New player questions

Just started playing Prophecies a couple of days ago and have a few - hopefully not too stupid - questions!

Firstly, on parties, I'm used to grouping in WoW, LotRO etc., but with the zoning in GW things seem a lot different. For example, I accepted an invite from someone when looking for a gate opener in Pre-Searing Ascalon and ended up getting zoned two or three times, ending up in the French-speaking Ascalon zone!

Obviously you can be ported around according to the location of other party members, but how does this work across zones and map locations? Is it based on the position of the leader or something? Also, when I finally found someone to open the gate, they logged out after the job and stayed in the party as disconnected. I noticed that entering Ascalon again, they automatically disappeared.

I guess I'm asking for a basic rundown of the party mechanics as I can't seem to find a good description anywhere, other than how to add members to your group.

Secondly, is there a quick way to loot dropped items, i.e. a 'loot all' key, or do all items have to be picked up individually with the interact key/double-click?

Lastly, is there any way to bind mouse-look to a mouse key, so that you can move with cursor keys while looking around with the mouse, or can you only look while moving using a bound keyboard shortcut?

I'm liking the game a lot so far, but there are quite a few subtle differences to get used to it seems

Thanks in advance for any help!

if you zone back into a town you will zone to the party leader's home server (I.E. Europe French).

pressing : will target the closest selectable item near your character, pressing Spacebar will make them go and pick it up. (one at a time)

Hold down your right mouse button and you can move the camera around without moving or while moving.

You can look in the options tab F11 by default and then controls there is the free camera option, assign a key to it. While pressing that key, you'll beable to rotate the camera while moving without altering your trajectory.

Yup, that's what I'm doing at the moment. I'm just used to using the left mouse button for looking around from other MMORPGs and FPS games. I'll get used to it I guess.

Regarding the partying, what was majorly disorienting for me was that I was getting ported without actually moving anywhere myself. So the main question is what triggers that? Does your character automatically get moved when another party member changes zone or was I hallucinating?

One more question that sprang to mind tonight too; is it possible to switch off the chat that pops up showing 'X has won a Hall of Heroes' battle type thing. I have the other channels turned off, but doesn't seem to be an option to remove that one?

If any party member zones through a portal, the entire party zones. If you're in a city/outpost, and all members have access to the target city/outpost, the leader can zone everyone to that target city/outpost. Otherwise (including if the party member is not the leader), only they will zone, leaving the rest of the party intact.

And no, you cannot turn off the 'X has won in the Hall of Heroes' in chat.

to clarify that last post about movement and what not...

You travel by a couple of methods. You can walk the old fashioned way, you can intentionally teleport using the map linked to your M key by clicking on a town you have already been to. (In a party, the leader may move the whole group from town to town this way but it does give you a pop up warning) and you may be dragged through a new portal to the next area by a member of your party going there themselves.

It does this to keep the party together in a group. courtesy requires mentioning said trip before you go so any others in the group may ahve time to pick up dropped loot.

May I add to this thread
You may have noticed there are boxes you can tick or untick to filter converstations.

Chat can be missed if you do not have the right boxes ticked.

Enjoy the game

Thanks for the replies

Yup. One of the first things I did was uncheck all the boxes, as there does seem to be a few 'mentally challenged people' in Ascalon!

Since then, I've re-enabled the Team option, and just enable local when I'm looking for someone in town.