MMORPG: How a Computer Game Becomes Deadly Serious (17 page)

Andy walked on for two seconds until he realized that Robert had stopped. He looked back and saw his friend looking at him with wild eyes. “What? What’s the matter?”

Robert shook his head and shoulders several times, as if he wanted to shake off some physical restraint. “What exactly did you say just now?” he asked urgently.

“No. No. No way!” Andy was waving a finger at him, looking a little frightened. “You’re not going to tell me that it’s connected are you? Are you?”

Robert didn’t answer at first. He just looked at his Dutch friend, then finally repeated his question. “Andy, what did you mean by that? Please tell me!”

Hesitantly, speaking slowly and carefully, Andy said. “I said that it seems difficult to know which violence is connected to your terrorist. Because there are so many murders and terrible things in the papers these days. And then I mentioned yesterday’s attack on that ship. As an example of an unrelated thing, nothing more!”

“What attack? What ship? Come on, tell me, Andy!”

“Well, you know.” The Dutchman halted, looking for the right words. “I was referring to the attack on a rich man’s yacht at some village at the IJsselmeer. Some people were killed. You know, this was all on the news?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t read the Dutch papers. The
Herald
,
BBC
and
CNN
didn’t say anything about it. Did they leave a painting this time as well?”

“No, they didn’t. No doubt because it’s not connected to your terrorists.” Andy smiled, trying to put an end to the subject. Seeing that Robert wouldn’t let it go, he continued: “The news said it was just a reckoning within the criminal circuit. A local thing. The victims were just a bunch of drug dealers. It had nothing to do with terrorists.”

“Just tell me what happened. Please?”

“Shall we have a drink first?” Suddenly Robert realized it wasn’t wise to discuss things like this in the open air. They went into Barerra and ordered two beers. After they seated themselves in a quiet corner, Andy started talking again.

“Well, as far as I know, two nights ago, a big boat in a small harbor was attacked. It belonged to some drugs king. I guess this guy must have been important because he’d several armed guards on board. It didn’t help him, though. Four stiffs were found in the morning. A bloody affair, as far as I understood. Like I said, it was at some place at the IJsselmeer, if I remember correctly.”

Robert looked at him for several seconds. “What’s the IJsselmeer?”

The question seemed to take Andy aback for a second. “A big lake in the north of the country. It used to be open sea, but they built a twenty miles long dike, and now it’s a lake.”

“So it’s in the Netherlands?”

“Yes.”

Robert took Andy by the upper arm and squeezed hard. “This must be it!” he whispered urgently. “You know, we knew they were preparing for an attack on a water vessel. We saw them rehearsing it. Then, suddenly, Khalid disappeared and the others were all offline for a few days. So most likely it went down during that period.”

“Wait a second.” Andy gently unwrapped Robert’s fingers. “I thought your guys were terrorists, am I right? Are they drug dealers now?”

“Hell, do I know what they want? All I know is that we saw them preparing for a raid on a ship. We suspected it must have gone down in the last few days, and now you tell me that there actually was such an attack!”

Seeing the frustration and anger in his friend’s eyes, Andy put a calming hand on his shoulder. “Come, let’s have another beer. Then you can tell me exactly what you witnessed and what’s going on.”

Andy asked a lot of questions, forcing Robert to tell his story slowly and in a logical way. Several times he had to go back a few steps to explain things more elaborately. Robert found that he’d become such a veteran of the WoW game, that he was taking things for granted that non-players wouldn’t understand.

When he was finished, they went to Roberts place as Andy wanted to show him some news articles on the Internet. Robert found himself quite upset by the news. Apart from the fact that the attack on a major drug dealer seemed uncharacteristic, it fitted the puzzle all too well.

After Robert made some notes, Andy insisted on seeing the locations in WoW himself. Robert logged on and showed him Raynewood Retreat and how it matched with the map of the grounds where Benjamin Natale was killed. He pointed the similarities out one by one. He was talking softly as he wasn’t sure if Khalid was around.

