spacepirate
space dragons in space
The battle was over. The Worldenders had lost, and their Guild Hall in Stage 6 was nothing more than rubble and data caches.
In Stage 1, the Kingdom of Chartreuse, the moon of Andaros watched over players old and new. The server-wide guild event had lasted a full eight hours, a normal duration that most veteran players had gotten used to at this point. Promoted as the “Guild War to end all Guild Wars”, the server event was formally titled “Last Hall Standing”, and it was the first server event to directly involve the guids’ halls themselves. Rather than featuring raid bosses, hazardous environments, or cursed equipment, the danger came solely from the game‘s fellow players. The rules were simple: using any items, skills, tames, or anything else that the game had to offer, protect your own guild hall and destroy as many others as you could. The one caveat was that once the event started, any items not in a player’s inventory or in a guild’s building couldn’t be accessed, and all monster drops and merchants were disabled, too. If the materials weren’t stockpiled within the guild, then they were plain out of luck for crafting anything else. Unique to this event was that the prize, other than rankings points, included looting and pillaging anything you could from another guild’s storerooms. Anything left within the guild hall was fair game, other than players’ inventories, of course— even though there had been rumors of player looting, the event didn’t go so far.
Perhaps some of the more casual players would take shifts or even just front-load their preparations by crafting a whole guild’s worth of awesome gear, but any veteran player would stay on for the full duration of the event, likely running on empty after pulling more than a few all-nighters just for good measure.
Still, even with the most skilled players of the game, the Worldenders faced a multi-pronged war… pay-to-win powerhouses like the Domin8ers, leagues of new players spurred by the bounty-and-discounts super savings that EZ Buy was offering for thier retail locations to anyone who could show proof they damaged the Worldenders’ Guild hall, and mercenary armies of professional raiders rumored to be hired by the devs themselves combined to make the raging onslaught all but a fool’s gambit. Then again, a group of players so bitterly attached to a world that no longer existed could be characterized as little more than fools, even as they died a thousand deaths. Levels were reduced, buildings were levelled, mounts and tames dismantled or looted
Perhaps the Worldenders and their fans had been too optimistic. After all, they were a guild united in spite and anger towards the corporations pouring into Andaros, and most of them had been rivals of some sort prior to their meager alliance.
The sun shone like it always did over the virtual dreamscape, and even though parts of the city of Chartreuse were filled with cornerstores and dead-eyed employees where there were once dragon egg stalls and enchanted smitheries, the game continued for most players like it always did. For any remaining Worldenders, they would find themselves scattered in a random starting spawn in Stage 1, reduced to level 1, without the bulk of their stock or the reassurance of numbers. Indeed, any attempts to even view their guild chat rendered the following message:
Was this an aftershock of the event, or could the guild admins like ZenRikka really have dismantled the guild after such a devastating loss, and without another word? Any attempts to send messages to ZenRikka would go through, but it looked like she was offline. For ex-Worldwnders who stepped back into Andaros after the chaos, they would find a personal message from Sic_Semper_Slimes just a few hours until the dust settled. While everyone was free to do as they wished, this was perhaps the one lead they had of regrouping with the rest of the guild.
The message could definitely be clearer, but Sic never really was one for exposition. Either way, Valley Lows was a region of Stage 1 to the south, with relatively limited drops and resources. It would be relatively easy to get there unharassed, especially since dungeons were currently open to all players, unlike many of the ‘Premium Experiences’ created in collaboration with one of Andaros’ new sponsors.
