World of Eternia: The Complete Collection

by Antony W. F. Chow

  The President frowns slightly at the notion of giving away the Oriental Expansion, and losing all the revenue EDE is expected to pull in from the expansion. This also discounts the costs in manpower that the company had spent the past year in creating the expansion.

  The project manager sees the hesitation and reminds him gently. “Sir, the two companies will be merging soon.”

  “Are you certain this step is necessary?” Richard asks while dreading the inevitable answer. The boss can barely resist the urge to shout for the pudgy man to get out of his office!

  “If you want the match to take place in about three weeks from today, yes it is necessary,” Mark confirms. “We already have the content in place on our end—the missions, the quests and quest givers, the monsters, and the loot. The expansion could launch today, if we really wanted to. We are simply beta testing the content to root out all the bugs.”

  The project manager pauses for a moment to catch his breath. “We can incorporate the visual stuff that their artists at Virtuous Gaming have produced so far, to make it look more like a joint project and let the VG folks feel good about themselves.” Mark suddenly remembers. “By the way, I noticed that Virtuous Gaming is using the same game engine that we used for World of Eternia,” he notes. “Did VG obtain a license from us to use it?” he asks.

  “Considering that the engine was co-written by their CEO and I, VG is legally entitled to use it without paying us a licensing fee. I checked with several intellectual property lawyers to confirm on that point,” Richard replies.

  Mark opens his mouth to ask a follow up question, but the executive quickly cuts him off.

  “I have to admit that I’m surprised to hear that VG is so far behind the eight ball on its own MMORPG product. I guess Virtuous Gaming’s inability to raise capital from investors really set them back on this project,” Richard continues.

  “Do I have your permission to approach my counterpart at VG to discuss turning our Oriental Expansion over to them?” Mark asks, wisely allowing the subject to drop. His boss is obviously not going to discuss the matter any further, and in any event the issue is one between Richard and his lawyers.

  Richard nods sharply. “Please keep me posted.”

  Chapter 40 – Backup Plan

  The CEO waits patiently for his employee to leave the office. Once Richard is sure that Mark is gone, and no one else is waiting outside the office to speak with the boss, Richard locks his door. He pulls out a small laptop computer from his desk, a highly portable unit weighing less than three pounds and carrying an eight inch screen. After the computer boots up a minute later, Richard connects to a proxy server through TOR, and from there enters a private chat room under the username, “Lion King.”

  Richard hesitates for a moment, because the contractor he is about to use charges a lot for his services in bitcoins. However, Richard’s ownership in the company and everything he worked for is at stake now. Be brave, the conflicted man reminds himself. “I have a job for you,” he types.

  A moment later, “DB” replies. “What do you need?”

  “A joint online gaming event is being held between Virtuous Gaming Co. and Eternia Development & Entertainment, Inc. in approximately three weeks,” Richard types. “I need you to hack into the event and ensure that the EDE side wins.”

  The Digital Bandit thinks for a moment about the proposed mission. “How stealthy do you want my involvement to be?” he asks.

  “I don’t care if VG becomes aware of your hacking. They will simply pass it off as another prank from you,” the Lion King responds. “You can hack in pretending to be a VG game master, reduce all damage output from VG players to, say, one percent of normal, and that should be enough to turn the tide in EDE’s favor,” he suggests.

  DB blanches at the suggestion. It is simply too . . . boring for DB’s style of hacking. But a job is a job as long as it is interesting to the hacker and pays well, with money being the priority. “I want ten times my usual fee in bitcoins,” he demands. Let’s see how desperate this fish really is, the hacker smirks.

  “What? That’s outrageous!” Richard protests angrily.

  “What you’re asking for requires access to the game system settings. It is not a simple thing to do, compare to, say, a dedicated denial of service (‘DDoS’) attack. I would need a second hacker to come in first, muck around VG’s system, and pull all the attention away from my intrusion and attempt to access the system. So you’ll be paying for a two man job that will take a longer amount of time to accomplish. This, in turn, means that the job will carry more risk for me and my partner. Thus, there needs to be additional compensation for these additional risk factors,” DB explains. Of course, the assistant will be in it for the thrill of the job itself, and won’t be compensated for the work.

  Richard retorts. “The job won’t be ten times harder than usual.”

  “The fee is non-negotiable. If you don’t agree to pay this amount right now but change your mind later, I won’t accept the job,” DB types back. “I have a lot of jobs to do, and my schedule is tight.”

  Richard weighs the cost of this hack job against going into the event honestly, and relying on his World of Eternia players, including The Strangers, to win out. No, the risk of failure is too great. Charles may be setting up a similar hire to interfere with WoE players. “Fine,” he types finally. “However, you get half up front and the rest upon completion of the task. So if EDE comes out the loser in this event, you won’t get the rest of the fee.”

  “LOL,” the Digital Bandit types in response. “You forget who you’re dealing with. I expect the upfront portion of my fee to be transferred to my account within twenty four hours.”

  “You’ll get it,” Richard promises and exits the chat room.

  Chapter 41 – Anticipation

  Lisa Huffman knocks on the door to draw the occupant’s attention.

