I yanked off the VR headset, the world shifting from the tortured cold of the prison to the comfortable gloom of my basement hideout. My neck cracked as I slumped back in my gaming chair. The expensive ergonomic kind that's supposed to prevent exactly this kind of pain. The LED strips lining my desk pulsed in sync with my music, casting everything in alternating shades of purple and blue.
The wall of monitors before me displayed my usual array of chaos: crypto charts, network diagnostics, chat channels, and about thirty Chrome tabs I'd never actually read. Bitcoin had just hit 100k, painting my trading graphs a satisfying shade of green. At least something was going right.
I grabbed an energy can from my mini-fridge. The cold can helped ground me back in reality after hours in World of Ruin. With the GMs onto me, it was probably smart to lay low for a while.
What should I do now? Maybe take a walk outside? No, too dangerous. They were still looking for me.
Maybe I’ll write some rap music. I turned on a hip-hop beat and nodded along to it. The rhythm came easy, dark, electronic, with just enough trap influence to make it interesting:
Seated on my desk on new year's eve,
Watching euro-yen take a nosedive bleed,
Bitcoin collapses,
The train I was supposed to be on, crashes and bashes,
Bangers and mashes,
Yet here I am, still breathing fast,
Trading charts, my only looking glass
Not exactly platinum material, but it had that right mix of cynicism and desperation. Perfect for my brand. I saved it to my 'Unfinished Projects' folder, where it joined the digital graveyard of half-written tracks and abandoned code repositories that I promised I would finish one day.
My eyes landed on the stack of books collecting dust on my desk, programming manuals mostly, their spines cracked from endless late-night debugging sessions. I'd practically lived in those pages as a kid, back when I thought understanding every line of code would somehow make the world make sense. These days, I preferred to let my exploits do the talking.
I pulled up my game library. Maybe something old school. One of those MMOs from before games got too serious about security. Back when "security" meant having a GM occasionally fly around as a dragon, and "anti-cheat" was just a strongly worded forum post asking players to please, pretty please, not use exploits.
Games from when developers were too busy trying to keep their servers from catching fire to worry about little things like wall-clipping or item duplication. When finding a good bug was like discovering buried treasure, and sharing it on obscure forums made you feel like a digital Indiana Jones.
Those were the days when "terms of service" was more of a polite suggestion than a binding contract. Before every action got logged, analyzed, and cross-referenced against sixteen databases. I missed those days.
My eyes caught the World of Ruin icon and my cursor hovered over its launch button for a moment. The urge to dive back in was strong, Estella was probably wondering where I'd disappeared to. But no, not now.
In the end, I loaded up War of Worldskill, watching the familiar logo materialize on my center monitor. The game had been running for fifteen years now, outliving countless "MMO-killers" and surviving its own questionable design choices. The latest patch banner advertised "The Crimson Spire," a new 24-man raid that promised to be the hardest content yet. Because apparently, the devs thought what this game really needed was even more mechanical difficulty to fuel the community's ego complex.
I sighed, already dreading the social interaction ahead. Finding 23 other players meant dealing with the Party Finder – a special circle of hell where elitism went to breed. Every listing was a cryptic wall of text, a language evolved over decades of MMO culture that might as well be greek to anyone normal.
A group caught my eye: 23/24, "CRIMSON SPIRE PROG - MUST KNOW MECHS - PARSE CHECK - NO CARRIES."
Great. Spreadsheet warriors. The kind of players who treated raiding like a corporate performance review. They'd want to see my "parse", detailed combat logs showing exactly how much damage I dealt, healing I did, everything tracked down to the decimal point. Because apparently playing well wasn't enough anymore; you needed graphs to prove it.
I joined anyway. What's the worst that could happen? Besides public humiliation and another blow to my rapidly diminishing faith in humanity?
The chat exploded instantly:
[RaidBoss_420]: bruh, show parse
[RaidBoss_420]: link logs or kick
I pulled up my battle logs. My numbers were solid – purple percentile, top 25% of raiders. In any rational world, that would be more than enough. In the old days, that would've been something to brag about. But parsing had created a whole new hierarchy, with colors marking your worth like some twisted gaming caste system. Grey,green,blue, purple, orange, pink, gold – each shade a new level of elitism.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
[RaidBoss_420]: lol purple? what is this, casual hour?
[xXDarkLord69Xx]: imagine being purple in 2024
[xXDarkLord69Xx]: do you even parse bruh?
[RaidBoss_420]: orange+ only, read description scrub
[You have been removed from the party.]
I stared at my screen, wondering if it was too early to start drinking. The next party looked promising: "Chill prog, experienced players welcome."
My off-meta build, a carefully theorycrafted combination that I'd tested extensively, apparently triggered someone's spreadsheet anxiety.
[BigDPSEnergy]: tf kind of trash build is that
[Me]: Trust me bro, I've cleared with this setup multiple times
[BigDPSEnergy]: metasheet.io says ur trash
[BigDPSEnergy] has added you to their blacklist.
The next two hours became a blur of rejections, each party finder group its own unique flavor of gatekeeping. One wanted only players who'd cleared week one (the raid had been out for nine days). Another demanded everyone have the exact same gear build, down to the cosmetic dyes. A third wanted voice chat interviews to "check vibe alignment."