Next, they went all the way to see the pirate ship. Robert wasn’t above showing off a little, casually killing mobs that were far below his current level of sixty-two. He also enjoyed the compliments for Casper, his pet. At level fifty-five he’d tamed a Frostsaber Huntress in Winterspring, a magnificent cat that served him extremely well.

After Robert told his friend exactly what they had seen there and what had happened, Andy still wasn’t satisfied.

“Now show me how you keep track of these Grimstone guys.”

Obediently, Robert opened the social window. He explained how he’d added the members of The Hammer of Grimstone to his friends list and how this window showed their approximate location when they were online. At that moment, two of them actually were online. Gilead was in Ogrimmar and Pharad was in a place called Netherstorm. While they were watching, the name of Drimm became highlighted. This was accompanied by a text message and the characteristic sound alert that told him that one of his friends or guild mates had come online. Drimm’s location was shown as Shattrath City.

“That’s your neighbor, isn’t it?” Andy asked.

Robert nodded. “Behind his computer right across the corridor.”

Andy was silent for a few moments. “I’d like to talk to him,” he suddenly said. “Just to get a feeling for him.”

“Let’s not do something rash,” Robert answered. “Rebecca and I are trying to keep a low profile. Even then, there have been two unwanted encounters in the virtual world already. They don’t know that we’re stalking them, so let’s keep as far away as possible.”

The grunt he got in reply told Robert the other was brooding on something. Then he was distracted by more alerts, as nearly all the members of The Hammer of Grimstone came online in quick succession. Within two minutes, nine of them were online.

“What are they doing?” Andy asked, eyes glittering with excitement.

With a shrug, Robert answered. “No idea. It may mean nothing. I’ve seen many of them online at the same time quite often. They could be here to do an instance together.”

This got him a gentle push in response. “Come on, you’re the one who just told me that you don’t believe in too many coincidences! There must be a reason. They’re all logging on at more or less the same moment!”

“They’re all coming to Shattrath,” Robert announced. He pointed at the screen where they could see that seven were now listed in the capital city of Outland. “I bet that these two are flying to Shattrath as well.” He pointed at the screen, where the location of Pharad and Jakky had just changed. Jakky was in Terokkar Forest, and Pharad was listed in Blade’s Edge Mountain. He opened his map and zoomed out until the overview map of Outland was shown. He pointed out the location of Netherstorm. “You see? Pharad’s route takes him from Netherstorm to the zone of Blade’s Edge Mountain. Next we’ll probably see that he moves to the next zone on the
itinerary, which is Zangarmarsh.”

“Can we go to this Shattrath City as well?”

Robert nodded, holding his breath while he kept staring at the screen. As soon as Pharad’s location did indeed change to Zangarmarsh, he sat up.

“Let’s go!” With these words, he activated his hearthstone. Ten seconds later he was back in a place called Falcon’s Watch in Hellfire Peninsula. He sprinted out of the inn and rushed to the flight master. Shattrath was relatively close to Falcon’s Watch, so the flight didn’t take long.

They got there before Pharad did.

Robert positioned Gunslinger ten yards away from the flight’s arrival point, blending into a small knot of other players standing there. A little later the guild leader of The Hammer of Grimstone arrived. The huge Orc warrior looked awesome in his epic gear. A monstrous two-handed sword was slung over his back. As he walked past them, they could see that a bright magical glow surrounded the weapon, moving and twisting like a living thing.

“After him!” Andy urged.

“I am!” Robert replied with a grin. He followed Pharad, trailing a short distance behind, into the main building of the city. It wasn’t so much a building as an immense hall, where A’dal, the ruler of the city, kept his eternal watch on the center pedestal. Pharad moved over to one of several coves, where portals to the major cities on the other continents were to be found. At the portal to Ogrimmar, the other members of The Hammer were assembled.

Pharad moved right through the group and went through the portal. The others followed, disappearing one by one. In a few seconds they were all gone.

“Are we going as well?”

In answer, Robert stepped up to the portal and went through. They had to wait a few seconds for the new location to load. Robert drummed his fingers on the desk impatiently. Finally, Ogrimmar appeared. They were just in time to see Gilead, one of the Grimstones, jump off the platform of the small building that all people who travelled by portal arrived in. He was mounted on a war raptor.

