There were also a ton of patch notes, too much to go through now. As if a particular someone was reading my mind, Roxanne’s voice carried through my bedroom door, “Dinner’s up!”
My stomach cried out its displeasure in response. While those Scorch Boar Steaks tasted awfully good in-game, they didn’t really fill your belly. I frowned as I wheeled out from the desk and turned toward the door.
There was time to read and figure this out. After all, there was a hefty dose of server downtime ahead, not to mention the four-hour timer for the auto-logout to reset. Besides, I wanted to see my sister, Chrissy.
Our home was compact but efficiently designed. The two bedrooms were connected directly to the main den/dining area on two of the four walls with wheelchair-access bathrooms sitting next to them. Open archways on the walls opposite the bedrooms led to two small chambers, one a kitchenette and the other was a small front foyer. Again, the walls were the same even white, and a round, synthwood table with a five-year-old, knock-off TriVid holovision projector mounted in the center of it dominated the room.
Roxanne had been busy, as she continually was, this time hard at work feeding our little family. Mom’s slightly-worn-but-lovingly maintained china was set out and a simple meal of roast chicken, creamed corn, and green beans was laid out on two of the three places set. Chrissy’s place, well, as befit her situation, was a bowl of steaming protein-and-nutrient mush. She never complained about the taste but I couldn’t imagine it was very good at all, no matter how far taste enhancement chemistry had come.
From her place opposite me, Roxanne smiled wryly. “Thank you for deigning to join us, Max.”
I chuckled at her poke and rejoined. “Thank my belly!” I rolled up to the table and glanced over at Chrissy. “Hey sis, how was school today?”
A lot of people found looking at my sister hard. It wasn’t disgust for most; it was that instinctual heart-wrench that came with seeing a vibrant young girl bearing the weight of the permanent injuries she had. The crash, the one that disabled both of us and took away Mom and Dad, was a decade past and Chrissy had been only three at the time. Every month, every year of her life from then on had been a struggle for mere survival.
At first glance, she had taken a lighter touch than me. She had only lost her left arm, shorn off by the steel wreckage of the car, and unlike me, she took to prosthetics well. The real problem had been the ruptured electrical batteries that dumped their chemical contents over her small body. The resultant chemical burns and inhaled fumes … it would take more time for me to list off the resultant health issues and best to simply say that her ability to breath, to eat, to speak all came down through the flesh-colored synthplas facemask that covered her nose, mouth, and throat. What bare skin Chrissy showed was the mottled reds and whites of extensive skin grafts. At least her raven black hair had grown back long and straight past her shoulders and her blue eyes were crystal clear.
To her eternal credit, if the flaws on her skin and the strangeness of her prosthetics bothered her, Chrissy never showed it. She was always an optimist and a permanent spot of sunshine in our lives.
“School was okay,” Chrissy said, her voice crackling through her mask. “Oh, we’re *zzt* starting a module on computer science and NSAF stuff! Mind helping me with the *bzzt* homework?”
The voice module needed work and she really deserved a better round of plastic surgery. They had made advancements in the last five years, but both those surgeries and module repairs were considered ‘discretionary spending' by the Medical Council. Even the things they did cover, such as the constant need for updated prosthetics as Chrissy grew (we needed to get her a new arm soon; this one was starting to look small and strange compared to her natural arm), required money beyond what our disability and government assistance could cover.
I bit back the tears that wanted to come out. I’d let them out later. Didn’t want to spoil dinner, right? Roxanne knew how I felt, she was giving me a reassuring look.
My smile wasn’t forced, even if I was holding back my sadness. “Of course, I will. Heck, I’d argue that the only people who know more about NSAF are Roxanne and her mom.”
“And you know I’ll help you too, Chrissy,” our nurse smiled softly. “For now, though, how about you concentrate on dinner? You know how doughy that gets when it gets cold!”
Chrissy laughed. Even with the distortion and crackles, it was music to me. “Don’t *krkk* remind me! It was a pain *zzt* in the butt last time to clean my feeding tube!” Tapping a tab on the side of her mask caused the rigid grill at the front of her mask to part with a mechanical clink before a hard, plastic tube rolled out.
