Alt-key descriptions and Class text- inconsistent.

The other night when I logged in at Fort Ranik, every player had their class and level floating over their heads in white. When I hit the "Alt" ket I also got their names, but upon releasing it the class and level data remained. Some people had small blue icons in the shape of a man next to their data. I had never seen this before and the next time I logged in all of that data was gone. I cannot see in Options how to enable-disable such a display- what was happening?

Thanks!

That is only in the lower level mission loading areas. It helps to see what class people are. And the blue icon means that person is the leader of a party and how many people are in it. If you don't see anything over them, they are a member of a party.

So why did it show one time but not another? Was there something different about MY status that displayed the text?

As far as I have seen, the Class and Level above the players heads and the difference in colours and numbers listed is only visible in Mission Towns.

This is to make it easier to see who you want to add to your Party before you go off on a Mission(not a quest). The dark blue and light blue colours on there names is normally related to whether they are in parties already. The numbers in light blue above there heads, normally mean they are the Party leader and that is how many people that are in that Party.

This doesn't happen in normal Towns like Ascalon, as it doesn't have a Mission.

As for why it happened once and not the 2nd time you logged in, were you still in Fort Ranik or had you moved to another location??

I can't remember actualy if I was at Ranik or at one of the Wall Outposts... I travelled a great deal last night and my head's still spinning- I saw places I've never seen before (excuse my n00bishness). What's the difference between a Mission city and a Quest city anyway? I've not lead any teams, just tagged along to get a lay of the land and to pick up some XP, so I'm still a bit in the dark.

mission areas will have the *enter mission* button below your character list

A mission city has the large shield icon on the main map. A regular city is a bronze badge looking thing. And an outpost is a smaller silver circle with a bronze edge.

The difference between mission and quest cities is easy to determine on your map. The Mission cities are the ones with Shields and it normally has you go from one area to another with a story and cutscenes. They normally have Mission and Bonus XP of 1000xp each.

Quest cities are normally just Small round gold/silver balls, or things that look like hexigans with a picture of a Rook/Castle(Looks like a Chess Piece) on them.
They normally have lots of people milling around and lots of NPC's to interact with with all sorts of different quests for you to go and do.

For example.
The Northern Wall and Fort Ranik are Mission Cities.
Ascalon and Ashford Abbey are Quest cities.

Ahhhh... so that's what that means. OK cool I was wondering. Can you tell I spent a lot of time in Pre-Searing?