Gunslinger mounted as well and jumped down onto the path below. He thundered after the others, just in time to see how they were aiming for the flight master. One by one they took wing. They could see them flying in a tight curve through the valley, following the programmed departure path.

“Damn, we don’t know where they’re going!” he cursed.

Andy exhaled. “What can we do?”

“I don’t know.” Robert thought for a minute. “Yes, I do know. We can wait until they arrive. Soon, they’ll all be in a certain zone and stay there. Then we could go there as well and see if we can find them again.”

They didn’t have to wait for long. Right after they left Durotar, where Ogrimmar was situated, the Grimstones entered a zone called Aszhara and remained there. Robert opened the map and discovered it was directly to the north.

“Do we go there as well?” Andy was eager.

Robert uttered a few profanities and shook his head. “I’ve never been there. That means that I don’t have the flightpath that they’ve taken. God knows how to get there and how long it’s going to take us.”

He activated the website of Wowhead and started to scan the information about ‘Aszhara’.

“Look, it’s connected to Durotar!” Andy exclaimed. “That’s where we are now, isn’t it?”

Robert looked where Andy was pointing. “You’re right. From the map, it’s not clear how to get there.”

He pointed at the mountain range that ran all the way along the border between the two zones. “No clear road is leading to Aszhara from here. According to the Internet there should be a connection. This probably means that there’s a pass somewhere, but it could take an hour to find it. Besides, it looks quite impossible to get into those mountains from Ogrimmar.”

“Maybe we should follow that river?” Andy put his finger on the Southfury River that ran from north to south and passed the city. “Is it possible to swim?”

“Swimming up that river? I don’t know. I tried it once with another river, because it seemed a likely connection between two places. In the end I got stuck in the basin of some waterfall. There was simply no way to climb up. I had to go back all the way.”

He opened another file that showed an overview atlas of the continent of Kalimdor. He studied it for a moment and started to laugh. “I found the way. Again, it takes us to Ashenvale. It’s funny; there are nineteen zones on this continent, but my pursuit of these guys takes me back to Ashenvale all the times!”

He showed Andy where a road ran to the eastern border of Ashenvale, crossing into the neighboring zone of Aszhara. “When we get to Aszhara, we must look out for a place called Valormok. That’s where the flightpath is.”

With these words he clicked on the wind rider master and selected Splintertree Post. Again.

After a reckless ride through the Nightsong Woods they came upon a bridge spanning the Southfury River. They crossed and got the message: ‘Discovered: Aszhara’.

“We’re there. Now let’s move!”

The road led them into a different landscape. The density of the trees faded out, allowing gradually more daylight to filter through the tree tops. The colors changed as well, giving the impression that they were riding out of late summer into early autumn.

Andy whistled. “This game is really, really neat!” Admiration and excitement were glowing on his face. “Is it dangerous here?”

“I don’t know,” Robert answered. “I’m level sixty-two, which means that, in theory, I should be able to handle anything we encounter. This continent was originally designed with level sixty as the highest possible level. Every zone has enemies of a certain level range. I believe this zone is fifty to fifty-five, which is pretty high. But if several level fifty-fives attack me at the same time, we might be in trouble.”

There was nothing to fear. Without any trouble or incident they arrived at a place called Valormok. It wasn’t exactly a village. All they saw was a campsite with two well made shelters covered by thatched roofs. The largest had hammocks tied between the supporting wooden poles. There was also something that looked like a large abandoned wagon. A campfire was burning at one of the shelters, but there were also some big smoldering braziers burning throughout the camp. Several computer controlled Horde characters were standing around. One of those was a flight master, and Robert acquired the flight path out of habit. There was nobody else to be seen, certainly none of the Grimstones. Robert checked and ascertained that they were, indeed, still in the zone. All of them.

“Now what?” Andy asked.

Robert hesitated. Suddenly he realized that, until now, he had always relied on Rebecca to make all of the important decisions. She always knew exactly what to do and her knowledge of World of Warcraft seemed endless. All of a sudden, he was cast in the role of tutor to Andy and decision-maker for both of them.