Finally, after enough rejections to fuel a lifetime of therapy, I found a group that let me in. We loaded into the instance, the elaborate raid backdrop materializing around our characters. The raid leader was halfway through explaining the first mechanic when it happened.
[XxNaruto_SamaXx]: YOLO PULL FOR GLORY!!!
[XxNaruto_SamaXx] charges headfirst into the boss arena.
The tired old "suicide pull" might have been funny if it hadn't just wasted two hours of party finding. The boss's raid-wide attack obliterated us in seconds. The chat devolved into the usual toxicity speedrun:
[HealzForDayz]: ****ing waste of time
[TankBro453]: actual trash community
[BowMaster]: definitely an AI
[RaidBoss_2]: uninstall and delete
The party disbanded faster than a failed idol group. Two hours of searching, countless parse checks, and gear inspections, all ended by some teenager who tried to be funny.
After that disaster, I loaded up Fatal Fantasia XIV. The Eastern developer's influence was obvious in everything from the art style to the draconian moderation policies. They'd even built an infamous "GM Detention Center" , a special in-game jail where they'd force players to reflect on their bad behavior. At least it meant people would be less toxic about raiding. In theory.
The party finder's cryptic language stared back at me like some ancient hieroglyphics:
[A2C][MUST KNOW STRATS][1 FOOD ONLY][LC TH:I, DPS:O][ L>R][NO FIRST TIMERS][DUTY COMPLETE]
I mentally decoded the raid shorthand, a skill as essential as typing these days. A2C meant "Aim to Clear", no learning allowed, you better know your stuff. One food duration meant they expected to finish within 30 minutes, the length of a single buff item. LC positioning, specific spots you had to stand during the "Limit Cut" mechanic, with tanks and healers going in first, damage dealers out. Left to right for loot distribution, because even virtual treasures needed bureaucracy.
All this just to say "Experienced players only, don't waste our time."
The party filled quickly. Too quickly. That should have been my first warning.
We loaded into the trial, a massive circular arena suspended in space. It’s always circular, because every eastern MMO developer shared the same aesthetic playbook. The boss, some impossibly beautiful man-angel hybrid with more wings than any being reasonably needed, towered over us.
First pull, gaming speak for the first attempt. Our healer, wearing gear that practically screamed "I just hit max level," stood in the first mechanic like it was a warm summer rain. In MMO terms, a mechanic is a fancy word for "the thing that kills you if you stand in it." Party HP bars dropped faster than crypto during a China ban announcement.
Wipe. Total party kill. Back to the start.
In any other game, the chat would've exploded with toxicity. But not here. No one dared risk the GM jail. Instead:
[DPSKing_99]: Perhaps we should review mechanics?
[TankMeister]: Any questions about the fight?
Radio silence. The special kind of silence that came from a healer who had queued for high-end content without watching a single guide video.
Another pull. This time they survived the first mechanic, only to get obliterated by the limit cut sequence. The nice thing about wiping to different mechanics was the variety, I supposed.
Thirty minutes passed. The food buffs wore off. Someone's crafted gear started taking durability damage.
[WhiteMage_UwU]: Thank you, I must now take my leave.
[SaMuRaI_KiNg]: Thank you, I must now take my leave.
[GunBreaker_72]: Good game
[DPSKing_99]: gigi
[AstroQueen]: Good game
[Party has been disbanded.]
The next four hours blurred together in a cycle of:
60 minutes - Waiting in party finder
5 minutes - Watching someone fail basic mechanics
2 minutes - Enduring painfully polite party dissolution
Repeat.
I alt-tabbed to my parser. Despite the wipes, my numbers were solid. But it didn't matter how well you performed if other players treated death like an inconvenience rather than a failure. They'd never known true consequences, never felt the weight of real permadeath. Players would charge into boss fights without preparation, without fear, treating their virtual lives like infinite arcade tokens… It was such a waste of time.
My VR headset sat on my desk, its sleek surface reflecting the LED strips like some kind of technological temptress. Every few minutes, my eyes would drift to it. Each time, I'd force myself to look away.
"Just a few days," I muttered. "Give the GMs time to cool off."
But who was I kidding? The longer I stayed away, the more my mind wandered.
My fingers drummed against the desk. The rational move would be to wait longer. A week, minimum. Let the heat die down completely. That's what I'd have told any other player in my position.
But I couldn't shake the memory of Ada's final moments, how quickly a person could just... cease to exist in that world. When you faced a boss there, you weren't just risking a bit of your time. You were risking everything: your character, your progress, your entire existence in that world. No wonder the combat felt so much more intense.
When was the last time you felt truly alive in a game where death meant nothing. The Guide’s words echoed in my mind. He was right. I needed something with higher stakes. I needed somewhere where I didn’t have to deal with toxic assholes and party finder bullshit. Somewhere where I didn’t need twenty-three other people to validate my existence.
My hand reached for the headset, fingers tracing the smooth contours. Fatal Fantasia's garish interface still flickered on my main monitor, all bright colors and meaningless achievements. I closed it with a click.
The headset's weight felt familiar as I slipped it on. Comfortable. Like coming home after a long day pretending to be someone else. No flashy effects or daily login bonuses. Just a simple choice: enter a world where everything mattered, or stay safe in ones where nothing did.
My finger hovered over the login button. Last chance to be sensible. Last chance to play it safe. I thought of Estella waiting for me, probably with that knowing smirk of hers.
Safe was overrated.
I logged in.