Lets talk about the good first,

The current admin team is helpful and kind, my buddy and I couldn't find food crabs and we assumed it was a bug, but the admin on our server US-4 PVP came to check it out and in a sly manner informed us that its just not a good place for food where we were, didn't outright tell us, so we had to figure out the information he gave us, but nonetheless, helpful.
The admins do a good job dealing with objectively toxic players, if you play on a PVP server, expect to be killed, yes, even as a baby. However they do a good job making sure people aren't ruining the fun of the game by players being horrible to each other (EX. bad language, racisim, harrassment, rude usernames.)
Even in PVP there are nice players, and in non PVP servers, most are welcoming, it is fairly easy to meet and play with people in this game.
The flight and ground mechanics are very smooth, it involves skill to do it properly, but there is alot of skill involved in some aspects of the game, especially if you're in a PVP server with air combat.
There is progression in the form of becoming an elder dragon, mating and breeding, clan building, PVP aspects such as where you want to live, and getting the skin genetics you want.
The map is gigantic and there's lots to explore.
The dragons available are unique, have their own skills and are better at different aspects.
The game world is untame, although graphically dated a bit, fun to explore and expansive.
The models are very nice, and have great detail quality.
There are skins that look very nice, and many dragons look unique.
The breeding system is in depth, it adds another layer of gameplay, though at times give players in established clans a signifigant advantage.
A very fun play with friends.
Although they do update the steam activity feed now and again, following their discord is the way to get information, and they often post alot of it.
The playable dragons (without breeding modifiers) are pretty well balanced depending on what they excel at.

Now the bad;

Dying is rather punishing as an adult, or even more so, an elder. If you play a flame stalker, that dragon take 4 real time hours to become a full sized adult, and to become an elder, you have to find 80 of these mushrooms to become an elder, or wait 12 hours and log on to become an elder for one tick equivalent to eating a single mushroom. These mushrooms aren't easily available, there are limited spawn locations, where many of these locations could have the wrong colored mushrooms, and you don't get the progress, additonally, you're competing for them with 99 other dragons that know exactly where they are, and they rarely go alone, often with their clan, whom sit in the areas and guard and control the zones, gatekeeping other players. Then these mushrooms are on a 45-120 min timer where it MAY spawn the correct mushroom, and if you die, all that hard work is gone. This could be fixed easily however by randomizing the mushroom spawns to cover the entire map, and giving players more reasons to explore the entire map and making it less of a brutal chore. These problems are very much so a MMO feeling system in a survival game.
The clan system: There's alot to be said about this in a animal survival game, but the mushroom thing is a good example. Every game like this has the group mechanic, a temporary team where you survive together, which is cool, it works well, people rotate around and play with other people; its alot of fun. However due to the breeding system in the game (and if def makes a difference) you are almost required to play in a clan if you want to be strong, you cant play this game as a solo or a small group because so many clans get very powerful and dominate the server, if another clan want to kill you, you'll end up with 10 - 15 other dragons on top of you within seconds, making your group of 4 that have been playing 3+ hours lose all their progress. In addition to not being able to access the end game content because of them and their superior breeding, you'll just die with an insanely slim chance of survival. Forcing you to join a clan.
Often like many games with shorter term clan systems, the most powerful clan often becomes toxic, they dominate the server aimlessly killing other players for no reason, making the game less appealing for a newer playerbase to play.
This one is fairly glaring to most that have played the game, but at its base price of 20$ there are 2 species of dragons available in the game, and a third available at 8$ as DLC. For a game that has been released in early access for almost 2 years, this is a problem. In my opinion, that logic seems unreasonable. I'm well aware of how much video game development costs, and the man hours that need to be put into a game to have a finished product, However with a half million dollars invested by kickstarter backers and a price point of 20$ USD, I expected more to be playable at this point for what I paid for from a game life time and initial price point. I was very surprised to see a DLC dragon.
Now you may use a select amount of skins as a player, and can breed into skins, including ones only available to kickstarter backers, which I think is very fair, though I wish there was a way to buy said skins.
However from what I understand, in the 1.0 update, they are releasing a new map, and 3 new dragons, 2 dragons are available to all players, and the third of the dragons is only available for kickstarter backers. This to me seems like a bit of an issue, as it appears people who didn't fund the kickstarter/didn't know about the game wont be able to play as that dragon unless you're bred into it. Locking the limited available content such as playable characters (when it comes out) with no way now to freely access them permanently is too much. Others may not feel that way, however if they want to find a new player base, changing your stance on this or making it an expensive DLC to compensate those who backed the game could benifit both the players and developers.
Lack of PVE content, if you wanted it, there's not much here unless you wanna kill crabs all day, because that's the only PVE stuff you can do. They say in the new map they're adding new things to kill and eat, a sand worm thing, some turtles, some fishes, maybe some flying bird guys, and a massive sand wyrm boss guy. which looks cool; but is desperately needed for PVE servers or more dynamic PVP, countering some of the problems with clans by giving them something else to kill.
We're missing weather, that would make a huge difference, a thunderstorm that grounds flyers is a is a buffet for vile spitters, cinamatic battles in dynamic weather would be and incredible feature and can also counter some of the problems with clans.
More places to live and den/nest, we have a few hollow trees, but we don't have caves, unique dens, readily available hides or the ability to create them as the available dragons.

