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Ahh, the Tome of Knowledge. Such a cool feature with loads of groovy information. Unfortunately, the more unlocks you have, the longer it takes for you to log in.

I have determined that the cause of my extremely long load times is linked to Tome of Knowledge unlocks. I performed the following tests on a fresh install of the game at default settings by loading into Altdorf from the load screen.

40 Engineer (~2600 unlocks) - 135 seconds
40 Swordmaster (~1200 unlocks) - 34 seconds
5 Warrior Priest (~120 unlcoks) - 17 seconds

I have seen similar results on other PCs. The bulk of the load time is spent with the animation on the loading screen frozen. The zone loads quickly once the game stops being frozen.

Here's what Carrie Gouskos, Tome Producer, had to say:

Hello all,
Sorry to hear about how much trouble the tome is causing your loading times, believe me it is in no way our intent to make you not want tome unlocks. That being said, we've tracked down a fix and are attempting to expedite it.
You should hear more soon.
-Carrie

I always wondered if the ToK was actually responsible for many of WAR's performance issues as well. Let's face it, the book is filled with tons of information that is constantly server-checked after nearly every action you do or is done to you. It tracks your critical hits, the number of High Elves you've killed, your fall damage, and even whether or not you perform a crafting action in water. Those few examples are like half of a half a percent of what this thing tracks.

Can it actually be causing more problems than just load time lag?

Let's pretend the answer is yes for the sake of argument. What would you do? Obviously, the Tome is a huuuuge part of WAR, ingrained in almost every facet of the game from live events to influence to titles and much more. Would they actually disable it? Hell no. Should they? I don't think so, because it would feel like WAR was missing something without the ToK.

So what option does that leave? Fix it, duh. Do I have much faith that they actually can fix it? That's another "Hell no" unfortunately. Oh, I'm sure they'll get the load times under control, but that's very minor compared to the issue of it possibly causing poor performance while you're playing. There are simply too many pieces of data flying around for them to get this under control without completely disabling it.

If this is the case, I wonder if Mythic actually knew about this beforehand. Performance was waaaaaaaaaaaaaay better in beta and that's when the Tome wasn't fully fleshed out or really activated. They must have done a cost-benefit analysis against this and figured the Tome brings more to the game than the issues it causes (if it is in fact causing issues, and I truly believe it is).

How do you feel about that? Would you rather have better performance or more unlocks and number tracking?

The PopCultureOfDestruction has a really cool article talking about the rock stars that helped create such massive hype for Warhammer Online. He examines it from the early development up until the present, by painting us an accurate picture of what Paul Barnett, Jeff Hickman, Josh Drescher, and Carrie Gouskos brought to the WAR community over the years.

The biggest PR player I think he forgot to mention is Mark Jacobs, the VP of Mythic, who is much more outgoing and communicative than any other MMORPG head honcho before him. A VP who delivers the good news, the bad news, and personally asks fans for feedback really amps up the hype!

Several members of the forums and beta boards including Missy, James, Spyke, and Robert should also be mentioned! To be fair though, there really are too many people to list in one blog post. The next time you fire up your WAR client, click on the CREDITS button. Everyone on that list deserves a huge thumbs up! :)

ChaosCast episode #4 is ready to assault your ears with interesting discussion, community news, and, oh yeah, an awesome interview with Mythic Entertainment's Carrie Gouskos, Tome of Knowledge Producer, for Warhammer Online! Hopefully, you catch the reference of this episode's title.

Here's the episode breakdown:

The Blowhole - Questions by Isanox, Kevin B., Matt D., Hirokana, and Johnny Walker Black!

Welcome to the Community - Bloghammer Online and WAR Noob (/salute) - We apologize for the small amount of sites mentioned in this episode. Our list is huge for episode 5, so you'll get your turn!

Roasted on the Spit - Carrie Gouskos gives us a lot to think about and discuss regarding the Tome of Knowledge and what it's like to work at Mythic Entertainment! They're still hiring btw!

Round Table Discussion - There is no distinct RTD this episode because there was a lot of discussion during the interview section. We were running quite a bit over schedule, so we left it out, but fear not, it will return in episode 5 bigger, badder, and uncut!

Hopefully, this will help you start the week off fresh after all that nasty business from last week! I've had some time to cool off and listening to Carrie speak really cheered me up again! I feel reinvigorated!

We really had an excellent time chatting with Carrie and want to thank her again for taking time out of her busy schedule to answer our questions. This woman has been putting in shifts at the office until 2am people, so I really hope you appreciate everything she has done for the game once it launches. Her passion for WAR is huge and she deserves to stand up there with other great devs you've come to know and love, including Paul, Josh, Jeff, Adam, etc. Thanks again, Goose! ;)

As always, you can submit your Blowhole questions and new community site links on any of our sites and we'll make sure to include them in upcoming podcasts! Those sites are Waaagh! Blog, Keen & Graev, and The Greenskin (you're standing on it)!