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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?

I didn't write much of a celebratory post when I finally reached rank 40, even though I did a lot of complaining on my way to the top. I'm also not one to give the Tome of Knowledge much love since I have a greater interest in many of WAR's other features. To address both of these issues, here's a screenshot of my ToK's introduction page moments after I hit rank 40.

tome-at-40

And here's a screenshot of me and one of my friends looking off into the distance, pondering what else will come our way in the days, weeks, and months ahead in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

snafzg-nazgum-rank40

Name the exact location and win an e-cookie! ;)