Things to be said from other reviews and state of the game;

One big thing to be said is that for an undetermined amount of time, they've been dealing with hackers, they've been very transparent about the situation, and that its affected the game both inside and outside of the game itself. That being said, from their most recent posts they've found multiple causes of their attacks and have solved many, if not all of their problems. I absolutely commend them on this stance to this problem and dealing with it for not only the players and game safety, but their own. With that in mind and understanding its been an issue for around 6 - 8 months, please keep in mind that will absolutely eat up all of the time that could've been spent on development, and it had to be taken as priority #1. Though I do want my points of a lack of development to still be known, especially on the playable dragons.

I fully expect to rewrite my review when 1.0 comes out, and I am hopeful that it remains positive and informative.

Lets talk about the good first, The current admin team is helpful and kind, my buddy and I couldn't find food crabs and we assumed it was a bug, but the admin on our server US-4 PVP came to check it out and in a sly manner informed us that its just not a good place for food where we were, didn't outright tell us, so we had to figure out the information he gave us, but nonetheless, helpful. The admins do a good job dealing with objectively toxic players, if you play on a PVP server, expect to be killed, yes, even as a baby. However they do a good job making sure people aren't ruining the fun of the game by players being horrible to each other (EX. bad language, racisim, harrassment, rude usernames.) Even in PVP there are nice players, and in non PVP servers, most are welcoming, it is fairly easy to meet and play with people in this game. The flight and ground mechanics are very smooth, it involves skill to do it properly, but there is alot of skill involved in some aspects of the game, especially if you're in a PVP server with air combat. There is progression in the form of becoming an elder dragon, mating and breeding, clan building, PVP aspects such as where you want to live, and getting the skin genetics you want. The map is gigantic and there's lots to explore. The dragons available are unique, have their own skills and are better at different aspects. The game world is untame, although graphically dated a bit, fun to explore and expansive. The models are very nice, and have great detail quality. There are skins that look very nice, and many dragons look unique. The breeding system is in depth, it adds another layer of gameplay, though at times give players in established clans a signifigant advantage. A very fun play with friends. Although they do update the steam activity feed now and again, following their discord is the way to get information, and they often post alot of it. The playable dragons (without breeding modifiers) are pretty well balanced depending on what they excel at. Now the bad; Dying is rather punishing as an adult, or even more so, an elder. If you play a flame stalker, that dragon take 4 real time hours to become a full sized adult, and to become an elder, you have to find 80 of these mushrooms to become an elder, or wait 12 hours and log on to become an elder for one tick equivalent to eating a single mushroom. These mushrooms aren't easily available, there are limited spawn locations, where many of these locations could have the wrong colored mushrooms, and you don't get the progress, additonally, you're competing for them with 99 other dragons that know exactly where they are, and they rarely go alone, often with their clan, whom sit in the areas and guard and control the zones, gatekeeping other players. Then these mushrooms are on a 45-120 min timer where it MAY spawn the correct mushroom, and if you die, all that hard work is gone. This could be fixed easily however by randomizing the mushroom spawns to cover the entire map, and giving players more reasons to explore the entire map and making it less of a brutal chore. These problems are very much so a MMO feeling system in a survival game. The clan system: There's alot to be said about this in a animal survival game, but the mushroom thing is a good example. Every game like this has the group mechanic, a temporary team where you survive together, which is cool, it works well, people rotate around and play with other people; its alot