by Jason Cheek
The new technology had changed the world’s financial markets overnight as everyone tried to get in on the possibilities of virtual reality and the company’s patented direct neurological interface as V-MMORPG’s stocks soared. Imagine being able to eat as much food as you liked without gaining a pound, of playing a game five times a week for two hours at a sitting and losing your excess body fat within a three month time period, or being blind and experiencing sight for the first time – the possible uses of the new technology were endless.
Traditional entertainment mediums tried to block the game from being released, but the cat was already out of the bag. The only thing that lobbyists were able to get passed before the game’s release date was to require that ‘The World’ be given a rating of (AO) or ‘Adults Only’ due to the in-game possibilities available for player interaction since ‘virtual sex’ had suddenly become a buzzword. Instead of making the game less popular as some of the more religious opponents to the new virtual technology had hoped, the law had only made the game more popular than ever.
Luckily for my friends and me, we were part of the initial Kickstart project and had gotten our names on the list from day one, except for Jimmy and four of our guildmates. Between an inordinate amount of peer pressure and the monthly updates coming out about the progress of the game’s design, I managed to talk all of them into shelling out the dough for the game pods before the price doubled. The biggest problem was the cost for the married couples in our group who had to shell out ten-thousand dollars instead of five since they needed to run two units instead of one. Glenn was so pissed off at me that he didn’t talk to me for over a year because I’d gotten Kitty, his wife, in on pressuring him to make the final purchase. Thankfully, once we’d heard the reports of the Alpha testers, all was forgiven.
“We have adds!” Hearing Krystal’s taunt voice over TeamSpeak, my mind was pulled back to the battle at hand as four mini-bosses suddenly teleported into the chamber.
“Kitty, Glen, Anthony and Danielle, pick-up those adds!” Before I’d finished the order, four attack pets peeled off from the pack attacking the raid boss to pull aggro and tank the new threats as the raid started to reorient itself to the new threat. “Pull them back to us so that we can burn them down quickly.”
Like a well-oiled machine, my friends pulled back their attack pets so we could mob the mini-bosses. Like clones stamped out of the same vat, we surrounded the soldiers that Urqhart had called to his aid. As one, our Legionnaire Frost Scythes began burning down the mobs’ health with each swing, while we continued to chain caste mind blast against the world boss non-stop. This took some skill, but we all managed it without a problem. In less than three minutes the mini-bosses were taken out, and our pets were back on the raid boss once again. Smiling happily, I watched as Urqhart’s health continued to fall.
The Metaphysicist profession (aka MP) was a truly awesome class within the technocratic futuristic game world of Chaos Online. The profession had been designed around the solo-player and was a class that was its own group due to its three pets. The pets were typically referred to as demons by the player base, but in truth, the pets had nothing to do with the realm of supernatural evil. Within the game world’s story arc the pets were created from the psionic powers that were manifested by the MP’s rage. When the profession reached level 200, they received their top tier attack pet, which was a black seven-foot tall demon-like creature that could tank and had massive amounts of health along with decent damage output and two round floating support pets nicknamed ‘meatballs.’ The pair of meatballs were a powerful heal and mez pet combo that completed the Metaphysicist’s mini-group. Mez was the in-game nickname given to pets or professions that could cloud a monster’s thoughts and take them out of combat for a short amount of time. In gaming terminology, the term was CC or crowd control. Not only did the MP profession have the strongest in-game pets, but it also boasted one of the most powerful ranged attacks called ‘mind blast.’ Only instead of using pure nano-tech, the profession used a combination of psionic enhanced nanotechnology powers to deal damage. At the highest level, this was one of the more powerful ranged attacks within the game, hitting for 3k worth of damage and could be chained cast non-stop until the MP ran out of their psionic reserves, aka mana.
The only downside typically to the MP profession was that they tended to be very squishy, lacked the ability to wear the heavier armor types within the game, and generally had lower Hit Points and almost zero melee attack damage. For these reasons the profession was typically designated in most raids and parties as a support class, but this was only if you played the class as they’d been typically designed to play by the current player base.
My perspective on tweaking the profession turned our MPs into something completely new. With a few minor adjustments to strength, stamina and two-hand edged weapons skills I’d managed to come up with a build that allowed the class to wear heavy combat armor, wield an impressive two-handed edged weapon that typically could only be used by the enforcer classes with only a minor loss to total spell damage and nano pool size, while still allowing instant cast speed and gave the MP an impressive amount of total Hit Points that were on par with that of an enforcer.
In general for Chaos Online, the only difference between professions was the spells that a profession had access to and a slight stat difference between the three races that made up the virtual world, but even then those race differences were not anything noteworthy. So I built our MP’s template based on an enforcer build with the focus of all skill points on two-handed edge only. This gave enough skill points for all of the normal spells the profession needed while still keeping the strengths of an enforcer. As to why no one else had come up with a similar idea made no sense to me. I think it was because everyone in-game just knew that MPs were a caster/pet class used for support and so it was assumed they had to be physically weak. Whatever, it wasn’t my fault that others had problems thinking outside the box.
