As wipe said, more critter groups could be good, but the main issue is setting appropriate base xp for each critter type. Some of the xp values are simply stupid.
As for crafting, it is not slow at all, so whinging about timeouts is pointless.
xp gain, this is a large part of the reason for switching to final item countdowns. It fixes the amount of xp able to be gained by one char, so there is no more of gangs pumping one members xp by all gathering for him.
Also, a beta test is a perfect opportunity to experiment around with things such as rate of xp gain, crafting speed and similar ... making everything really fast to "help testing" is a completely false arguement