Admin: Ending Prologue (2)

The assembled army of Players commanded respect.

They lacked the dazzling plate armor, enormous banners fluttering in the wind, and a couple of dragons on the Players’ side to truly ‘awe’ me, so they hadn't reached such a high assessment in my eyes yet. Even so, the assembly of men definitely inspired respect.

Divided into eight proper cohorts… Well, at least I always imagined a Roman cohort looking like what I see in front of me, though I can’t vouch for the exact number of Players or if they’re actually in proper Roman formations. At least their gear seems to match? 

Some Players were outfitted with something resembling proper combat equipment, with sharp strips of iron that, at a decent distance, could be called swords, all thanks to the first fully operational forge. They even maintained a proper formation while moving forward! 

At least it looked like proper formations from my point of view, what’s important is that they’re actually marching properly, and no one broke the line to slay as many monsters as possible. It could even be called ‘discipline’. 

Even the initial report that the boss was currently destroying their future, hard-earned loot didn’t cause them to break formation… Well, not too severely, their ‘commanders’ had to wrangle some over-eager Players to move back into formation. 

Rallied for an honest fight against enemy bosses and mobs.

As they advanced, the first cohort pushed forward, crashing into the first wave of mobs at full speed, quickly carving a path for the other Players, the other cohorts. After a couple of minutes, when most Players had exhausted the momentum of their initial rush and started losing health, a spirited shout announced the second cohort arriving to their aid. Immediately, a second wall of steel relieved the first cohort, sending them to the back of the line for a brief rest, all while maintaining pressure on the mobs. 

Then, as the second cohort began to falter, the third joined the fray, and when the third depleted their strength, the somewhat rested and healed first cohort stepped in again.

It seems that the Players were adopting a three cohorts rotation, were the others supposed to be kept fresh for the boss?

This cycle was not only well-coordinated, but also well-organized. The mobs, whose numbers far exceeded the Players and were meant to be a significant obstacle on the path to the raid boss, began melting away before my eyes, quickly fattening the participants with experience… It was not even a battle, I couldn’t call it that, it was more like a cleanup, and not in the usual sense of players clearing mobs in a location, but a full-on military operation of annihilation.

Maybe some Player dug up a historians’ records on training Roman legions? Well, even if so, knowing something was only half the work, it still needed appropriate adaptation to the current game realities and proper implementation in game conditions.

For instance, when flying imps entered the fray, it’s unlikely even the most detailed account of Roman legion actions described how the Players should respond to this scenario.

But the now advancing cohort, the fourth, have demonstrated a decent mastery of ranged weapons. Fortunately, for the Players, appropriate projectiles literally littered the ground under Players’ feet. Moreover, it turned out each cohort had a couple of mages, capable of downing the aerial mobs with ease. 

And the mobs fought desperately indeed, not just in the sense of throwing themselves at enemies without fear, as expected from mobs, but also in that it looked less and less like standard PvE clashes and more like a full-scale conquest. With an unstoppable legion of Players on one side, against the savages trying to halt them without a single ‘modern’ weaponry to their name.

The mobs attempted to hold the Players back as long as they could; but even the higher-level creatures joining them were quickly processed into experience and crafting resources. After that, four cohorts broke through, gnawing their way toward the raid boss with all their might.

The fifth cohort joined next, but contrary to my thought that Players were now aiming to intensify the pressure on the mobs, knowing that they are approaching the raid boss, instead, they spread around the territory already cleared of mobs, forming something like a guarded cordon. 

A five-second reflection led me to realize that my little trick of summoning hordes of Demons on the Players from their blind spots, had firmly imprinted in their minds that the Demons could appear from anywhere. It seems that it had prompted the Players into taking preemptive measures with the creation of proper protected corridors, both for potential retreat and to guard the main combat forces from a backstabbing.

Watching this scene, only one thought pulsed in my head.

Did I overdo it?

I mean, of course, getting sweet revenge on the Players and the chance to pit them against each other, torment them with mob hordes, and to elicit a response in social and military development, was simply part of the game. The enjoyment I get from it was simply a side benefit. Now, watching the Players getting so invested in my game that they started fully training for literal combat operations and military campaigns, with coherent plans, rearguard actions, and secured retreat paths, it only pleased me more. 