of fun. However due to the breeding system in the game (and if def makes a difference) you are almost required to play in a clan if you want to be strong, you cant play this game as a solo or a small group because so many clans get very powerful and dominate the server, if another clan want to kill you, you'll end up with 10 - 15 other dragons on top of you within seconds, making your group of 4 that have been playing 3+ hours lose all their progress. In addition to not being able to access the end game content because of them and their superior breeding, you'll just die with an insanely slim chance of survival. Forcing you to join a clan. Often like many games with shorter term clan systems, the most powerful clan often becomes toxic, they dominate the server aimlessly killing other players for no reason, making the game less appealing for a newer playerbase to play. This one is fairly glaring to most that have played the game, but at its base price of 20$ there are 2 species of dragons available in the game, and a third available at 8$ as DLC. For a game that has been released in early access for almost 2 years, this is a problem. In my opinion, that logic seems unreasonable. I'm well aware of how much video game development costs, and the man hours that need to be put into a game to have a finished product, However with a half million dollars invested by kickstarter backers and a price point of 20$ USD, I expected more to be playable at this point for what I paid for from a game life time and initial price point. I was very surprised to see a DLC dragon. Now you may use a select amount of skins as a player, and can breed into skins, including ones only available to kickstarter backers, which I think is very fair, though I wish there was a way to buy said skins. However from what I understand, in the 1.0 update, they are releasing a new map, and 3 new dragons, 2 dragons are available to all players, and the third of the dragons is only available for kickstarter backers. This to me seems like a bit of an issue, as it appears people who didn't fund the kickstarter/didn't know about the game wont be able to play as that dragon unless you're bred into it. Locking the limited available content such as playable characters (when it comes out) with no way now to freely access them permanently is too much. Others may not feel that way, however if they want to find a new player base, changing your stance on this or making it an expensive DLC to compensate those who backed the game could benifit both the players and developers. Lack of PVE content, if you wanted it, there's not much here unless you wanna kill crabs all day, because that's the only PVE stuff you can do. They say in the new map they're adding new things to kill and eat, a sand worm thing, some turtles, some fishes, maybe some flying bird guys, and a massive sand wyrm boss guy. which looks cool; but is desperately needed for PVE servers or more dynamic PVP, countering some of the problems with clans by giving them something else to kill. We're missing weather, that would make a huge difference, a thunderstorm that grounds flyers is a is a buffet for vile spitters, cinamatic battles in dynamic weather would be and incredible feature and can also counter some of the problems with clans. More places to live and den/nest, we have a few hollow trees, but we don't have caves, unique dens, readily available hides or the ability to create them as the available dragons. Things to be said from other reviews and state of the game; One big thing to be said is that for an undetermined amount of time, they've been dealing with hackers, they've been very transparent about the situation, and that its affected the game both inside and outside of the game itself. That being said, from their most recent posts they've found multiple causes of their attacks and have solved many, if not all of their problems. I absolutely commend them on this stance to this problem and dealing with it for not only the players and game safety, but their own. With that in mind and understanding its been an issue for around 6 - 8 months, please keep in mind that will absolutely eat up all of the time that could've been spent on development, and it had to be taken as priority #1. Though I do want my points of a lack of development to still be known, especially on the playable dragons. I fully expect to rewrite my review when 1.0 comes out, and I am hopeful that it remains positive and informative.