Noticed in this screenshot, the thrall on the Stygian drum which was briefly shown in the upcoming battle pass for Age of War.
Musician thrall, or emote?
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Looks similar to the work metal emote, but likely it’s just an interactive object by my guess, especially since he’s using drumsticks. It’s would be nice to get some instruments to put thralls on or something, but who knows? I doubt it’s gonna be so simple as that. I think having an actual musician thrall that can be placed on instruments like workbenches would be great.
I guess we find out next week 
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just a gonna drop this here
No what you will be getting next week is a few gigs of disappointment.
My opinion the update isn’t going to be ready, funcom knew it, so next week we just get the frame work for the age of war. We wont get the actual age of war till chapter 2.
Now since part of it is siege warfare seems war drums would be a thing 
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It’s still an update and I get something new. Sorcery wasn’t exactly my thing.
But yes, I’m not expecting too much until Chapter 2.
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At least they’re showing that we’re gonna get musicians AND merchants like we asked for… so yeah, that’s something. I know @den mentioned that player merchants were something they were working on, so I can wait a bit longer. 
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Torchlighter sounds interesting too.
Maybe… hard to say just how practical that would be. 
The 2 fighters in the foreground have a size difference, the one on the right is bigger and stronger, that would be pretty new.
I’m not sure if that is new. I have some fighter thralls that are larger than others. I have an archer thrall that looks much smaller than others also.
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Those icons have been in the devkit for a long time. There are lots of professions to choose from for thralls as templates to use for mods (many of the more unusual icons to anyone playing base game have already been used in mods). Doesn’t mean they won’t eventually use them in game, but their existence has been known for a long time.
So more than likely an emote?
Probably, but hard to say.
From the screenshot? Maybe… but who knows? Maybe they’ll surprise us. We’ve been asking for musicians for a while now.
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Hopefully that produce actual sound.
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Still thinking that war drums for a thrall, will be part of the battle pass, or at lest aught to be part of the siege update, with towers and such.
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Possibly, unless this is just something unique to the raid camps. Anyway, if they are placeable instruments, it’s not exactly the first one I would have chosen. A war drum isn’t exactly the best tavern music and feels very specific in its purpose. I can’t see myself using a war drummer anywhere tbh. It would just get annoying.
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I think about it this way:
We hear that Stygia is raising an army to invade. We know it’ll take about three months for them to recruit, equip and transport those troops. So in response, we start fortifying our lands and recruiting troops to defend what we have claimed for ourselves. Medieval warfare isn’t fast-paced. Logistics take time.
From a game development perspective, it makes sense to build the new features gradually, considering the limited dev resources. Then they can see what breaks and how in the first chapter before starting to add more stuff. The roadmap even accounts for the fact that they may not be able to do everything they want to do if there’s a lot that needs to be fixed.
It even makes sense from a dramatic perspective. The first part of a drama is always building up momentum. Then comes the action, and the setback, and finally, catharsis.
While the old purge that now comes in rapid succession because of the turboed purge meter, are crushing your base and wiping out your guards every week.
So why the age of sorcery? They dumped a major boat load on us, most of which is going poof in the next age. They put a lot of effort and developmental time in to something that was removed in a few months, pretty much voiding all the work. You want to talk about wasted developmental time. I feel for whom ever put all that time in the the headhunter wagons and such.
What book waits till half way through to introduce the hero and plot?
No I don’t believe this is building momentum, this is funcom knowing there was no way they were going to have this ready for the next age, which goes out on time as is. THIS is the issue with hard release dates. Never seen a game where it was a good thing. It’s hard on coders, bad for development, and no good for us players.