It told me that the Players took my creation very seriously, which pleased me greatly, and clearly planned to continue playing far into the future, otherwise all their prior investment would be pointless… Which pleases my bosses very well.

A very classic case of sunk cost fallacy.

However, this game was originally a game, that is, an MMORPG, whatever prefix it should have, VR? AR? Doesn’t matter.

If the Players were so immersed that they spent hours of their very finite lives, which should have been spent on rest, work and other more tangible things, playing the game? Well, more power to them if they want to spend time drilling military tactics, which, while unlike in reality, wouldn't cause fatigue, wasn’t something that could be accomplished with a click of the button.

But, wasn’t their devotion a bit overmuch? From the perspective of me fulfilling my role as the GM of the game world, this should only make me happier, and it did. The slower the Players progressed through the plot, the more time I had to prepare further content for them to enjoy. But from a human perspective? 

I mean, spending such amounts of time on such tiring activities instead of just playing around, you know, the whole point of playing a game, instead of repeatedly drilling the same tactics…?

Or was I already starting to sound like those grumbling old men claiming virtual reality games provoked cruelty and blurred the lines between worlds, causing derangement. Would I catch myself murmuring something along the lines of ‘back in our day, all games were on computer screens and nobody confused fiction with reality, unlike now!’?

Alright, let’s forget that question and return to another reason for my concern under current conditions, related to exactly this same situation.

The Players were progressing too quickly and too effectively.

I mean, I planned to use the raid boss as a bogeyman to scare the Players with later, but the Players had unpleasantly surprised me. And most disgustingly, they unpleasantly surprised me by behaving like rational representatives of humankind. 

Instead of acting like normal Players who would just ignore the boss until a group of daredevils rushed the raid boss first and got wiped, or until I had provoked the Players with tales of their loot’s horrible martyrdom in the raid boss’s jaws; causing them to swarm the boss in a human wave to bury him with their lives, they actually prepared.

Discipline, tactics, a proper chain of command, all these were serious steps in the development of the military art in human history, and each time they were implemented, humanity took significant leaps forward; the Players made five such leaps at once and now seriously kicks ass. As their mob clearing has demonstrated, they are now already a proper combat force.

Of course, at some point in the future, I planned to create mighty military empires and legions and the like, but this was so far ahead in my plans that one could say I hadn’t even planned anything like it. It seemed to me as a content for ‘high levels’, so I hadn’t even considered what I’d have to do to accomplish it. It was more like ‘pie in the sky’ kind of plan.

The planned Togra was supposed to be a pirate den with its own military forces and some high-level NPCs, but that was it. Disunity, pirate vendettas, and a small, comparatively speaking, organizations and fleets…

What to do with Players who had already devised battle plans at the level of Roman legions? Wouldn’t the Players ‘accidentally’, on purpose, subjugate my pirate refuge. And wouldn’t the numerous quests I’ve prepared for all the Players turn into methodical, systematic, and most importantly, very fast quest grinding distributed by authorities from above?

I needed somehow to introduce an additional factor into the game, something to disrupt their excessively fast-growing combat effectiveness, cohesiveness and simultaneously their rapidly strengthening alliances…

After waiting a few seconds, I snapped my fingers, an idea forming in my head. Shifting my gaze to the huge vessel where the Child currently awaited its ‘savior’, with a light hand introduced a limit on the number of quests it could issue per day, while increasing the rewards for each. At the same time, I adjusted the limit on the number of possible jumps into the Tempest of Time, increasing the rewards for those equally. Let the Players now fight each other trying to access valuable rewards. 

Nothing provokes factional fragmentation like introducing a limited resource that they would all fight each other over.

A moment later, almost reaching the raid boss, the Players suddenly stopped, and four more cohorts emerged from the general Player camp, heading straight along the cleared streets under cordon guard forward. The Players that are nearly reaching the boss zone suddenly split into two groups and moved sideways, parallel to the boss arena. And, only because I’ve started observing the current situation from the start allowed me to understand that the advancing reinforcing cohorts carried the best equipment, and had the largest number of Players in their ranks. 