This was how our small guild of thirteen was able to field a fifty-two member raid that was approximately the equivalent in strength to that of a traditional forty player raid in total damage output and healing ability. This battle against the highest raid boss in the game was the culmination of a year’s worth of prep work and planning.
“Shit guys, looks like we’ve got trouble on our six,” AJ said as I looked behind us. Swearing out loud, I changed the video recording to third-person perspective as a stream of new players began entering into the Biodome behind us all wearing the moniker ‘The Syndicate’ under their names.
“How in the hell did they even know we were here?” Jill angrily asked as she backed away from the group.
“I saw a couple of Syndicate players hanging out around the whompa at Two Holes when we teleported in. As soon as they saw our raid take off, they must have told Genele we were after Urqhart.” Mike angrily answered.
“Yea think, Mike! Next time why don’t you say something sooner instead of waiting until the last minute to drop some shit like that.” There was a low groan at Jill’s biting remark, but the same question was on everyone’s mind as Genele’s oversized Atrox Enforcer avatar came striding through the doorway. Immediately The Syndicate’s guild leader began shouting in general chat.
“What in the hell do you think you’re doing trespassing in our dungeon, losers?”
“What the fuck are we going to do now?” A stressed out Krystal began to rage in raid chat. “We’ve only gotten the boss down to eighty-eight percent. If they get even a quarter of their guild here in time, they’ll smoke us on damage output.”
I didn’t blame Krystal for being worried; she was our guild’s numbers one tactician at calculating damage output. Mike unconcernedly shrugged as he faced Jill’s avatar in-game. “Because it wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference either way, except to freak Krystal out.” As if reading my mind, Jimmy’s angry voice cut in.
“We attack balls to the wall. That’s our only option now.”
For a long s
econd the chat server was silent as everyone eyed the boss and the trail of Syndicate players filing in behind us thoughtfully. Really what choice did we have? Either we took the chance to burn the boss down and possibly wipe, or we let these assholes kill steal our boss. The answer to that question was a no-brainer. They could take our boss over my dead body! Hearing my friends’ angry grumbling, a large grin split my face as Genele’s avatar stepped in front of me.
“Are you deaf or something? I’m talking to you, asshole. What in the hell is your lame ass newbie guild doing in our territory?”
“Jimmy’s right. The worst thing they can do is make us wipe, and it’s about time someone else took down the game’s world bosses besides The Syndicate. Not to mention, I’d love to stick it to them one last time before we leave for The World anyway. Let’s do this!”
Switching to general chat, I address Genele in front of his guildmates. “You know what Genele? Ever since I heard about you and your guild, I’ve always wanted to say one thing to your face.” I laughed out loud as the entire raid gave him the finger. “Fuck you and your guild of merry asshats!”
Immediately, I gave the order to charge as the raid closed into knife-fighting range of the boss. As I began giving orders to hopefully keep us alive, Genele’s voice exploded in general chat as he began to rage. “Do you know who the fuck I am? Do you have any idea how much you just fucked up? Do you have any clue-“
“No Genele, it’s you who just doesn’t just get it. We don’t give a rat’s ass who you are.” Let that be a lesson for you. If at any time you feel like you have to tell someone how special you are and those words come out of your mouth. Just know right then and there, no matter the situation, you’re just wrong.
The inability to PK players of your own faction in Chaos Online was a double-edged sword. While I’d wished plenty of times that I could spawn camp the little shitheads while leveling at one time or another, in this situation it worked out to our advantage that they couldn’t attack us directly. Otherwise, The Syndicate could have just PK’d us and taken the raid boss for their own or at least made us wipe by killing too many of us off to be able to take out the boss while conducting an anti-PVP assault at the same time. But, since we were all Omni-Tek, the only option they had to stop us from killing Urqhart the Absorber was to try out damage our raid. If they could do more than fifty percent of the total damage to the boss, they’d successfully take the kill away from us, and we wouldn’t get anything. No loot, no drops. Nothing.
The sad part of this whole conflict was that normally attitudes like The Syndicate were considered bad manners by the gaming community as a whole and policed accordingly. Especially in games like Chaos Online were it took such a long time to level up a single character to max level. In MMORPGs that were based on a slower leveling progression, game characters and guilds built a reputation among the player base. Normally such anti-social behavior would mark your character or even an entire guild if they didn’t kick you out, and the damage to your reputation would make it nearly impossible to level further within the general community. The forums were full of stories of new players who ninja looted a boss in a pick-up group only to find their name posted on the forums of the server’s local ‘Griefer List’ for everyone to see.
Most newbies shrugged this off at first as not being important, but then to their amazement, they quickly learned no one on the server would team with them from then on out. It most cases it got so bad that those players had to re-roll their avatar from scratch just to clear their name. The end result was that these players either learn how to play well with others or they were pushed out of the game. While that might sound extreme to some players, it made the game much more enjoyable overall.
