MMORPG: How a Computer Game Becomes Deadly Serious (6 page)

“No, but this is different,” Robert exclaimed. “I saw an Arab guy, a Muslim presumably, who came to the Netherlands just before a terrorist attack, who’s receiving WoW messages that happen to coincide precisely with a message that’s left at the bombing scene, exactly on the date mentioned! We’re talking about some weird coincidences here, if they’re coincidences at all! And don’t you think that exactly
because
the whole game is about killing, there’s no better place for a terrorist to do his business unobserved?”

“Maybe.” She closed her notebook.

Andy, who had been listening to the exchange silently, as if ashamed of having come up with the theory, suddenly spoke up. “Wasn’t there an attack by a student from Leiden a couple of years back?”

“Yes, there was,” Astrid van der Bosch replied curtly. She rose from the table. Her colleague did the same.

“We’ll take your information under consideration. If we have any further questions, we’ll contact you.”

Robert and Andy exchanged a quick look and moved to the door. The interview was clearly over. They shook hands with the two officials. The man, who still hadn’t said a word, escorted them back to the lobby. Unexpectedly, he addressed Robert. “It was good of you to come to us with this information. We’re investigating many leads at the moment, and we’ll also look into what you told us.”

A little surprised, Robert nodded. “Thank you,” was all he could think of.