I thought that they must have been the boss clearing group, and yet, when they had reached the edge of the Boss Arena, they stopped. The cohorts then split, leaving some Players behind as they seemingly started to surround the boss… 

No, the Players weren’t just clearing the path to the boss, they’ve decided to clear the surrounding territory as well! Thus ensuring no mobs could interfere in the fight and creating a proper cordon around the boss; only then would the approaching players strike the raid boss and deal with him.

Watching this scene, I turned once again to Child and Tempest of Time, quickly lowering the available number of Quests available even further while significantly increasing the rewards for participation.

No matter how you look at it, this wouldn’t do. This situation needed resolution as soon as possible.

And good thing that among the approaching cohorts, Jabberwocky wasn’t present, remaining as the commander at a distance, in his camp.

Otherwise, I fear I wouldn’t have been able to restrain the urge to simply hurl a meteor at the Players and call it a ‘random’ game event.

***

The Players made their move, unfortunately, without in-game chat, they couldn’t reliably determine the exact moment to advance their formation with complete precision. Instead, they relied solely on an estimated time frame they figured would be needed to isolate the raid boss, moving forward after a twenty-minute wait.

Quite quickly, the scene before the Players shifted from ruined streets littered with stone rubble and still-undissolved corpses to a fairly spacious, though clearly segmented, view of an empty courtyard. In the center, Players finally found what they came to this location for.

Loot!

Oh, and also the raid boss guarding said loot.

Essentially, the entire combat group was a mishmash of the strongest and most experienced Players with the highest levels and, preferably, real experience, if not in actual combat or historical reenactments, then at least in something resembling fighting. Considering all these facts, and the fact that all participants in this ‘expedition for the raid boss’s head for the heresy of destroying loot’ belonged to different ‘Guilds’, central command of the combined combat group fell to Beze. As Jabberwocky’s protégé, a veteran of punitive campaigns against Infernals, and someone with real experience and credentials in boxing, she was bestowed the laurels of command over this assault.

Something Beze didn’t particularly enjoy. 

She preferred beating enemies herself with her fists over directing those who beat them, but nobody asked Beze’s opinion much. Jabberwocky had requested her involvement in command, so suppressing her inner reluctance, Beze barked her commands sharply. 

The battle, to save all the loot, has begun.

“First formation!”

Quite quickly after these words, the Players dispersed, forming a decent staggered group, a protection against the Boss’ fireballs, and pushed forward. Their steps were measured and halting, as if they’re hoping to trigger some cutscene with the boss and hear his acknowledgment of the arriving Players.

But that didn’t happen.

Instantly, Beze spotted a fiery streak slashing across the sky, heading for her. Only reflexes hammered into her brain’s subconscious jerked her head aside, causing the fiery line to miss her head, failing to cut short her attempt to command the first proper raid against the boss.

It seemed the boss not only had no plans for any cutscenes but also decided to turn the element of surprise against the Players, something they thought only themselves possessed. And perhaps if someone else had been in Beze’s place, without real competitive experience in such a violent sport as boxing, it might even have worked. 

Fortunately for the Players, Beze was, and after dodging aside, she managed to shout her second command. 

“Third formation!”

Scrolling through her instruction, Beze decided to skip the Second formation, as it assumed the Players could trap the boss and attack him simultaneously from all sides at a distance, but well the plan of mice and men. Thus, now organized into the third formation, a hit-and-run tactic, the Players instantly surged forward, periodically changing direction and moving in sharp dashes side to side, trying not to get caught by the boss’s single-target shots. 

Meanwhile, the group behind Beze’s did their best to cram into the nearest available crevice, preparing to fire from behind the backs of those charging ahead.

The boss, in turn, realizing the Players were approaching from all directions, cast several available buffs on himself before dashing aside. Surprisingly, instead of flinging magic at a nearby Player, he simply crashed into them at full speed with his physical body. True, the Prophet was a mage, but he was still a boss, so his physical stats weren’t inferior to the average Player, and all with the added momentum of his fast movement. The Player, unable to handle the surprise, instantly collapsed to the ground and was pinned by a point-blank ‘fire arrow’.