  Charles beckons her to come into his corner office with a wave of his hand. He saves the highlights that he had marked up on his computer while going over Martin Pembrose’s financial report. After the CEO finishes reviewing the CFO’s report and finalizes the edits with Martin, the quarterly report will be sent out to Virtuous Gaming Co.’s investors. Once the edited report has been saved on his hard drive, Charles turns to his attention over to his vice president to receive Lisa’s oral report on her meeting with the EDE group. “How did it go yesterday?” he asks.

  The R&D head draws a tight smile on her face. “The EDE folks appeared to be quite dismayed by our progress with our MMORPG,” she says with embarrassment. It is one thing for in-house workers in the same company to acknowledge this, but quite another to let outsiders realize this too!

  The CEO chuckles lightly at her predicament and tries to reassure her. “No, I would imagine those guys are freaking out over the apparent raw deal they got on their end. That little pig man probably marched straight into Richard’s office and swore up a storm over getting hoodwinked. Clearly, their intellectual properties are worth much more than ours, meaning that a one for one exchange is a sucker deal for them,” he smirks. “So the ball is in Richard’s court to figure out a way out of this mess.”

  “Of our doing—intentionally,” the VP adds quietly.

  Charles waves a finger at his employee. “You sound like you don’t approve of my tactic,” he muses.

  “May I have your permission to speak frankly, sir?” Lisa asks gingerly.

  “Go ahead,” he gestures with another wave of his hand.

  “This lowers our reputations and mine specifically, in the eyes of EDE,” she points out.

  “I have two responses to that,” the employer replies. “First, as the head and founder of Virtuous Gaming, the ultimate responsibility falls on me personally. So whatever flake you catch for the state of our MMORPG, I get at least double your take,” he points out. “Second, as a business man I think I made a really nice deal. I basically put Richard in a bind now. He could publicly rescind the match with us and create a
public relations nightmare; I would expect many World of Eternia players to drop their subscriptions in protest. Alternatively, he would need to open his vault and give us the keys to his product. Either way, it is a win-win proposition for us.”

  “What do you think their CEO will do?” Lisa asks.

  “Richard is a bit of a gambler at heart, so he would obviously roll the dice and continue onward with our joint match,” Charles predicts. “He will lean on that little fuzz ball to make it happen. If it means giving us access to World of Eternia, Richard will do it. He doesn’t like to back down from a challenge, especially when there are so many eyeballs on him now. He will continue to forge ahead with the jointly held gaming event.”

  Charles smiles at his game developer. “Just like Richard, I will also lean on my staff to make this work. Make the best decisions you can to ensure that the match will take place three weeks from now. You could make things a bit more difficult for the other side, if you want. Stretch out the negotiations for the settings of the match, for example. Extract as much flesh and blood as you can. But do keep your eyes on the ball and make sure that the match will take place as scheduled,” he says.

  Satisfied with the wide latitude that the boss is giving her, Lisa leaves without another word before the mercurial man changes his mind.

  Chapter 42 – Generous Offer

  Mark Whitney calls up Lisa Huffman at her office. “Hi, this is Mark the project manager from EDE. We met last Friday,” he reminds her.

  “Yes, I remember you,” the VG employee replies.

  “Hey listen, would it be possible for you to come over to my office? I may have a short cut to get the ball rolling for our inter-company match,” Mark says.

  Lisa is intrigued by what she hears. Just like Charles predicted, she thinks. “I’ll be there in an hour.”

  “Great! See you soon!” he replies enthusiastically and hangs up.

  * * *

  Lisa arrives at the headquarters of Eternia Development & Entertainment, Inc. within an hour, as promised. She sees Mark waiting at the front door of the company building and smiles.

  Mark offers a friendly wave at her as Lisa approaches. “I’m glad you could make it,” he says. “Let me take you to my office so that we could talk.” He turns and stands in front of the doors, which slide open to allow his entrance.

  Lisa quickly follows him, while looking around. The building is much bigger than Virtuous Gaming’s rented office space. EDE owns the building itself, and apparently retrofitted the interior space and customized it for the company’s specific needs. The entrance empties into an atrium with a visitor’s desk in the middle, escalators on the left side, and express elevators along the walls to the right.

  Mark stops in front of a turnstile leading to the escalators. He turns around, and hands Lisa a visitor’s badge. “You’ll need this to get in,” he says. The short man fishes out his own identification card and slides it through the reader. He then pushes through the waist high turnstile. The man takes three sets of escalators to reach the fourth floor. Finally he gets off and waits for his guest to join him. “We’re almost there,” Mark says and starts walking towards his office.

  When Mark arrives, he sees Britney Valentino from the art department looking at the reference book on human anatomy. “Hi! You could take the book back to your desk if you want. I kind of need the office right now,” he says sheepishly.

  “Oh! Um, sure thing!” The blond woman, who is wearing a red and white checkered shirt, jeans, and white sneakers, quickly takes the hint to leave the office with the reference book in her hand. On her way out, the employee takes a quick up and down inventory of Mark’s guest waiting outside.

