In MAA’s world, while Clavet is assembled with her cell in Heathrow, Adèle’s main character, Jutudiel, a thief, that is, a rogue’s healer spec, has her own cell assembled in Adèle’s player home, outfitted with bedrooms, a washroom and a kitchen, to name a few items Adèle outfitted her home. Which is large enough to house all eight of her characters. Meanwhile, Adèle is busy selling food her juggler, a ranged DPS, grew over what can feed her cast.
“How exciting! We’re given the opportunity to bleed the enemy dry by leaking a report to Perseria’s city council that the rebel army is on the move, and less than a day away from the First Circle of Hell” a rebel myrmidon in Jutudiel’s cell suggests to her.
“I think I can craft myself Perserian scout garb. The rest of my equipment could easily pass for what they use” Jutudiel answers the rebel myrmidon while she gets the bolt of cotton as well as sewing instruments.
Perserian scouts wear niqabs to protect themselves from sandstorms. So I guess I need to make one. Other than that, Perserian scouts are often irregulars, and don garb that can allow them to blend into the crowd, Jutudiel thinks of what she wants out of a niqab.
Once the niqab is done, Jutudiel dons it and approaches the gates of Perseria, a desert city with mostly Middle Eastern architecture. However, Jutudiel doesn’t approach the city by the gate leading to the Lower Perseria dungeon. As she gets to another gate, the guards intercept her:
“What are you doing? The city is off-limits to anyone not a food merchant or on patrol!” the guards yells at her.
“Go tell the city council that the rebels are on the move after Belzebuth’s death and are less than a day away from the First Circle of Hell!” Jutudiel answers the guard before leaving.
The guards dash from their post to the city hall, replaced by other guards. Feeling these new guards to be hostile, Jutudiel then runs away from that gate, and in the direction of her home.
By the time the guards relay Jutudiel’s report to the city council, the city council is in session. As the guard is brought before the council chamber, before the 7 Councillors…
“Dear City Council, the rebels appear to have killed Belzebuth and are trying to push their attack into Hell itself!” the guard simply re-tells what Jutudiel told him.
“If the rebels are strong enough to drive Belphegor and Belzebuth out, it’s a matter of time before the city falls if we do nothing!” a distraught councillor yells at his fellow city councillors.
“The problem is the Gates of Tartarus. Even if rebel ingenuity could cause the Gates of Tartarus to fall, we can’t intervene without risking the city’s lockdown to be compromised!” the mayor retorts, believing the flames of rebellion could reach the city itself if the lockdown is relaxed. “That said, the rebels forced our hands!”
“I don’t expect the rebels to even want to hold on to the Gates of Tartarus for any length of time. They might succeed in capturing the Gates if they are strong enough to oppose Belzebuth, but capturing the Gates will require essentially every rebel unit” another councillor remarks.
“And then our main hope of defeating the rebels would lie in catching them between the Pandemonians and us! We can’t delay much longer, and by the time we arrive, the demons will have made a number on their ranks!” the same distraught councillor harangues them.
Heated discussions ensue among the city council, when they debate the merits of striking at the rebels they believe are in the outskirts of Hell, or not doing anything and maintain their defensive stance. That, knowing that any sortie against the rebels will force them to at least partially deconfine.
“Perhaps deconfining could appease the city’s residents a little bit. However, if the rebels capture the Gates of Tartarus, we might be able to make peace with them, and perhaps let them live in their domain in Hell” another city councillor disagrees with the others on this new development.
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Back in the players’ world, MAA’s manufacturer realizes that something’s wrong with it, and the heads of the game hold an emergency meeting regarding the leak of First Circle of Hell content.
“Although Monseigneur only showed part of the next patch’s content, what she did has hurt us. It has caused players to close their accounts because, even if the leaked content was confirmed in full, it gives the players the impression that we lost control over the game!” the MAA team’s accountant yells at the execs running the game. “We must ban her from the game until a decision has been made about the leaked content!”
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“We can’t ban her from the game like this! The bad publicity of banning the GM of the last RWF winner will hurt the game even more! This tier has seen the worst losses in players since the very existence of this game!” the marketing head of the game voices his opinion.
“Speaking of leaked content, the best way to plug this leak in players would then be to confirm the leaked content in full, and add previously dummied content into the game, such as these one-boss dungeons that were never released!” the dungeon lead developer suggests, with the others not realizing that releasing these one-boss dungeons will need to be done in different patches altogether.
“The first one-boss dungeon we plan on releasing will be, well, Charon, and it takes place at the Gates of Tartarus. But they must be queued for separately from regular, multi-boss dungeons” the UX/UI lead developer comments on the dungeon lead developer’s suggestion.
