What do the different colours and markers mean on the experience bar?

What do the different colours and markers mean on the experience bar?

It seems to be split into three sections with two markers and the both the bar and the markers can be orange or blue, what does this mean?

This is actually confusing but I did a little googling and found this dev blog from the lead designer. I have added emphasis to the key parts of the paragraph.

In order to explain the progression we need to start talking about xp. At the bottom of the screen is the xp bar, and when the player has filled up 1/3 of it they will be given an ability point. Filling out the whole bar gives a skill point. A player gets xp from many different sources: Killing monsters, PvP, missions and crafting. The amount of xp needed to get an ability point or a skill point is static.

So it looks like everyone was on the right-ish track but I think we were reading too much into the bar.

EDIT: A bit more info from playing more tonight. The blue area will fill up each third of the XP bar as your progress. When you completely fill the bar you will get an AP point and the redish tint will go over that section of the bar. When you fill all three bars, that is when you get an SP.

Best way I can explain the experience bar is this way.

You have an experience bar at the bottom of the screen divided into 3. Every time 1/3 of the bar gets filled you get 1 AP which is used to buy your abilities. Every time you complete 100% of the experience bar you get 1 SP which is used to upgrade your weapons and armor. When you complete a full 100% experience bar you will get 3 AP and 1 SP.

The experience bar is a total of 120,000 experience which equals 1 SP, thus 1 AP is 40,000 experience.

Experience can be earned from killing monsters, doing quest, and pvp.