The man nodded back. He reached into his jacket and retrieved two business cards. He gave one to each of them. “Keep an eye on this Khalid. If you really think something is going on, give me a call.”

~~~

CHAPTER VI

Rebecca
had been fiercely angry when he’d told her of the reaction of the police to their information.

“How can they be so stupid and so ignorant?” she’d exclaimed, going off on a rant about stuffy public servants who still lived in the twentieth century. She made it sound like the Stone Age. “Just because that lady has a son who plays World of Warcraft, she’s not an expert all of a sudden. The CIA recognises the dangers of World of Warcraft, but some stupid Dutch lady thinks she knows better. If she understood what we’re talking about only a little, she wouldn’t dismiss the opportunities an online multi player game presents!”

“Why are you suddenly so sure that all this really has something to do with the terrorists?” he had asked.

“I’m not sure. I never said that! It’s just that we can’t be sure that it isn’t either. What they should have done is thank you on their knees for coming to them, and investigate it to the bottom. They should follow any lead! Because they don’t understand it, they’ll just let it go.”

“The elder policeman did ask us to keep an eye on Khalid and contact him if we found out something else.”

She had nodded and looked him in the eye. “And that’s exactly what we’re going to do. But we’re going to do more than just keep an eye out. We’re going to start our own investigation.”

“And how are we going to accomplish that? I can’t break into his room or follow him around all day!”

She smiled broadly and gave him a hard poke in the shoulder. “Sure we can! Just not here, in broad daylight! No, Robert, we’re going to do our sneaking in the place where we think they meet each other: World of Warcraft!”

Now, Robert was about to embark on his first journey into World of Warcraft.

“We’re going to do this together,” she’d told him, “even when I’m back in Scotland next week. That means that you’ll have to work hard to become an adequate player. I’m going to help you, but you have a lot of work to do!”

As promised, he called her when the installation was complete and he’d established an account. That part was easy. He just followed the steps, which ended by giving in his credit card details.

“Great, now you’re ready to enter the world of Azeroth!”

“Sorry, but explain that to me. I thought it was called World of Warcraft?”

She laughed over the phone. “Yes indeed, but the imaginary world is called Azeroth, like our planet is called Earth.”

“I see. And what do I do now?”

“Now you’re going to create a character. First you have to select the right realm. You have to select Sylvanas.”

Robert was browsing through a list of different realms. “What does a realm mean? And why do I have to choose that one?”

“You don’t really think that twelve million people are at the same place at the same time, do you?”

He didn’t answer, not understanding what she meant.

“No virtual world can be big enough to accommodate that many people. Besides, no server in the world would have the capacity to facilitate that. Therefore, WoW is divided into a number of different servers. Each server has several hundred thousand people on it.”

“Hmmm,” Robert grumbled. He wasn’t sure he understood.

Rebecca was a patient teacher. “You can compare it to a tennis club. Everybody is a member of the same club and plays exactly the same game, by the same rules. It’s just that they don’t all play on the same court at the same time. It’s the same in WoW. Every server, which is called a realm, is a different court. Every tennis court is exactly the same.”

Robert laughed and complimented her on the way she explained it to him. “This is WoW for Dummies, but it works for me. So why do I have to select the Sylvanas realm?”

“Do you remember how we looked up Drimm on the Internet? On the Armory? One of the things I learned is that Drimm and his guild are on the Sylvanas server. So if we’re going to investigate them, we have to be on their server. It’s no use to watch court number seven while our subjects are playing on court number twelve.”

He nodded, unaware that she couldn’t see him over the phone. The next screen asked him to create a character. “What do I do now?”

“I think it’s best to create a character who’s exactly similar to Drimm. That means you’re going to create a Tauren hunter.”

After some searching, Robert saw what he had to do. “Yak, he’s ugly!” he laughed. Then he noticed that he could alter the appearance, and started fiddling with the skin color and hairstyle. It didn’t improve the looks of his character much. The Tauren race resembled huge bulls that had somehow learned to walk upright on their hind legs, and had grown fingers on their front hooves.

“Yes, the Horde side doesn’t give you the prettiest characters. You’ll get used to it. Now, are you ready?”

He saw that he still had to choose a name for his Tauren hunter. He thought briefly and decided. Then he hit ‘Enter World’ and was rewarded by an introduction movie. It showed friendly plains of grasslands with smooth hills. He was floating in the air over the prairie. Robert leaned back in his chair, amazed by how friendly the virtual world looked.

A voice was telling him about the race of the Tauren, but Robert wasn’t really taking in what it was saying. Now he was floating through a city of tents, perched high in the altitude of some huge cliffs that rose steeply from the rolling plains. Next he was accelerating over more grasslands, seeing many kinds of animals below. Then he was descending toward a small village, circling some figures who were standing together at the centre of the village. Only when the movie finished did he realize that he was one of those figures.

He was standing right in front of another Tauren. Above its head stood the name ‘Grull Hawkwind’. Also above its head was a large yellow exclamation mark. He had no idea what he should do now.

“Are you still there?” he asked.

Rebecca chuckled. “Yes, I am. Are you ready?”

“I think so. I’m in some kind of village. There’s a guy with an exclamation mark over his head.”

