Aertheca

Aertheca

Description
"Greetings traveler and welcome to the magical world of Aertheca, a world inhabited predominately by seven races. Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, Halflings, Half-elves, Half-Orcs, and Humans share the lands and govern their respective regions. There are many beasts, unknown horrors and wild territories that await adventurers. It is a world where anyone may rise to fame and fortune or be swept away and lost in the great events of their time."

If you desire power and glory or if you simply seek adventure in new lands, fear not the unknown and come find your place in Aertheca...

Setting
Aertheca consists of three continents surrounding a mysterious island. It is a vast and diverse world, between the majestic mountains of ice and snow on Chalea and Kryth, the evergreen forests and crystal lakes of Lui'ninque, the scorching deserts of Shirzax, and the rich plateau of Mendor, there is much to see and untold riches to discover. In the center of it all is the magical and mysterious island of Aertharon, known to many as the Domain of Armageddon.

No one knows how this island came into existence, though some say it is the birth place of the gods themselves. These days only brave and foolhardy adventurers risk travelling to the island looking for long lost treasures, many never to return. Those lucky enough to survive the journey speak of great fortunes, mysterious ruins and of fearsome guardians who dwell there. If the gods shine upon you while you adventure on this most magical of places, you may truly stake your claim to be one of the greatest heroes to have ever lived upon Aertheca.

Background
Aertheca has a long and colourful past. Of late the Dragon Wars have come to an end and a time of relative calm has settled across the lands. The once proud kingdoms have dissolved into separate cities, each struggling to hold the warlords of the wild at bay and to keep what lands they held at the close of the great war. Most lore and magic has been lost, though in time, a new generation of adventures and seekers of knowledge may uncover what was lost or gain insight into even more powerful magic. Three Houses have arisen from the ashes of the Dragon Wars and they now begin to cast their eyes out with dreams of expansion. These Houses have not gone unnoticed by the city states, who cling to memories of what once was. It is a time of both great opportunity and danger for the dreamers and brave travelers who would dare to roam the wild lands of Aertheca in search of fame and fortune.

General comments
The Aertheca module is a completely new player world which succeeded an earlier player-world known as "Hybrid LOTR".

Where the old world of "Hybrid LOTR" was player world was short on RP, strong on PvP, and permitted extreme empowerment of PCs through e.g. armour, weapons, and crafting, the new world "Aertheca" carefully keeps the strength of allowed gear limited.

Counter to the earlier ideas where practically any level-40 PC had godlike strength compared to the NPCs and monsters, the philosophy of the Aertheca is that individual PCs should be unable to overcome the top boss-monsters unaided, and that a group effort is absolutely required to face the strongest boss monsters and survive.

In addition, the server has devoted much effort towards balancing individual classes, which in practice means severely curtailing the most powerful classes such as Sorcerors, Wizards, and to some extent Clerics.

A few examples: - the IGMS spell has been reduced to 10 missiles - the Biby spells all are subject to saves - the Black Blade of Disaster summons now takes damage - the spells "Acid shield" and "Elemental shield" don't stack - timers on spells such as "Implosion", "Greater Sanctuary" - the "True Seeing" spell has been removed, and now merely adds to spot and listen skills

Certain common restrictions have been put in place, such as disabling the "Devastating Critical" feat.

The Aertheca module is large ... very large. And many areas contain something of value (e.g. crafting resources), making it a giant easter-egg hunt server.

Criticism
Having played on the server for a few months, I have to note that the weakest area is server maintenance.

One gets the impression that the current maintainers and builders have inherited a module which is simply to large for them to understand and maintain.

Bugs in Quests
On the server forum there is a special thread dedicated to bug-reporting (in itself an excellent move), with specialised sections for "quest bugs", "broken transitions", and others. Unfortunately however this doesn't seem to result in simple issues (e.g. quests) being fixed within an appreciable timeframe (say a month or so).

Bugs in quests are disappointingly common, to the point where a player who can't complete a quest first tends to suspect a bug in the quest before anything else. Broken transitions are also numerous, and when reported, tend not to be addressed.

Forum maintenance
The forum looks good, the threads work, but unfortunately shows the following shortcomings:

Only recently was the search-engine placed in a sensible place in the menus.

Information on the player-world of Aertheca (in what sense did the builders override the default Fearun and/or LOTR properties of races, gods, what impact did Aertheca's history have, and what special items have been added by builders and/or DMs) is squirrelled away in a hundred threads without being summarised in one spot, thus making the information practically inaccessible to ordinary players (and the odd DM)

Maintenance of bug-reporting threads is poor. Some threads devoted to bugs that *still exist* have been moved to the "Fixed Bugs" section.

Scripting and Scripting Bugs
The scripts on Aertheca certainly seem complex and ambitions. For example, a complete chat-system has been implemented in scripting (called "meta-invites").

Unfortunately the current set of scripts also seems unmaintainable (by the curent builders).

The following scripted facilities are all bugged to the point of rendering them unusable, or of having the functionality removed:

- bank vaults in which PCs can store items loose the items - special "PC-dedicated summonable chests" (called "slaves") crash the server when used and have recently been disabled - the special "Scrying" functionality for Wizards is broken

Features

 * CEP + Custom content.
 * New 1.67 bioware content (including new tilesets!).
 * Over 1000 Areas.
 * Rideable Horses!
 * Player controlled factions with claimable cities.
 * Hundreds of unique quests.
 * Random dynamic loot system.
 * Unique, custom made crafting system.
 * 16 different Dragon Disciple types to choose from, each with their own wing colours and other properties.
 * Customised spells.
 * Fast Dedicated Server Host with loads of bandwidth.
 * Realistic Resting System.
 * Armour and Weapon crafting is free and always successful.
 * Some classes have been modified.