The only time this player ‘self-policing’ didn’t work was when the player was part of a powerful guild on the server that allowed their members to grief other players or when a game had a fast leveling option. There were always one or two guilds in each faction on a Chaos server that allowed this type of shitty behavior. On ours, it was The Syndicate. The Syndicate was the highest ranked guild on the server with over two hundred players, all of whom had at least one top-level character. Syndicate players were able to get around their negative reputation status of being online bullies by teaming solely with other players from their own guild. Also, they did this by controlling access to the World Bosses that everyone wanted a shot at.
Unlike most guilds that didn’t have a large enough player base to take on a world boss on their own, The Syndicate had a hardcore base of high-level professionals that could consistently take down the world bosses in-game. Because of this dichotomy in numbers, levels, and experience, The Syndicate was able to stake out certain areas within the game and list them as being off-limits to the general public. They did this by only allowing players who followed their rules access to the pick-up spots within their raids on world bosses.
Any guilds or players that tried to go after a world boss on their own found themselves banned from any of The Syndicate’s raids which even included a special blacklist for who could play with their guild in normal dungeons. For those few guilds that were powerful enough and refused to fall in line, The Syndicate would usually show up in force in the middle of the raid and kill-steal the boss by out damaging their competition.
When my friends and I moved to Chaos Online from World of Warcraft to experience the PVRMMORPG gameplay until The World was released, we immediately ran into problems with these asshats. They constantly tried to tell us we weren’t allowed in this area or that. The worst was with the open-world bosses or special dungeons without separate instances that they would camp at random times. Not for the loot, but just for the fun of griefing other players by blocking access to the game content and loot from these areas.
The forums were ablaze from our constant sniping at each other. Bullies always got me worked up, which was why I spent so much time on the forums calling them out whenever I could document their shenanigans. While the rest of the guild was able to mostly shrug this off once they logged out of the game, AJ, Jimmy, and Domenic had seriously wanted to hunt the worst of these offenders down in real life to beat them within an inch of their lives.
Thankfully that was never an option. While it might sound extreme to some non-gamers, I could readily understand their feelings on the subject, even if I didn’t subscribe to their philosophy. Most of us have experienced those griefers, spawn killers and ninja looters that got their kicks off on the power trip of being able to hurt or aggravate others while hiding behind the anonymity of their computer screens. We’ve all wished, at one time or another, we could smash someone’s face in for their antisocial behavior, so I could understand where they were coming from.
The battle for Urqhart was going to be close. By now it was forty-eight Syndicate players against our thirteen. As soon as we moved into melee range, The Syndicate had begun their own attack. I watched the damage counter as I struck with my Frost Scythe and instant cast Mind Blast simultaneously as I watched Kurono’s health drop. My attack pet had only two heal pets assigned to him to keep him alive. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to counteract the massive amounts of damage he was taking. Unfortunately, the rest of our heal pets were quickly passed around to keep us all from dying as Urqhart’s AOE took its toll on the health of the raid. As it was, we were barely ahead in total damage output on the boss.
To make matters worse, at every ten percent drop in his health Urqhart would warp in another four mini-bosses, which meant that as soon as he dropped below sixty percent health, we had twelve min-bosses being held by our mez pets. There was no way we could burn them down and out damage The Syndicate on top of that. The damage meter said we needed to hold out until forty-seven percent of the boss’s health, but once Urqhart hit fifty percent we’d have three additional mini-bosses that had to be dealt with, or we’d wipe.
“Get ready for the pops.” As soon as I heard everyone’s affirmative, the next batch of mini-bosses began to warp in and I go
t my mez pet on the closest to me as Glen, Kitty and Tony pulled their attack pets off the boss. For a second the three high-level mobs were running around smacking everyone attacking the World Boss, but within a few seconds my guildmates got ahold of the adds and began tanking them. Hopefully, we could burn them down quick enough to keep the pressure up on the boss.
The rest of the fight was anticlimactic. The Syndicate kept up their attack until Urqhart died trying to overwhelm us with mini-boss adds, but we just peeled our pets off the boss and stepped back out of his AOE. The rest of the plan went like clockwork.
If Genele had been smart, he would have stopped his people from damaging Urqhart below ten percent health and made us try to take out all of the mini-boss adds and the Raid Boss at the same time which would have wiped us. Luckily he was too pissed off to think straight.
“Yay, go me!” I silently cheered. Krystal said I had a knack for pissing people off. It was nice to get something back from my special skill every once in a while. To be honest, there was nothing like the adrenaline rush of PVP or trying to stop a bunch of asshats from trying to out-damage your raid to steal your kill, which was why as soon as the last mini-boss dropped, I was done.
We still weren’t a hundred percent sure we’d manage to out-damage The Syndicate until AJ popped the raid boss’ loot window. As soon as we saw the drops pop up in chat, we gave a ragged cheer. AJ didn’t wait for us to roll on the gear. He immediately threw on the Jathos' Molybdenum Plate Armor and commenced to moon Genele as we all began dancing around in a circle as I stopped my video of the event and teleported back to our Omni-Tek headquarters. Putting my feet up on the desk, I switched my chat back to our TeamSpeak server.
“Holy shit guys, that was incredible. I think it might even beat the time when we took out Garrosh.” I could picture Domenic’s smile as he spoke up.
“Talking down a bunch of assholes is always better than taking down a raid boss for me any day.”
