I logged on today expecting a challenging new test, saw the Lostpedia clue page with some black and white squares and thought "oh, some kind of chess game!" - but no, that was just part of a video. Test 4 is, literally, what we make it. You can create your own test! The first reaction I had was "are they running out of ideas ALREADY" to warrant asking us to make the tests for them, but then I figured maybe its actually part of the story - and also maybe for the first time I can actually get some friggin Dharma points!!!If you would like to take my test, which is aptly based on Lost alternate reality game trivia, inc. TLE, F815 and DIRP, then follow the link (I wonder if it'll get taken down...). Apparently you get 50 Dharma points for every person who takes your test, and also the chance to be in some official Dharma portfolio, gaining you a swish 500 points. I do see a slight flaw in the logic though, as I hear anyone can "cheat" by taking their own test over and over, but hey its still fun, and I'd love to take other peoples' tests if they link in the comments section - I'm a bit of a quiz show fan so I think I'll enjoy this portion of the story!
But now we come to the part of the story which I'm really excited about - the video. There was a brief glitch during Hans Van Eeghen's talk about making your own test. Now I have no claim to this find, BUT the glitch thing is actually a data matrix 2D barcode, and that barcode says "reiwtletmk"... and an anagram of this is.... wait for it.... MITTELWERK! DA DA DA, DA DAH! Having almost literally written the book on Mittelwerk (I devised a large amount of the Lostpedia article on him), I'm very excited at the awesome TLE reference! But is it a mere shout-out or something huge. Remember what happened at the end of The Lost Experience? (go here and click the word "humanity"). Could this reconstituted Dharma Initiative be a separate gig from Hanso as was surmised, being run on the QT by the evil Thomas Werner Mittelwerk, who's planning a new way to kill 30% of us with a third-world health and safety not-so-tested viral agent? I'm now slightly more inclined to be supporting Black Swan/RuckusGuy/Dan Bronson in their efforts to take down this supposedly altruistic group, especially if ponytail man is behind the action. Very cool though, the game is finally starting to over-reach into a real narrative, and now half-way through the testing phase, things seem to be hotting up.
P.S. I also made tests on Psychology and classic literature if anyone is interested.
