Pax Dei’s Wilderness Alpha is going to be a large test. Mainframe Industries released some more details on their plans for the test, including inviting more than 100k players, regional server plans, and more on provinces.
Initial plans call for two testing regions, one in the US and one in the EU. Players will not be required to join any particular region, so if you are in the US and you are in a European based clan and you can put up with the latency, feel free to join an EU server. If you are elsewhere, pick whichever is best for you.
The team first plans to open two shards per region to start, and decide whether more are needed based on population and activity. There will be advance notice before they open, in case you need to plan for the fresh server.
The team says that they’re aiming to get claims and friends to play together as much as possible. Their Friend Token system has been integral to this in the past, letting the token signal to the system that these are people who want to play together, whether a large clan or just you and a couple of friends. In the latest round of announcements, they also released details on provinces and home valleys on each server, along with screenshots of the coordinating maps to aid in planning where your group might want to build homes, castles, and villages.
In the EU, the first two shards will be Arcadia and Elysium. In the US, the initial shards are Agartha and Annwyn. The names are important, because once you pick the region and chard, you will also have to select a Province and a Home Valley. In an example, if you’re in the US region, this might look like US / Annwyn / Ancien / Tolosa.
Provinces are geographic areas with valleys, mountains, and other terrain. Found within the provinces are the Home Valleys (familiar if you were in the previous test). This is where you claim plots of land and build. Lyonesse, the PvP province, is not an option for your Home Valley. You can’t build there, although it is a place you can venture into if you want high risk and high reward.
Your choice of where to put your Home Valley also impact what kinds of resources you will find in that area. Which makes communication among others–and possible trips into Lyonesse–important.
