battle pace. I feel as if I won't begin to doze off when I'm fighting mobs in 2.0 like I had previously. Reminds me sort of FF10/10-2 where it felt "free" and real time. I'm sure things will get polished even more as things progress and I look forward to more Alpha previews!

And I hope that I get an email sometime relatively soon to join in the Alpha. :'3