Martin had to admit that the more he learned about this zone, the more it seemed to be in order. It was isolated from the starting zone by literal guards, and the only breach he had seen was due to something bigger punting the Sharkbear over the walls.
"Okay, I think we might need to plan what will happen to this world," Martin said, sitting down in the dry dirt. As soon as he did, flowers started to sprout underneath him, trying to support his weight, but they quickly turned into flesh-eating plants that withered away.
The Bearshark looked at the display and sat down as well, though it double-checked that nothing sprouted underneath its butt.
"What is the purpose of an endgame zone? It should provide a challenge to the players and something they can repeatedly do when they have reached the level cap." Martin said he wasn't a game designer by nature, having spent more time around a combine harvester than reading books on game development.
Martin had played a couple of classic MMOs in his time, though he had never really reached the endgame in any of them. As such, he felt like he was out of his depth with this task. Jasper was more suited to this task, but as always, Martin took this as an opportunity to learn.
"We need to figure out why players would do this. Since it is endgame, we can't reward them with XP, and Gear might be redundant. After all, then this wouldn't be endgame, just... late game? So what do people want?" Martin was getting frustrated trying to think out loud, but he knew this would be better for problem-solving.
The bearshark seemed confused, and a massive paw pointed to itself. "I am not sure what we are talking about," it said in a gruff voice. Martin looked up, feeling a little embarrassed that he hadn't clued the bearshark into what he was doing.
"Sorry, I am just talking to you to have my thoughts out there. Just... try and ignore me; I think Jasper called this Rubberducking..." Martin said before returning to his thoughts.
"Cosmetics are always fun, and we can definitely do something along those lines. Things you can only find in here... Maybe new game plus? How do you do that in an MMO? Uuuuh..." Martin's thick tusk ground against his nose scratching an itch without him having to lift a hand.
Martin's eyes blazed as he thought of an idea. "I KNOW IT!" He stood up, or rather, a vine filled with spines and spikes pushed him to a standing position. "We make it a world event! Each month, some unknowing evil threatens to erupt from this hellhole of the world, and it will march on the civilized world!" He was pacing back and forth as he spoke the bearshark, trying to keep up with the movements.
"We will have players who contribute the most to dealing with this threat get a reward. I am thinking the top 100 get some cosmetic item, while the other top 3 get to dual-class, simply layering a new class onto their existing skill set. Of course, there needs to be a limit saying that you can't be in the top 3 more than once, or things would be unfair." Martin said, and from the expression on the bearshark's face, it was struggling to keep up.
Martin smiled. "So the carrot will be rewards for those who participate, and essentially doubling people's power if they do really well. The stick will be that if people don't do something about this, the entire server will be demolished. That might be too intense. Let's call it a temporary punishment... I am sure the main branch guys might come up with something better" Martin said, looking at his companion with glee.
The bearshark seemed happy that Martin was delighted, but it did not understand much of what was happening. "So what do we do next?" it asked.
Martin's face was on the verge of manic as he giggled, which was especially disturbing as Orkish vocal cords weren't designed for giggling. "We are going to find something that can destroy the world."
With that Martin started to walk deeper into Leltho, happy with having found what he believed to be a solution to the endgame problem.
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Jasper and Celeste were making their way out of the now-renovated church. Jasper had notifications blinking in his vision, trying to make him pick the spells that belonged to his Ur-magic. However, he had more important things to do.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
"I need to go check on Martin to see that he hasn't been booted out of the game or something like that. He could be trapped in the character creation room or something like that." The god of magic said, adjusting his glasses.
Celeste nodded slowly. She understood why Jasper felt he needed to check up on Martin. However, the time distortion meant that even a short trip outside the game would leave her about half a day of doing nothing.
"That is fine, but I need to go fix Marcusburg. They are definitely doing something dumb, and I need to fix that," Celeste said, and Jasper nodded.
"I know that. I will be fine. I just gotta-" Jasper paused mid-sentence. He had finally gotten a look at the city around him.
Construction was going on with a speed of which Jasper had never seen before, however, it wasn't building, but rather tearing down. The massive houses were being disassembled with abandon, work crews shouting at each other as they tore out mithril all around them.
Celeste swallowed, having seen the same thing. The houses were being torn to pieces as massive wagons had been stationed around the streets, each of them barely able to contain the mithril that was being throw into them. As soon as one had been filled to the brim, they started to ride off, only to be replaced with a new one.
