Runes of Magic US / AU

We've seen some big changed since 2010. We're now on Chapter 6 (though they did get rid of the chapter system and just call it patch 6.0), and there has been several management changes. We went from Frogester NA to Frogster EU (which turned out to be worse), then went to Gameforge Berlin, which was even worse. Now, we've moved to Gameforge Karlsruhe, and so far, it seems promising. They've communicated more with the community in 2 weeks than Berlin and Frog Eu has ever had combined, and the same goes for the amount of info they that have given.

Orange duo stats are currently the best, though very hard to obtain (from Proofs of Myth, or PoM's for short), which drop from Hardmode of the old worldbosses (lv 75, some have up to 200 million HP...), though can also be obtained from Proof events, which have happened twice so far.

There was also some item shop changes that happened at the start of Ch 5, if you scroll thru the news, look for Item Shop Repricing.

As of the past few weeks, there has been massive item Duping happening, and Gameforge Karlsruhe is currently busy banning people and deleting duuped items. They're also starting to do some more quality control (Refer to Yoman's article on RoMwelten which translated the German meeting between over 100 guild representives and Gameforge folks Gameforge Karlsruhe: German CM reveals what to expect from move to Karlsruhe:), and are communication with Runewaker to try to get their fixes.

Hmmm... Ch 4 was not in 2010. If you retired in 2010, you should not even see Ch 3.

Anyway... yellow stats are mainstay, yes. There are two types - shell based and memento based. Shells you get from mini-games, mementos from bosses. Also, you can buy them with something called EOJs (Energy of Justice). There are higher versions "orange" of stats at several levels. So, if your stam/dex is 150/150 for normal yellow stats, the orange would be 165/165. They are found on hard mode bosses at the end of instances.

Best gear is usually drops, but not always. There are viable choices for some categories that are available at memento, EOJ and shell vendors. Some decent gear can be crafted too. That said, yes, purple drops for weapons is the way to go.

T9 is obsolete; since T5-making gear is easily available (albeit not from vendors yet), T10 is usual. T11 is for those who are rich, T12 for those who are rich and crazy. Gear is T6, T7 and in some rare cases T8.

K/S is still decent for tanking. PVP... I doubt it.

Best way to explore gear is with addon. I recommend Character Plan, it is excellent "paper-doll" system that lets you experiment with gear and see what is what. Item Preview has its uses too, but I like CP quite a bit better.