She deserved better than this but the only way to get that was money. I turned my stare toward my plate and everything became clear as crystal. I knew exactly what I had to do.
Somehow, I had to find a way to find a way into Crystalfire Keep and not just some penny-ante paid work around the edges. I had to find a way to the top.
So, we went into testing for Patch 2.0 with two primary goals: to bring back the social, team-oriented focus that EO started its life with and to inject a bit of mystery into the narrative of the world itself. Dealing with these problems are part of the life cycle of every MMORPG that’s ever come out, pre- or post-NSAF, and how a dev team decides to deal with them marks the course of that virtual world for years to come.
Kyle Patruski, in a GNN interview, just after Patch 2.0 launches
Scaling content has come to EO! Crystalfire Keep and all subsequent Strongholds will follow this system, as well as all lead-up quests to unlocking the zones. Previous content will remain as is to provide an even leveling path. All incoming and outgoing damage, effects, and healing in relation to these zones and quests will be scaled via a complex algorithm based on levels, statistics, Gem quality, and the encounter’s difficulty. This includes avatar-to-avatar interactions to prevent exploitation by high-level players.
Excerpt from Elementalis Online Patch 2.0 Notes
4
I was full of anxiety as I tried to sleep. There was a part of me that wanted to rush, that argued every moment I spent out of the game now that Patch 2.0 was up was a moment wasted. Even if I couldn’t be in-game the entire time, there was research to do, feedback from the changes to soak in, and early scouting reports from new content. Fortunately, the rational part of my brain took the wheel.
The facts were that Crystalfire Keep wouldn’t be open for a month. I had four weeks and some change to get the lay of the land, figure out the wrinkles of the new patch, go through the quest line, and find my way into a winning guild. Yes, it was still a tall order but there was no reason to panic and screw everything else up in the process.
I played a tank, after all. Tanks had to be alert, rational, on-point, and aware of what was going on. If I was tired, cranky, and generally upset, I wouldn’t be able to impress the people I needed to or have my wits at the ready to figure out what was sure to be a bevy of complicated encounters and new mechanics. The patch notes themselves were a lot to take it.
It still didn’t mean that I slept well. Not like I slept peacefully much as it was. If it wasn’t pain spikes, it was general stress, worrying about Chrissy or the general state of our family. However you wanted to slice it, I did manage to get some rest all the same. I awoke as bright-eyed as was possible.
The morning regimen of getting cleaned up with Roxanne’s aid, helping her with breakfast, seeing Chrissy off to school, and a round of physiotherapy seemed to drag on in a timeless void. I tried not to be short or cross with anyone, but I don’t think I did a good job at that.
I knew that was a fact when Roxanne gave me a faint frown at the end of therapy. “What bit you in the rear last night?” she said as she finished settling me back into my wheelchair.
I grimaced. No matter how gentle her hands were, it always hurt the most when I first settled down. “Nothing. Just anxious to get to work.”
That frown deepened a hair but all she said was, �
�Oh. I suppose I can understand that.” She turned for the door of my room. “Well, speaking of work, I had better file my reports. I’ll be here when you come out of the dive.”
We didn’t need to get into our regular ‘discussion’ about how healthy it was for me in the social and emotional senses to dive to my limit every day, regardless of the income it brought in. I certainly didn’t need that stress, not today or for the next month. I would have to apologize a lot once this was done for all the lost time with family, that was for sure, but for now …
“Okay, Roxanne,” I called after her. “I’ll ping if I need anything else.”
She replied with a non-committal grunt and stepped out of my room. The moment she was gone, I wheeled myself as fast as my poor motors would carry me to the NSAF headset on its mechanical arm. With a touch on the touchscreen interface of my chair, the familiar whirring of the arm filled the air as the gear descended over my head.