Beze, witnessing this scene, quickly ran through the plans Jabberwocky had managed to drill into her head before finding a suitable one. “Sixth formation!”

A slight hesitation rippled through the Players as they recalled what the formation entailed, for which two closely positioned Players paid for the pause with a fireball. The Fireball served as the warning bell as they began stretching out to one side, deliberately dispersing in that direction, while from the other sides they closed in. 

They shifted from an attempt to surround the Boss into an effort to pin the boss from three sides, trapping him and funneling him toward the side without Players.

The boss, again displaying his great intellect, sensed something amiss instantly and rushed not toward the inviting empty side but forward, aiming to break through the Players’ encirclement and escape the trap set for him.

This time, however, the Players were prepared, and the boss couldn’t manage to break the encirclement on the fly. Though a lightning bolt did fry another Player, the boss was pushed back.

By this point, the Players with ranged weapons had finished their preparations, finding a place to hide, and emerged all at once, for which a couple of them instantly paid the price. 

However, only a couple, there were still far more Players left alive.

Everything came into play, from slingshots and stone-throwing to something resembling arrows, wielded by a few of the alliance’s most outstanding archers. After a moment of desperate firing and numerous misses, the first projectile to strike the boss’s body finally knocked off some HP, making him at last spill blood onto the long-awaiting stone beneath his feet.

The fight is just beginning.

***

Finally, after all their struggles and failures, the Players managed to reach the raid boss.

Observing from a bird’s-eye view, I could take in the entire battlefield at once, not just the boss but all the Players, and thus knew, without a doubt, the boss was doomed.

No, defeating the Players attacking him now, while difficult was not entirely impossible, the AI had performed not just admirably but beyond all praise. A fireball whizzed past the Players a moment later, exploding and taking out a couple of them trying to flank from behind, was proof of that. The AI didn’t just decently decipher the Players’ tactical plans but countered them to the best of its abilities. There were many Players, and they were well-prepared, but looking at the current situation, I wouldn’t be shocked if the AI ultimately managed to handle four cohorts of players.

The problem, for the raid boss that is, was that while he was spinning around dealing with these Players, Jabberwocky wasn’t idling for a moment. He had decided not to wait even for the minimal two-hour wait time mentioned to him for all players to assemble, and sent the main strike force forward ahead of all the other’s plans. Right now, the Players who couldn’t return as quickly as he’d announced were pouring into the game, urgently forming new cohorts that Jabberwocky planned to send as reinforcements within minutes. 

Even if their equipment and discipline ended up only being a tenth as good as what the first group of Players had demonstrated, the boss would be significantly wounded and exhausted by then. So the Players would simply overrun him with their collective wave of steel and lust for loot.

I wasn’t worried about either the Players or even the raid boss, he had done his job well. The Players were also moving toward fulfilling their preordained mission of destroying the raid boss and linking all other locations together.

However, while the battle between Jabberwocky and the Raid Boss were unfolding on one side of the game world, the other side wasn’t standing still either.

Under Ja-Raja’s control, the Infernals were assembling their own raid, while the Players stationed as ‘guards and spies’ from the ‘alliance of the faithful’ demonstrated that the drills in Jabberwocky’s camp were only effective on some Players. These supposed ‘guards’ engaged in anything but their assigned task of monitoring the Infernals. 

The Infernals were probably grateful for this, because failing to notice such massive movement of Players required far greater talent than noticing them, and were preparing to sweep through the game world as a small repeat of Attila the Hun’s conquest.

Unlike the discipline and desperate attempt by Jabberwocky to recreate the Roman Empire at its peak through its military forces in reality, the Infernals appeared as their complete antithesis, more reminiscent of a barbarian horde as imagined by the average person.