  “Please come right in,” Mark invites Lisa, who quickly enters the room. The project manager closes his door, and walks over to a workstation at the left corner to fire up the computer. The computer is already set up to connect wirelessly to a virtual reality headset and gloves. There is ample space in front of the computer for a user to use “live action” mode in World of Eternia and enhance the virtual reality experience.

  The guest from VG looks around the room, and notes that the project manager’s office is quite big, almost as big as her boss’ office. The room is full of bookshelves stuffed with reference material. “I see a lot of books here. That’s quite unusual when people nowadays can simply search online for materials,” she comments.

  “While it is true that there is a lot of knowledge posted online for anyone to do research, there is no assurance that the materials will stay online forever. For example, universities may post classes online for people to watch and learn about various subjects. But they may eventually decide to add pay walls and require fees to watch the courses. Nothing is free in life, and someone has to pay for internet hosting,” Mark replies. “The books on the wall are reference materials that our artists and writers utilize to create content for our game, World of Eternia. Whatever they can’t find, our content creators will simply search online to supplement the material here,” he adds.

  Seeing that the computer has completed its boot up, Mark enters his log in information into the computer, and starts the WoE Oriental Expansion program. Mark turns around to face Lisa. “The reason I asked you to come in today is to try out our expansion yourself, and see how you could incorporate your department’s content into it,” he explains. “From what I’ve seen of your progress, I would estimate that you’re, at most, twenty percent toward completion for your game.”

  “That is a fair assessment,” the VG employee agrees readily. Charles Winter gets double my loss of reputation, she reminds herself.

  “Since we’re done with our expansion already, I think the upcoming match should base off this expansion and your work at Virtuous Gaming should be merged into it. By ‘work’ I mean the graphical stuff, since your world setting is based off classical Chinese opera and its mythology, if I’m not mistaken,” Mark continues.

  “That is correct,” Lisa agrees.

  The project manager smiles at the confirmation. “Then I think it will work, because our expansion introduces some Asian themes into WoE. Our theme is a mixture of Shintoism and Buddhism, but yours could be a subset of that cultural interjection.”

  Lisa jumps on the idea. “We could make the players from Virtuous Gaming belong to a different kingdom seeking to invade Eternia.”

  Mark nods and continues the train of thought. “These guys will try to invade by entering a special portal. Eternians will be tasked with defending the portal against VG players seeking to enter it to invade Eternia.”

  “And that becomes our ‘tower defense’ style of match, turned into a portal defense match,” Lisa concludes.

  “Yes, I think that will work nicely,” the project manager agrees. “We will need to confer with our respective bosses to get the go-ahead for this new arrangement. But in the meantime, I want you to experience our Oriental Expansion first hand. So I’ll need to teach you how to use the headset and gloves, after you create a WoE account of course.”

  “Yes, I would like to try your game,” Lisa smiles sweetly. Everything is going according to Charles’ plan.

  Chapter 43 – Nuts and Bolts

  Mark knocks on the door and enters the office. He has been visiting Richard’s office quite frequently these days.

  Richard smiles at his project manager and says, “Just give me a moment while I save my work on the computer.” Once the file is saved, the boss turns to face Mark. “What have you got?”

  “I invited Lisa Huffman, the R&D head at Virtuous Gaming, to visit my office and try out the oriental expansion. She was quite impressed with the overall quality and polish of our game. I floated the idea of integrating her company’s visual content into our expansion, and she really liked the idea,” Mark reports.

  “I sure hope so. If they insisted on using their own game as the template for the upcoming match, then the match is not going to happen,” the CEO says with a shake of his head.

  “It
is fortunate for us, then, that she is quite reasonable,” the employee replies.

  “Unlike her boss,” Richard quips. He waves his hand. “Sorry, let’s stay focused. So how do we go about having this match take place? What’s the goal line?” he asks.

  “Lisa agreed with me that the match could be a variation of a tower defense match,” Mark says.

  “How so?” the employer raises his eyebrows.

  “We could make the match a portal defense match instead,” the project manager answers succinctly.

  “You want a portal defense match?” Richard repeats. After a moment of consideration, he understands what Mark wants to do. “You want our players to defend the portal leading the We Tang Kingdom into Eternia?” he asks.

  “Correct,” Mark smiles. “It’s simple. If a champion from Virtuous Gaming manages to enter the portal, their side will win.”

  “Do you think this will work?” the skeptical boss asks.

  “If we set up certain restrictions so that forces from both sides start on equal footing, then yes it will work. To be honest, I think we will need to limit the number of participants for the event,” Mark suggests.

  Richard hesitates for a moment, and finally speaks his mind on the suggestion. “I’m inclined to say no to limiting participants in this match, since there is so much at stake for both companies and their players. And assuming we charge an entry fee to participate, the match will bring in a lot of revenue as well. But give me your best arguments in support of that proposal and I’ll consider it.”

  “I was thinking of limiting participation to five hundred players per side. First, the event will be streamed online and if there are too many participants it will be impossible for viewers to follow the action and see when the tide turns toward one side. Second, bandwidth considerations would favor a smaller number of players and this would ensure that the servers would not be overwhelmed. Third, five hundred participants on each side would allow the players to organize themselves and communicate much more easily,” Mark explains.