I don’t think I can put into words the exact feelings I get every time I go down deep. Well, maybe I can. Maybe you can imagine what it might be like to lose a limb and know that when that visor drops and those neural sensors make the connection with your brain, you will have that limb back again. The creep of anticipation as the gear comes down, that moment of panic after the headset is on but before the sensors are online where you worry that maybe this time you won’t feel it, and the glorious moment when your legs come back and your arm works perfectly and …
Yeah. That’s pretty much how it is.
Normally, I’d linger a bit in the NSAF network, take some time to relax my mind, walk around, take in some of the new art or maybe even an immersive short story. Today, though, I was all business, bringing up the Elementalis Online launcher and diving in. The strange, ever-changing landscape of the network melted away as the unique gravity of Elementalis pulled me in.
I had only one avatar, good old Shale, and I had the Quickplay option on, so there was no stopping at the avatar select or creation screens with their crystal rooms and star-flecked skies. Instead, I immediately felt the weight of armor, the massive stone shield strapped to my arm, my banner loosely gripped in my other hand, and hurtled down from the heavens toward the shattered world below.
That wasn’t some poetic turn of the phrase. Elementalis consists of broken fragments of a globe, continent-sized shards that were suspended into a roughly spherical shape by tendrils of raw energy spiraling out from a writhing core at its center. Pure white light and deep inky darkness fought in that core while the immense clefts between the world’s fragments were filled with chaotic oceans of elemental fury. Lakes of fire, bubbling chasms of lava, endless waves of tornados and hurricanes, and tumultuous, stormy seas divided the land, making magic and grand airships the only way to safely traverse from each Element’s homeland.
The sense of acceleration increased and my trajectory arced straight for Slabshard, the continent of Elemental Earth, and more specifically the stone spires of Granholm, capital of the Earth Kingdom. This was almost rote after my year of playing and logging in, so much so that I almost zoned out during the process. Maybe it was the extra cup of soycafe this morning or the anxiety, but I didn’t lose focus and caught something new, a bright glint of something reflective that hadn’t been there before, not too far north of Granholm proper.
Then the drop was over. I was Shale completely once again, standing tall and relaxed in the Crystal Hall, the travel center of the Craggar capitol. The place was awash with people of all four Elements: wispy Aurum, fiery Embers, wavy-haired Nix, and plenty of the native stone-skinned Craggar. The building itself wasn’t literally made of crystal, though it was adorned with plenty of them.
Instead, it was made of the same steadfast and simple stone that most of Granholm was built with. It got its name from the city’s Life Crystal, a massive, spiraling faceted stone that reminded me of a unicorn’s horn piercing the sky that sat in the center of the hall. An Elemental could tether their spirits to the Crystals, serving as both central respawn points and sanctuaries where Return Crystals and certain Spells would take you back to.
Needless to say, a good third of the people milling about or passing through were Crystal vendors, peddling everything from basic Grade C Return Crystals to Grade S Group Escape Crystals and all manner of merchandise in between. They catered to people in a hurry, like the convenience store/car charging stations all over town. The vendors’ cries mixed and mingled together with the hustle and bustle to form a rhythm, a song of community that had been getting a bit quiet as of late.
Two UI panes hovered at the edges of my vision, nagging me for attention. One was the usual index of patch notes after an update, something that really demanded my attention but wasn’t worth wasting my two-hour timer on. I’d read enough to wing it until later today.
The other was the Herald pane. Essentially a full-function in-game mail/messaging system, it was normally a spammy mess if you didn’t take the time to put up filters and multiple folders. Being a proper professional, I had done all that so the only reason the Herald would be softly pinging as I made my way out of the Crystal Hall was, well, business.
There were three messages vying for my attention in the list, all three sparkling with the gold highlights I had selected for job offers and financial matters. The first one was straightforward enough, notifying me that the rest of Burndall’s payment had gone through. I absently issued the mental command to collect the gold and do a cash-out to my RL bank account as I entered out into the main plaza of the city.
Granholm's heart may have been made of stone, but it soared high to evoke the majesty of the mountain ranges that dominated the region. The city was situated in a lush, forested valley nestled into the Dominion Mountains and, mirroring that, the plaza was filled with a circular grove of oaks and pines. I set my feet toward the Champion's Hall across the way, so I could turn in my bounty while I glanced at the rest of my messages.