“Don’t panic, I’m going to help you. Is your character called Gunslinger?”

“Yes, it is. How do you know that?”

In answer, his phone gave the tiny beep that told him the call had ended. He checked the display. Indeed, the connection was broken. At the same moment he heard a sound from his computer. He turned his attention back to the screen. In purple, a text had appeared on the bottom of his screen:

[Killermage] whispers: because I am standing right next to you.

He looked closely at his screen, but saw no one else but the Tauren he’d seen earlier.

[Killermage] whispers: you can move with the arrow keys. turn left.

Turning he saw Rebecca. Or at least, he saw someone on a huge horse with the name Killermage above his head. Or her head, in this case. Like his own bull-like appearance, the looks of Killermage were definitely lacking charm. She had a human form, but apart from that, there was nothing ordinary about her. She looked like a half-decayed corpse that had somehow risen from its grave. Hints of a ghastly skeletal body protruded through her clothing, that would have been of shining magnificence, if it didn’t appear so frayed at most places.

The text
Killermage waves at you
appeared, and indeed she was waving at him. He smiled. This was a lot more fun than he’d expected. He decided to try something. He hit Enter and was rewarded by an empty textbox at the bottom of the screen. He typed a message and hit Enter again. Immediately, it appeared in a text balloon above his head, just like in a comic book: ‘Hello to you too!’

[Killermage] whispers: that message could be seen by everyone in this village. If you type R of Reply you can send a message to me alone. That is called a whisper.

After some minutes of chatting back and forth, he was getting used to it. “What are we going to do next?” he asked.

“Now you’re going to accept your first quest. Talk to that guy with the exclamation mark. If you see an exclamation mark over someone’s head, it means he has a quest for you.”

He selected Grull Hawkwind. A box opened with a lot of text. He was welcomed to the tribe and was asked to prove his worth by adding to the supplies of the village. More specifically, he’d have to prove his worth to Chief Hawkwind, who was the father of Grull. He was to kill Plainstriders to collect seven Plainstrider feathers and seven Plainstrider Meat. He pressed the button with ‘Accept’ and was rewarded by a sound and the confirmation ‘Quest Accepted’ in his screen.

Although Rebecca probably understood, Robert happily typed “I accepted the quest. I must kill some animals called Plainstriders to collect feathers and meat.”

“You must always kill something, and you must always collect something. Follow me!” The huge horse of Killermage reared on its hind legs and turned whinnying around. She galloped away from him. Robert used the arrow keys to start moving as well. After some trial and error he got the hang of it. Still, it took some time to catch up. He started to develop some sense of the distances in this digital world.

“I need a horse too. How do I get one?”

Killermage rolls on the floor laughing at you
appeared on his screen. At the same time, he heard a laughing voice. “You need to be level twenty to learn how to ride a mount. It used to be level forty, but they changed that. Lucky you. At level forty you can get a much faster mount. If you have enough gold.”

Robert saw an animal walk up to him. He moved his mouse over it and saw that it was a ‘Plainstrider’. It looked like a terribly oversized turkey. Now it was walking away again.

“How do I kill that Plainstrider over there?”

“Do you see those buttons under the text box?”

“Yes.” Robert moused over them. They were numbered one to ten. Numbers one to four had a symbol in them. The rest was empty.

“Is there one that says ‘Autoshot’?”

“Yes, number three.” Robert decided to get on with it. Suddenly, his character had a gun in his hands, and a loud shot sounded. A puff of smoke swirled upward from the gun. Although the bird was hit, it didn’t drop down dead. On the contrary, it charged right at him.

Just before it reached him, Robert’s character fired off another shot. Robert started wondering if he’d hit some firing button, but before he could look on his keyboard the animal was on him. Its huge head reared back and it started pecking at him with its vicious beak. At the same time, it made aggressive sounds and Robert heard the blows landing on him. Well, on Gunslinger, but somehow it felt close and personal. He had no idea what to do. He was fruitlessly pouncing his keyboard. It somehow didn’t react. Just when he thought the animal was going to kill the poor Gunslinger, his character suddenly swung a kind of primitive axe. And again. It appeared that Robert didn’t have to do anything, it went completely automatic. Gunslinger took a few more hits from the bird, but on the next swing of his axe, the Plainstrider gave a piercing death shriek. It swayed on its legs for a long moment before collapsing on the ground. Its head came up one more time, then flopped powerless back on the ground. Robert found that his hands were clammy. The fight had been more realistic then he’d ever believed possible.

“Gratz with your first kill,” said Rebecca.

“Huh? Gratz as in congrats?”

“Exactly. Most people in WoW just say Gratz or even GZ.”

“Well, thanks. How do I get the feathers and the meat?”

“If you move your cursor over the corpse, you’ll see the icon of a little bag. That means that you can loot the corpse. ”

Robert did as he was told. It was incredibly easy. He looted one feather and one meat from the dead Plainstrider. He also got a cracked egg shell. He still had six more feathers and meat to go.

He saw another Plainstrider. Again, he clicked Autoshot. He hit the animal and it turned to attack him. This time however, the fight took a lot longer.

“You must shoot from as far away as possible,” Rebecca said. “When the Plainstrider comes too close, your gun is useless and your character switches to hand combat. So when you start shooting from as far away as possible, you get off a few extra shots, and it’s almost dead before it reaches you.”

“How do I know it’s almost dead?”