EntropiaPlanets presents: ROCKTropia ~ are we still entertained? PART II

[IMGALIGNLEFT]http://www.entropiaplanets.com/gallery/pics/3/banner2_537879.jpg[/IMGALIGNLEFT]As a follow-up to Part I of "ROCKTropia ~ are we ready to be entertained", I continue my journey through the landscapes of ROCKTropia, in an attempt to either debunk rumours or to confirm some. My point is to try and gather an unbiased experience to base an report from the planet on - reaching a combination of my own opinions mixed with an honest and factual description of my experience.

Discovering Lemmy's Castle
I was very impressed by the first look of ROCKTropia, where I inspected Lemmy's Bridge and the surroundings - including Vicar Village! The details around are great. My plan now was to run south towards the Evil Cathedral, the Stadium and all the other new things waiting ahead of me. But first I wanted to see Lemmy's Castle Northeast of Vicar Village!

Unfortunately everything was dark, dark and very dark around the castle. Of course, it looked very neat with the huge fires around - giving another evil impression - but when I ran towards the tp (I could see the blue dot on my radar) I ran into a huge brick wall. Behind it there was a big amount of red dots just waiting to eat my skull. I ran along the wall but it was so dark I could not see anything - not were it began, nor were it ended. I tried to TP into the other side, but for some weird reason that wasn't possible. I ended up on the other side of the Lemmy's Castle area and had to run all the way around it again. When I finaly found an opening, I could see the tp was surrounded by flying dragons and I had no chance to get there. I had to give it up as I also gave up exploring the castle and area itself. It was just too dark; to the point it became too much of annoyance, which was quite a pity!

PVP areas and Motörhead stadium[IMGALIGNRIGHT]http://www.entropiaplanets.com/gallery/pics/3/stadium.jpg[/IMGALIGNRIGHT]
To try and overcome the dissapointing experience, I hurried to the Motörhead Stadium, Southwest of Vicar Village. The west side of the area is PVP, so I just hurried around (until someone shot me ...) - to get the tps there and take a few nice pictures along the way. You can easily tell it's a stadium with all the huge lamps and stages around - a small one, main one and the whole Beer Garden. But I must admit there's not much else to see. I DID kill some vampire chicks around - both the seducing ones and the newborns etc.! You can't really tell the difference because they all look the same. Pretty easy mobs for newbies though - and they are not very agro - you can get very close before they attack. I must say it's the first time I've seen a pixel female mob with a sexy walk and jumping boobies! Big lol for the humour, but not sure it's gonna be one of my personal favorites...

Just to give a heads-up on the PVP areas because this has been discussed elsewere, I personally got the PVP message when entering the area - but obviously some people didn't. This might be a bug to be aware of - because you can get killed AND looted ;) There's also the whole Zomhattan Park PVP area on the Zomhattan Island (the big island to the right), but I could not join this area without a toxic shot. When I was shot in the Stadium PVP area, I did get a message that my toxic shot was spent and I should buy a new one to enter again (I obviously still had an old shot in me).

[IMGALIGNLEFT]http://www.entropiaplanets.com/gallery/pics/3/cathedral_1.jpg[/IMGALIGNLEFT]The Evil Cathedral is really Evil
My next jump was even further south to the Evil Cathedral! And that was an awesome place indeed. The huge cathedral rose up in front of me, like a mastodont monument in the darkness - with big torches on all sides to light up the towers. I got the tingling sensation of a chilling fear and ran around the cathedral in the hope of being able to go inside and maybe even see the evil cardinal. But I got disappointed. There nowhere was an opening to run inside and enjoy the mysterious place! To quote Monty Python "It's only a model". I instead ran to the graveyard to inspect some of the grave stones! Unfortunately nothing really seemed to be written on them - one place I saw something that looked like latin to me. I'm not sure, but it wasn't unique because it was obvious that the same stones was placed on more than one grave ...

What stood out to me on the Planet is the lack of turrets around tps and [IMGALIGNRIGHT]http://www.entropiaplanets.com/gallery/pics/3/cathedral_2.jpg[/IMGALIGNRIGHT]cities. Several places (also on Zombie Island) you can't even get near the tp because of red dots floating on it! On the other side of the Evil Cathedral, though, before getting to the Evil Cathedral Back Garden tp, there ARE two turrets ... but hardly any mobs around. You have to run far more west to see a werewolf, which there was plenty off, by the way. The area there was quite nicely made with misty swamps around. Made me think of The NEVERending story, when they run through the Swamps of Sadness where Artrax (the horse of Atreyu) sinks into the mud. I don't know if that was intentionally, but NEVERtheless it looked very much like it.

Wolves, wolves and... more wolves.
If I had to pick one word to describe the amount of mobs, "abundant" would be it. There's really a LOT of them. It seems as if they have been thrown around and unfortunately it's the same mobs again and again; Wolves, Werewolves and Zombies. And even if they have different maturities, you can't tell the difference from the look. Once you have seen one zombie, you have seen them all!

The Evil Cathedral was, despite the lack of exploring possibilities, the most exciting place I've seen since I left the area around Lemmy's Bridge. I continued North East to enter Zombie Island and the Docklands, which I expected would be filled with ships, cranes, cars etc.