From: Burndall, Subject: Help me, Obi-Wan, you're my only hope!
From: Kayla, Subject: So many players, so few competent tanks …
I rolled my eyes a little, even though I really shouldn't have. It wasn't that I didn't want to find some friends I could relax around; heaven knew I could use some. It was just that most of those people trying to be my 'friends' were only trying to use me. After the first couple of those, well, my natural cynicism came to the fore and stayed there.
I decided to check the letters out in a minute because twenty bucks was twenty bucks. Besides, it might not hurt to make friends since I knew I'd need some real help to have a chance at Crystalfire.
Pushing through the crowds of eager adventurers, I entered the vast hub that was Champion's Hall. I mean 'hub' in the sense that many champions started their day from here.
Quests handed down from the four Elemental Kingdoms found their way here to be doled out to adventurers while more informal jobs and help requests were posted up on the various billboards mounted along the walls there.
The place was even shaped like a hub, well, the hub of a wheel with spokes. The central chamber served as a sort of common room where request boards were clustered and various halls radiated off from that, the entrance hall, one for each of the kingdom's, and one for the Champion Hall’s administrative staff.
Want to know the biggest change that's the hardest to deal with between the old shallow-dive MMOs and the deep-dives? It's the constant sensory barrage inside a big city. Sure, there's the usual spam in city-wide channels but add to that the constant vocal chatter of people around you. It's like being in Times Square at New Year's Eve, Akihabara during a big game release, or being in the centuries old MMO Everquest's Bazaar (at least that's what I've been told). For someone like me who doesn't get out much, you can imagine the overload.
I pushed the buzz of babble out of my brain, kept my eyes away from the Herald, and made a beeline for the Earth Kingdom's desk. The big slab of polished marble sat atop a granite pedestal at the end of the hall and was manned day and
night by Sir Copperholt, emissary of the Mountain King.
NPC interactions always required a little suspension of disbelief to keep your immersion. After all, there was always a crowd around a popular quest giver or convenient merchant, yet the moment you stepped up to talk, the rest of the world slipped slightly out of focus, the crowd noise died down, and said NPC only had words for you.
Copperholt was a fellow Craggar, of course, but he was old, with a drooping mustache of clear crystal and a stomach that fought an eternal war with his polished breastplate. Veins of, well, copper ran through his rocky skin.
As I approached, he chirped up with, "Ah, Warlord Shale, what news do you have to bring from the hinterlands?"
As a matter of convenience for easily distracted players, his words appeared subtitled in clear, white text by his head, with a few suggested responses underneath. I had seen these for months now and I knew exactly why I was here, so I briskly went about my business.
Conjuring the dripping head of Scorchtusk from my digital inventory, I dropped the still-sizzling hunk of pigflesh onto the knight's desk. "I have slain the terror of Emberfire Forest, Scorchtusk, for the honor of the Earth Kingdom," I pronounced.
The shock on Copperholt's face was believable despite the fact I knew he had to make that face hundreds of time a day. "Remarkable, Shale! With the beast gone, we may finally be able to make headway to quell the Flames of Conflict that threaten to consume the land!" Ah, unfortunately, good Sir Copperholt, that won't happen until the right content update hits. "You shall be well rewarded, indeed!"
He swept up the bloody head and turned, driving it atop one of several steel spikes that were mounted in the ground behind him. Pleased by the gruesome display, the knight turned back to me and raised a palm toward me and the familiar surge of a quest reward filled my body.
See, that's the other thing that contributes to immersion addiction: the reward high. Obviously, the dev team wanted finishing quests and gaining levels to feel good, right? Sure, the human mind is wired to get an endorphin rush from success as it is but why not add a little bit more to it? It's the only ethically dubious thing that the game companies managed to slip past the government watchdogs, a particularly potent poke of good vibes straight into the brain.
Ring of Promise: A LitRPG novel (Elements of Wrath Online Book 1) Page 4
