Epilogue: Elsewhere
(MetaTech Virtual Headquarters, Shadowmen Control Room)
Demi Turner looked over the reports from different servers, and nodded. Thankfully, Lilia had warned her about the ‘second wave’ that would likely be coming from the flash sale, especially with how streams and other influencers had been giving solid word of mouth praise for the game. So, they had been expecting an influx of players, and the problems they’d bring.
Honestly, the problems weren’t as bad as they’d feared. The influencer streams had made it clear that you couldn’t play Shadowmen in the same way as earlier MMORPGs. There were no quest icons, and you couldn’t just run around killing mobs for XP. You had to live in the world and be part of it to thrive. So, there wasn’t as much of a wave of chaos as one would expect.
Still, there were problems. More than a few people needed reminding that they weren’t the main characters of the story. You couldn’t just be the big hero, or get away with things that others couldn’t, because there was no such thing as plot armor. Everyone in the game world was perfectly killable. Some just had more consequences attached to their deaths than others.
Thankfully, these people were learning their lessons in ways that were less likely to involve rocket launchers going off in the middle of downtown areas. Sure, most got sent to a reroll at least once before they started listening to the first-wave and beta players, but they were at least trying to be sneakier with things. Which was good, since the first-wavers had done some serious damage to the game world’s stability, and she didn’t want to redo all that work.
Sally Navarro looked up from her own set of screens. “Boss, we just got an alert from the Seattle server. A string of PvP events in quick succession.”
Well, it was wrong to think that players in a living world wouldn’t eventually find themselves going against other players, especially since there were no visual cues or icons to identify players. “Right. Took a bit longer than I expected, honestly. What do we have?”
Sally chuckled. “Well, it looks like one of the Second Wave teams decided that the stories of the Mysterious Seattle Man and his team were overblown hype, or that they’d gotten lucky. Looks like they tried to rope him and his harem in as expendable workers.”
Demi groaned, one hand over her face. “They did not.” When Sally just nodded, she sighed. “I know they haven’t done any streams of their actual work, but you would have thought people would know better. So, what exactly happened?”
“Team run by a character named MissMe took an extraction job, but decided to try and get a more established team to do the hard work, and then sweep in and double-cross them after to get the real payday. Unfortunately, they were sloppy. They didn’t know when, exactly, he would be hitting the site, so they had to keep watch on it, while not obviously sitting outside the site. But they were at a nearby motel, with obviously armored vehicles.”
Demi sighed. “Let me guess, our boy sniffed out a double-cross, and had one of his team watching nearby areas? And when they saw an up-armored van, they knew the trap was there, and turned it on them?”
“It gets better,” Sally grinned. “One of the team decided a cranial bomb was a good sacrifice for extra points in character creation. And didn’t have enough protection on their commlink, or let their hacker run protection. So, your boy’s TM introduced the team to what happens when grenades go off in small rooms. Killed most of the team, including the hacker. Then, she bricked the surviving members’ gear and stole all their money, before making them the fall guys for the power outage the team caused as part of their extraction.”
“OK, so the AI flagged this as a major PvP event, marking it for review?”
“Right. Ever since the first few incidents in the beta, we made sure PvP events were marked, so that if they became a pattern we could catch it early and stop players from griefing each other, usually by sending both of them to different servers.”
“So, was that it on the PvP events? You mentioned a string.”
“The other is classified as a minor PvP event, but was included in the logs due to proximity in time and still involving your boy’s team, along with it being more of a potential long-term problem. Unrelated group of Second Wave players tried to skip out on the bill for the same fixer Iceblade’s team uses. Most of the team was already ‘handled’ by the fixer’s contacts, but the last one, named Donna Daring, was hiding out, and the fixer sent the team after her.”
“Straight kill order? That wouldn’t qualify for a long-term problem. What else is there?”
“Basically, they brought her to a vampire who would sell on their extracted scientist to some other corp. According to the AI report, the vamp is going to keep her as a blood-bag for a few months, until her essence drains to zero, and then toss her body to his feral ghoul guard dog so that she doesn’t come back as a vampire herself.”
“Ah, yeah, that could be a problem. Basically being locked into a torture scenario for months before getting killed and reset is likely to lead to hard feelings. What chances does the AI give her for getting out of this?”
“5.3%. And it is only that high because she’s a mage, so there’s the chance she could summon a spirit to help her escape while the vampire sleeps. However, the vampire’s a mage as well, so it isn’t likely. Plus, the feral ghoul between her and the exit. AI is asking if we want to offer the ‘mercy kill’ option.”
“The option where we just switch a character to NPC status, right, like we do with characters who are being prepped for investiture by the insect spirits?”
“Yeah. Like you wanted, it requires administrator approval for cases that aren’t as clear-cut as being turned into a bug, but it is a potential out for anyone who is basically stuck in a no-win scenario, and they don’t feel like playing it out until the end. But it is limited so that they can only use the ‘mercy’ option once every three months, RL time, or they lose any ‘carry-over’ bonuses, and are reset to the account’s base power level. So, unless they have the Beta or Pre-Order bonuses, they’d be starting at 400 BP, with the basic options. Also, once the offer is authorized by an administrator, it remains valid for three months, RL time.”
Demi grinned at that. “Just in case they think they can try and get out of the situation, but later figure out they’re wrong?”
“Exactly. That, combined with the strict unlock conditions and time limit on repeat offers should walk the line between customer satisfaction and abuse of systems. But every player file that gets offered the ‘mercy kill’ is marked for closer review, just in case.”
“That’s good,” Demi nodded. “All right, go ahead and give her the offer. If she takes it, maybe Donna will be less daring in her next character. Assuming she learns from her mistakes. And make sure the AI tags accounts linked to PvP events and marks their posts in the OOC forums for review. Don’t want people bringing in-game fights to the OOC forum, or taking OOC squabbles into the game.”
“You got it, Boss.”