Personally, when I firstly downloaded map, I don't get - what this about? And stuffed it away.
But recently I overcamed my laziness and played...
I liked it! It seems like some Kings Bounty-like game, for me, and I like concept where you start as simple peasant, than hero. And professions... It's a long time where we played a OpenRPG map where you could change & progress your character profession. Last thing where I saw this was russian multiplayer map "Darkness vs Light", but here it looks so smooth, good.
I like moments when you walk through land and your party are attacked by bunch of wolfs or singular golem. It makes world more... Alive, yeah.
Also seeing that author keeps updating his map feels me with joy, because currently many remaining mapmakers makes only small changes and throw away their creations by many reasons.
But I don't get the point of battles. So you could lose just for losing battle? They're creating additional pressure on player, especially when player is new - he doesn't know that upcoming fight is determines your fate: keep player or recieve defeat message. IMHO, if player lose battle - just repeat it after sometime? Maybe they're storyforward feature and you can't remade them in that way, but...
It's only strange feature of map that I want to mention.
Anyway, good map & concept! Just keep going.
Strange, that no moderator reviewed it.