Yes. Our characters have all their inventory, all skill improvements, and are in the same locations they were when we last played. However the world has reset. All the changes we made are gone. Is there something I should be doing to save the world before shutting down the game?
To start up the world I selected host from the main menu. I didn't change any of the server settings, just started the game and created a character and started playing. The next time I selected host again and when I started the world I already had my character but the world was back to the way it was originally.