The execs and devs keep discussing courses of action about this leak of content. And, given the recent losses in players, they feel in a rush to save their game, and they go back to work to test the new content, such as quests, the Gehenna Grand Library as well as the Gates of Tartarus, and their loot tables.
“For multi-boss dungeons to remain viable content after the release of single-boss ones, there has to be some kind of loot that you can’t get in single-boss dungeons, otherwise people will just run the Gates of Tartarus to the exclusion of all other five-player content” the lead QA tester voices his concern as one of the first tests of the Gates begins.
“And yet, you kept ignoring the elephant in the room: on the very stream this content was leaked, she claims the residents of the game’s world are real and we are using the game to control them!” the customer service lead shouts. “Maybe that could explain the bugs you were unable to fix!”
Yet, before the official announcement of the manufacturer regarding the content leak, some of the core players left messages on the Death Fiscalists’ Discord server.
“After all these years, I’ve accomplished everything I wanted to do in-game, so I leave this game!” Ram announces to the guildies.
Oh boy… replacing Ram will be difficult. But that’s ok for him not to want to keep playing after having toiled so hard in-game for years. Although it’s not always visible on a stream, what kept me excited playing this game for so long was, well, the level of control ranged tanking affords me, Karine starts feeling a void inside herself upon hearing about Ram’s departure from the game, and the guild along with it. If you don’t have good chemistry with your co-tank, there’s only so much you can do on your own, she then have Caro on voice with her.
“Caro, do you feel comfortable switching to tank in raids?” Karine asks on voice, knowing that DPS are easier to replace than tanks, regardless of the level of raiding.
“I mean, there were times this tier where I needed to handle tank mechanics, but I’m afraid that, if I switch to grenadier full-time, we might hit enrage more often!” Caroline whines on voice, knowing that losing the bard’s offensive buffs may not be made up by the extra native DPS of her alt’s spec vs the bard.
“You’re still the player who does tank mechanics best here, outside of me! On top of that, not all extra mechanics are on the tank”
Karine feels like I can tank at the fatal level because I tanked on alt nights, but I know that tanking at the brutal level is already brutal enough as it is for me. It is hard, then again, all roles are hard in fatal raiding, Caroline seems to be a little perplex.
“I’d say that it depends on how fast we can get another DPS that’s more or less on my level” Caroline seems to be a little nervous.
“You’re on to something here. As with any other MMO, DPS are a dime a dozen, but good DPS, on the other hand…” Karine sighs, as she starts formulating a Google Form that she can then post on MAA’s subreddit devoted to guilds. “If you tank, you can eat mechanics so others don’t have to; as a DPS, sometimes you ate mechanics to squeeze a little extra!”
Best-case scenario: we might nab some ranged DPS or tank from a disbanded fatal guild. However, I don’t want to get my hopes up. Especially since fatal raiders are clearly a rarefied world, Karine muses since she wonders about how to fill the void left behind by Ram’s departure.
“All right, you win, I will tank on my defender since it’s the one tank spec I can actually play” Caroline sighs, while she’s catching up on the news of the game.
Speaking of the news of the game, the manufacturer finally makes its announcement about the leak of First Circle of Hell content. The manufacturer not only confirmed the stuff Karine leaked earlier today on a stream, but also announced the release of one-boss dungeons, alongside a questing area, at the rate of one per month. In order of release would be Charon, Astaroth, Behemoth, Mammon and finally Leviathan.
However, Caroline’s blood boils when, at the very end of the roadmap, she reads a statement of the manufacturer’s denial of the allegations of abusing residents in the game’s world.
“What’s the meaning of this? Who’s accusing the manufacturer of abusing the residents of MAA’s world?” Caroline fumes at the screen upon reading about the abuse accusations, while still in the guild’s voice chat.
“Because all of you were laser-focused on winning this race to world first, it appears that I’m the only one here who knows about these accusations. It’s time I told you everything!” Karine starts telling her guildies about the angelic beacons and their effects.
The manufacturer is in denial! This game that has brought me joy for years has wrought damage and suffering to another world, and this raises a lot of legal and ethical questions. I am unwilling to go into the legal issues, unless the Canadian operation of the manufacturer, if any, goes bankrupt, or needs to enter a business proposal because of this, Karine also feels her blood boiling. However, I hope this entire crisis can be solved without causing the manufacturer to go bankrupt.
So why is it that the accusations surface only now? It seems like a ploy by some commercial rival of MAA’s manufacturer, Francis, who only listened to the other guildies argue about the accusations and their validity, wonders whether these accusations could have been a little… too calculated.