The groups of various Players were amorphous, and determining who commanded them, or how successfully, under such conditions was difficult. Of course, this made them far more similar to the typical MMORPG Players, those who move in a chaotic crowd, usually spamming skills on cooldown, except for a couple of leaders and healers who despise Players for such behavior. But, in comparison, to Jabberwocky’s organized war machine, they seemed like true savages; all that was missing were axes banging on shields and horned helmets.

Moreover, while even now Jabberwocky was assembling proper cohorts, distributing roles and appointing commanders, it seemed that each group of Infernals under Ja-Raja’s nominal control was precisely under his ‘nominal’ control. The Players freely moved from one group to another, command was held by those with the loudest voices and most imposing presence, and of course, higher levels. And they listened to Ja-Raja’s orders not because he was their leader, but because Ja-Raja could twist the head off any overly ambitious upstart if they acted too independently.

In other words, Ja-Raja and his Infernals are playing the role of a ‘horde of enraged mindless barbarians’ without any complaints. It made me ponder how drastically human personality expressions change depending on their surrounding conditions. And that from the perspective of typical MMORPG inhabitants, the Players were more alike to those very bloodthirsty barbarians. 

That’s why they so easily and naturally filled this niche as Infernals.

However, it couldn’t have been any other way for Ja-Raja. In his independently simmering cauldron, mobs were merely simply an additional experience source not the main one, how could it be otherwise? When killing a single Player could yield entire levels at once, saving days or even weeks of grinding for any eager participant? 

The fact that the experience gained by the killer came from the victim’s level pool didn’t foster internal cohesion in the group. It’s hard to remain unified when you know at any moment you could be killed, weakened, and someone else could grow stronger at your expense. 

Such unsteady alliances don’t last long, especially considering that a few particularly shrewd Players had already ‘dealt’ with numerous other contenders and risen up, now breathing down Ja-Raja’s neck as his likely successors, possibly against Ja-Raja’s own will. Moreover, the stark division between Players who successfully seized opportunities and those who were the ‘opportunities others successfully seized’ created a system quite expected of a standard fantasy horde of demon worshipers. 

That is, a divide into disenfranchised low-ranks, powerful patrons, constant paranoia, and a complex web of mutual agreements valued just slightly less than the chance to ditch them at the right moment to turn on yesterday’s allies. After all, taking down a higher-ranked, higher-level Player was more profitable than hunting the small fries around them.

Such a situation, as expected, birthed a society one could call ‘toxic’ from any perspective, with so many Players already looking for ways to renounce demon worship and return to the ranks of regular Players. Well, that’s exactly what Jabberwocky was handling right now, the Child would provide such an opportunity for the Players.

But what was especially surprising, was that not all the Players were dissatisfied with such a living situation, a considerable number of them actually enjoyed it. Some saw it as a chance to test their luck and rapidly ascend over the heads of their ‘allies’, others perceived it as a unique test of ingenuity in understanding the game mechanics. And some simply relished the chance to play under conditions of constant paranoia, the chance to be ‘the baddest guy of all’.

In any case, Ja-Raja didn’t belong to any of these categories, he simply enjoyed being at the top and intended to stay there as long as possible and as high as possible. Something about it being better to rule in Hell, than serve in Heaven.  

Considering that under current conditions there was no talk of loyalty, and the more strong subordinates he had, the sharper the question of leadership and potential replacement became; Ja-Raja needed victories to convince his subordinates that he deserved to be at the top. And, of course, to boost his level as high as possible, better be safe than sorry.

Thus, his expedition for the pirate ships wasn’t only necessary for the Infernals to gain access to the Broken City, and not only to get entangled in war with Jabberwocky, but also to prevent Ja-Raja from being toppled from his pedestal.

Therefore, Ja-Raja gave himself no chance of failure, unlike Jabberwocky and the raid boss, rolling back and trying again later wasn’t an option for him.

Lacking strict tactics and discipline behind him, Ja-Raja relied on mobilizing every possible Player for his campaign and on sheer level superiority.

And so, when the designated war cry echoed over the Players’ head, and a mass of living humans surged forward, I watched this scene with no less interest than the start of the raid boss battle.

And thanks to my discovery regarding sensation simulation?

With popcorn in hand.