Dockland and Zomhattan
I came to this 'outland' Dockland and it seemed flat, dark, misty and... boring. Be aware that this is PVP too - albeit you are not lootable! I had no problems running around here without a shot. There's some storage dock houses around - all the same - and here and there you find a crane - but everything is so dull and grey that I nearly gave up. Then the Zombies suddenly appeared! The intelligent ones and some slow ones... and I just shot around. I ran and ran - same houses, same roads, same cranes, same zombies and it seemed to continue forever untill I decided to just TP more north towards the city area of Lower West Side.

I could see lights from big apartments in the distance - LIGHT - LIFE - SOMETHING, and I ran towards the city area. There were old broke cars around. You could really tell that some kind of war had been going on. Fences, water tanks, broken cars, destroyed houses. It all reminded me of something I had seen before! And there they were, all the zombies - the old ones, the adults and the teens. All looking very much alike and very agro! I got lots of friends there, which I shot to pieces (easy, easy mobs which, behaviour-wise, reminded me a lot of the Tantillions on Calypso), and in return they gave me no loot! Thank you! It was like stepping back to playing resident evil for a moment - but it seemed that this area and the zombies also had been suffering from the developers copy paste button - because nothing changed!

[IMGALIGNLEFT]http://www.entropiaplanets.com/gallery/pics/3/say_hello_to_my_little_frie.jpg[/IMGALIGNLEFT]There's a huge space on Zomhattan were you find only despair and ugliness and millions of zombies. I tp'ed all the way to the Upper West Side to get away from it - but was faced with the exact same! I then tp'ed to the Upper East Side - but nothing changed! Then I tp'ed south to Lower East and it looked very much like the same, except for a huge Dome in the distance, which I wanted to explore but I couldnt because of huge ass mobs all over the place and right on top of the TP there, which made me give up again! Then I tp'ed into the BAMF HQ and B.A.M.F South, which are two tp's placed with only a tiny run inbetween. Quite odd was my first thought!

I TPed south and ran into a bunch of wolves. I TPed over the water towards The city of Dreams - and ran into a bunch of wolfves. I TPed into the City of Dreams and was pleasantly surprised about the light, the vegetation and the houses. The City of Dreams looks like a city - but the first thing you notice is the enormous 'Hollywood' sign with the letters *NEVERDIE* ... then a building with the letters 'NEVERDIE' and then all the signs around promoting NEVERDIE and Club NEVERDIE etc.[IMGALIGNRIGHT]http://www.entropiaplanets.com/gallery/pics/3/city-of-dreams.jpg[/IMGALIGNRIGHT]

There was a building called 'Club NEVERDIE' and I was eagerly awaiting some nice 'clubbing' as I went inside and discovered there was nothing there other than auctioneers and crafting machines!

[IMGALIGNLEFT]http://www.entropiaplanets.com/gallery/pics/3/auctioneer.jpg[/IMGALIGNLEFT]And that's another thing! All the auctioneers and technicians on ROCKTropia are the same! Slutty looking girls in minimalistic outfits! The technicians I can somehow understand. It's a vampire girl, total white and pale with red eyes and blood around her mouth! But it would have been nice to see something else than the same looking girls - what about some of the brutal Motörhead guards or some from Lemmy's crew?? There's so much which could have been done and yet, again, it's like the copy paste button got quite the workout from the developers!

The City of dreams contains huge appartments. You have to run up a long long road to explore them but I have to admit I didn't bother. I would not even know if it's possible to go inside of them. A lot of people were to be found in the City of Dreams - some trading already. It was like walking into Twin Peaks and it's obvious that this will be the main place on the planet.

I tp'ed around City of Dreams - Wet Wolf Greek has a waterfall which is really nice and I think that kind of stuff should have been more around. But yet again, the area was swamped with wolves all over. Not only around Wet Wolf Creek but also south at Mulholland Way - which is kind of a weird place. I TPed more north again along the coast and got killed by some pop dragons (there were millions of them). And I ended up all the way in the Stadium revival...[IMGALIGNRIGHT]http://www.entropiaplanets.com/gallery/pics/3/zomhattan.jpg[/IMGALIGNRIGHT]

More TPs around would be great! A better structured placing of the revivals would also be really nice! More light would help, so you are able to enjoy the details around. More variations in the types of mobs and also in the look of the different places would be another nice improvement! Less mobs around the tp's and the exciting monuments and areas.

BUT despite all the above, which might seem more negative than my first report, I had a really nice look-around-trip and was happy I gave the planet a chance. ROCKTropia is definitely different and still worth visiting, if not for hunting, then to discover the things you will never see on Calypso!

There are yet to be explored huge amount of areas between the TPs and cities - and who knows what they are hiding? Only time will show if there's mysterious things to be found around - and also only time will tell what else NEVERDIE and his crew have up their sleeves to surprise us with. After all, NEVERDIE did state that "the unique stuff will be added gradually".



Explore on your own?
Find the map of ROCKTropia HERE

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The opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necesserily reflect the positions of the EntropiaPlanets Staff as a whole!

 

I was only describing what I saw :D .. I probably missed a sign ;)