Jasper gave a whistle. "Seems like the nobles have gotten greedy enough to start tearing down houses. I am assuming that the mithril in the mines has had time to run out." He said, and Celeste nodded.
She turned to him and gave him a look. "Can you please try to fix things here? I need to go to the starting zone, but this is just... wrong. Please fix it." She pleaded, her eyes reflecting her determination, and Jasper nodded, equally resolved.
"I will look into it," he said before kissing her and logging out of the game.
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Jasper logged out and found himself back in the real world. He groaned a little as he quickly took a toilet break before returning to his desk and going through the character creation setup. He determined that Martin wasn't stuck in the sup-world, and Jasper fixed up some minor bugs he had spotted only for his own sanity. As always, a quick fix always took longer than expected, and he had lost himself to the project before he knew it.
With a titanic force of will, Jasper pulled himself from a particularly tricky part of some code he had written and focused on the game.
He knew that Martin was fine. The only real problem that could have happened was him being stuck in the makeshift character creator that Jasper had hacked together. Since he wasn't there, Martin must have gotten into the game fine, and Jasper had honestly assumed that his colleague had found himself in the starting location, though he hadn't checked before now. Having checked up on that, Jasper groaned.
"I missed a whole day? That is insane. I wasn't checking code for that long." He grumbled and pulled up a view of both Celeste and Martin.
Something struck Jasper as he watched Martin walk through the magical nuclear wasteland that Ewen had created. He paused for a second, knowing full well that what he was about to do was a bad idea, but this was much easier than actually having to pull both of them out of the system. Jasper logged in with the "Break-glass" account. The emergency account should only be used if nothing else is an option. It was a standard non-deepdive account, controlled using the classic WASD system, but most importantly, it had console access.
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Martin was walking through the wasteland looking for something that he could make into an eldritch abomination when a soft voice spoke to him from nowhere. It was mechanical and synthetic, and Martin groaned.
> @𝙰𝚕𝚕 𝚙𝚕𝚊𝚢𝚎𝚛𝚜: 𝙷𝚎𝚢 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚝𝚠𝚘, 𝙸 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚒𝚏𝚒𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝙼𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚒𝚗 𝚒𝚜 𝚘𝚔𝚊𝚢, 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝙸 𝚌𝚊𝚗 𝚐𝚎𝚝 𝚋𝚊𝚌𝚔 𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚘 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚜𝚢𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚖 𝚊𝚐𝚊𝚒𝚗. 𝚃𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑 𝚜𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚜𝚝𝚛𝚞𝚌𝚔 𝚖𝚎.
"Jasper, please don't tell me you used the admin account for just an ingame chat with both of us... This is not an emergency." Martin grumbled. He was the one who would need to set up a new break-glass account, as well as defuse the alarms that would be set off in the main branch. Their security systems would be giving them plenty of warning about this.
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Celeste had reached the edge of the forest that marked the country A'kastin. Travelling was easier when she didn't have to drag people along, and her trip had only taken her a day when she heard the strange voice. She assumed Jasper must be talking to them from outside the game, but she didn't mind. It sounded like he had a plan.
> @𝙰𝚕𝚕 𝚙𝚕𝚊𝚢𝚎𝚛𝚜: 𝚈𝚘𝚞 𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚞𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚢 𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚝𝚝𝚢 𝚌𝚕𝚘𝚜𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚎𝚊𝚌𝚑 𝚘𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛, 𝚋𝚞𝚝 𝙸 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝙲𝚎𝚕𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚎 𝚠𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍 𝚏𝚒𝚡 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚣𝚘𝚗𝚎, 𝙼𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚒𝚗 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚌𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍 𝚏𝚒𝚡 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚎𝚗𝚍𝚐𝚊𝚖𝚎, 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝙸 𝚠𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍 𝚏𝚒𝚡 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚖𝚒𝚍-𝚐𝚊𝚖𝚎. 𝚃𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚠𝚊𝚢 𝚠𝚎 𝚌𝚊𝚗 𝚌𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚎 𝚐𝚛𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍.
Celeste nodded along. That seemed to make sense, and she wasn't sure how to get that across to Jasper, so she simply spoke out loud. "Works for me."
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When they both agreed, Jasper logged out of the account and answered a couple of messages from the security department from Weird World Computing, explaining why he needed to perform the login. They weren't happy with him and didn't say anything else.
With that out of the way, Jasper smiled and logged back into the game.