What we knew before the servers went down: Two of Rocktropia's four main servers would not be brought back online. It also looked like the Arctic would not, but that Hell would remain. The two servers shutting down held some iconic Landscape as well as popular mobs. Lemmy's Castle Motorhead Stadium (including the beer garden) Vampire Cathedral Vampires Werewolves Motorhead Security Motorhead Royalty Lemmy Dragons Garcia Dragons Joplin Dragons Hendrix Dragons as well as a few shared loot mobs including Foul and Phasm. The Arctic contained what many still consider to be the Best new player experience mission chain and introduction to the game. Last night the Mothership MacReady (which I won in the Arctic hunting Things) was filled with Rocktropia veterans and regulars 'returning home' in preparation for the Apocalypse. There was a mix of nostalgia, sorrow, excitement, and skepticism among the passengers as everyone was thinking about what had been and what was yet to come. We had a soc hunt on Pop Dragon Stalkers, and then headed to bed once the server going down warnings began. I set my alarm early so that I could play a couple hours before work, and after downloading the VU logged on and looked at my map. It looked exactly the same! Well, at first look it seemed the same, but then I could see that none of the teleporters were available on the western two servers. (the ones taken offline) Here is what I found in the short time I had to explore. The Hell server is now being more fully utilized. In the past the Hell mines only really took up about 1/4 to 1/3rd of the server with huge open areas all around them. In the North West corner of the Hell map, hell truly has frozen over. Camp Campbell the starting tp for the Hunt the Thing missions is there, along with the camp and everything. I talked to Neverdie, and while the mission chain hasn't been put back in place there yet, they will once things settle down. To the north east is the new Vampire Cathedral along with some amazing spawns of Vampires for anyone who has had trouble grinding them in the past. Just follow the road away from the tp there, and you will find progressively higher lvl spawns of Vampires. Some people told me that the higher lvl dragons were around the Cathedral, but I never found them (or the actual Cathedral building for that matter) East of the mines but west of Club Hell is the new Lemmy's Castle and there is a pvp area in the southern part of it which has Motorhead Royalty. I am not sure if there is a beer spawn there or not, I never saw one. South of the mines is the new Motorhead Stadium which has quite a few tps in it. I found a spawn of low maturity Pop Dragons there. Inside is a lootable PVP area which has a spawn of Motorhead Security Guards in it. On mainland Rocktropia only the two Eastern Servers are available, and I spent enough time in Hell I was only able to explore a little bit. London Blockade still has Pop Dragon Stalkers. South East of of the South Studio Gate where the NEVERDIE/King Tut dragons used to be are now clean little spawns of young dragons for each type. (I only saw Rudolf and Garcia, but am pretty sure the others are there as well if I had kept going) Zomhattan got the Empire State Building added to it, and due to a screw up of the 'surprise' Boss spawn, there were Zombie King Kongs everywhere. 450,000 hp and as tall as the buildings! Crazy mob and should be fun to team on once things settle down a bit. We started to get a team together but were told by Neverdie that they weren't supposed to be there and MA was working at removing them. Glad we heared his warning since 10 minutes later the servers went down briefly and the Zombie Kongs were gone. I guess they are supposed to spawn once for each 2500 or so Zombies killed there, so will give zombie grinding a purpose for sure. It also turns out that team loots were messed up since as we started dispersing and hunting random dragons or whatever we wanted the base loot from the different mobs was <1/4 of what it normal is. We heard through the grapevine that teams were messed up and once we closed team and hunted individually the loots returned to normal. (another reason to be glad we didnt attempt to kill a Zombie Kong) Things I was not able to check out yet were: Instances (though I did check and my Book of the Apocalypse does take me to the 'secret' entrance, which is good since it had been bugged for a few VUs) Where exactly they moved the Werewolves to. Prison or any changes it might have gotten. Mining in the remaining 2 servers if they are the same resources or not. Mining in the new areas of HELL. THINGs (I only explored the beginning, and didnt go all the way through to check if it has THINGs spawning in hell yet or not, though there were wolves) The high level dragons (except for pops that I found) They are supposed to be in HELL somewhere, I just dont know exactly where. If the demons are still in their same mine shafts. any of the PVP areas Drop rate of Vinyls on wolves (some told me it was still llow, but I found they were in a team as well, so that might have been why) Tons of other stuff I am sure I haven't thought to look for yet. My thoughts on the change: I was presently surprised at the thought put into the layout, and although I am sad to see the loss of the two servers feel that they actually did a good job of retaining what was important, and I think it was smart to utilize the unused parts of the HELL server to accomplish some of this. (next step will be the 7 layers of HELL? a server is a 3d cube right? no need to have just one plain :D ) Neverdie seemed especially glum going into this VU, but kept his secret of the Zombie Kong pretty well. Even with the Banana event earlier I had no idea this would be his next new thing. I think they did a good job, and hopefully will focus on the economy (he truly seems interested in making corrections needed to promote the economy) and advertising and making the ties between our Virtual World and his Hollywood world through this new Zombie Kong.
It is interesting changes... Not exactly what everyone was expecting, but enough to make it worth investigating. I think his cryptic message said something about studios closing... haven't seen any rocktropians right in front of the megplex but I wasn't there too long... I think he said in the notes that arctic is there for a little while longer... so I suspect entire arctic map will be re-written but only time will tell? Enjoy the free oil while you still can. Some times of the day the rig is very non-populated... other times it's 'full' - of course there 'full' means there's 3 or so avatars, lol. :) Wonder if the bar missions are still screwed up as they were previously... Before the vu if you touched the troll's drink and someone else was in the bar with you they'd enter the instance with you and could very well loot the register even if they didn't touch a single mob in the bar. I think some of the other missions had similar problems, but I haven't tried many of the others previously... seemed too risky if this was happening on some of the others that require bigger investments to get to the end.
Ah well that actually sounds like good news. It may even be a good thing for the planet. Smaller, more compact might make for a less empty feel. I'm glad hell is getting more use. I really liked the look of that place but felt bits of it were aimed at someone (higher level?) other than me, lets hope this is a positive step backward that will allow more steps forward in the future. Wistrel
I thought that Lemmy's Castle, Motorhead Stadium & Vampire Cathedral were some of RT's main attractions so not sure getting rid of these is a great idea.
lol ... RT ... I was there for buying some drinks for my swimming pool bar at Monria. I met ND and Lokia ... and got this: Any questions? :-)
Lots :) How did you get it to spawn, How many were in team, any shooters outside of team? how long did it take to kill? How much regen? What were stats on the gun EMW got? I missed out on it cuz im still at work :(
I wasn't there but was in CND Lagoon square when the suspects came back from the field :) to the best of my second-hand knowledge: to spawn it you (or anyone) needs to kill 2500 intelligent zombies; it took about 40 minutes (?!) to kill; the cost was estimated at 3.5...4.0k (about twice zero regen cost, so there was some regen) the gun EMW got is a BLP gun with just lvl 21 req but bugged (cr*p eco - might be fixed in the future) the rest of loot mainly consisted of adrenal oil; also, Neverdie said something about future Kongs being shared loot.
