Some tidbits that will be in the next update:

• Monks can only wear cloth now, but they receive a 220% bonus from equipped armor.
• Items can now provide the following attributes: reduced fear duration, reduced stun duration, increased weapon attack speed, enhanced weapon damage, and reduced weight (armor). There is also one additional secret attribute.
• Exact successful run chance is indicated on the tooltip.
• The character select screen now indicates each class's preferred armor choice.
• Any class can equip any armor, but it will slow down all spellcasting and global cooldowns if it exceeds your class's preferred armor choice. The penalty increases in a non-linear fashion. Leather will apply a slight penalty, about 3%, to cloth wearers per piece. However, plate will apply a severe penalty, about 12%, to cloth wearers per piece. Note that different pieces apply different penalties. For example chest and helmets apply a much larger penalty than belts and gloves. A cloth-wearer would incur a 96% spell cast time penalty in full plate (8 possible pieces x an average of 12% penalty). Thus a 2.000 second cast time would become a 3.920 cast time. This same principle applies to global skill cooldowns for melee.

Sounds cool, so are we going to start seeing drops?

I just wanted to come on the boards and let you know that I'm a fresh player of the game (which does indeed give a good EQ fix!). I just started last week and read about itemization, so once you get items dropping I'll be all over it again. Let me know if you need any help!

Cool! Welcome aboard. It's an exciting time since items are about to implemented for the first time after more than 10 months of development.