MMORPG: How a Computer Game Becomes Deadly Serious (7 page)

“Every creature has a health bar. It’s the green bar you see when you click on it with your mouse. You have one yourself. Look at your own icon at the top of your screen. Your health is down to about fifty percent at the moment.”

Robert checked and saw she was right. His health was at forty-five of ninety-four. He also saw it was regenerating slowly.

”Why is the maximum ninety-four instead of a hundred?” Robert wondered.

“It’s not a percentage but a number, called hitpoints. Look at me, I have over twenty thousand hitpoints.”

“My hitpoints are increasing,” Robert noted.

“You heal slowly when you’re out of combat. By eating food, by drinking a health potion, or by bandaging yourself you heal faster. Or another player can heal you.” At that moment he saw little red crosses emanating from his own character and his health bar suddenly shot up to maximum. “I bandaged you just now.”

“Thank you!” He looted the corpse of the slain Plainstrider and got only one feather.

”Somehow I don’t get the meat out of this chicken,” he complained.

Killermage laughs at you
appeared in the screen. She replied. “It’s not that easy. Sometimes you get what you want, sometimes luck isn’t on your side.”

After maybe five minutes, he had collected all the feathers and meat he required. He had also found more cracked egg shells, as well as a pair of Flimsy Chain Pants, a Battered Buckler and a Frayed Belt. There were more than ten Plainstriders lying dead on the grassy plain. Just for fun, he shot at the one remaining bird in sight. As the others had done, it charged him after being hit, but died after a few blows of his axe. Right at that moment, a circle of golden beams came from above and surrounded his character. A message appeared on his screen that congratulated him on reaching level two. It also informed him that he’d gained hit points and mana, and that his agility, stamina, intellect and spirit each had increased by one.

“GZ!” Rebecca said. “Only seventy-eight more levels to go!”

Robert moved his mouse over Killermage and saw that she was level eighty. He calculated. He hadn’t even been playing for ten minutes, so he should be able to reach level eighty in a few days. When he told her so, he was rewarded by a lot of laughter.

“Look at the thin bar with all the small brackets that’s right on top of the numbered icons at the bottom of your screen.”

“Yes?” Robert moved his mouse over it. “It reads XP 32/900.”

“XP stands for Experience Points. For killing, completing quests or discovering new areas, you receive experience points. When the bar is full, you reach a new level. In your case, you go to level three when you collect nine hundred points. Every time you progress to a higher level, the required amount to reach the next level is raised.”

“How many of those points is it from level seventy nine to level eighty?”

“I don’t remember exactly, but I think it’s something like one point seven million. The upside is that you receive more points per kill when you get higher. Still, the average player takes about six months to reach level eighty.”

Now that he was done with the quest, he had to return to the village, but he was unsure where it was exactly. He had drifted away while seeking out the birds and killing them. Not wanting to show Rebecca he was lost, he set off in the direction in which he thought the village was. After walking for a few minutes, he knew he wasn’t going in the right direction. The land was now gently sloping upward and he saw a few vicious looking predators called Mountain Cougars.

“Shouldn’t you go back to village?”

“I would, if I knew where it was.”

Killermage was laughing loudly at him. “Why don’t you ask me then?”

Robert was a bit irritated. His sense of directions wasn’t his strongest point to begin with, and in real life he always made sure to remember landmarks. “Well?” he asked.

“If you press the M key, you get a map. You can see where you are.”

He did as she said. His screen was replaced by a map called Mulgore. Most of the map was blank. Only a small portion was filled in green. He saw Camp Narache, which he remembered was the name of the village. His own position was marked by a tiny arrow, which showed that he was indeed walking away from the village. He closed the map and turned Gunslinger around. À few minutes later, he arrived back at the safety of Camp Narache. Killermage was lying on the ground at the feet of Grull Hawkwind, fast asleep. Little ‘Z’s’ were floating over her face.

“Very funny!” Gunslinger said.

“Finally, there you are,” Killermage said, standing up. “Now, turn in your quest!”

Robert saw that the Tauren he’d got the quest from now had a yellow question mark over his head. He approached him and completed the quest. He got a belt as a reward. Grull Hawkwind wasn’t finished with him yet. He had a new quest for him called The Hunt Continues, which required him to kill Mountain Cougars and collect ten of their pelts. At least he knew where to find them. He also had a message for him.

“I just got a note. How do I read it?” he asked of Rebecca.

She rode up to him and dismounted. “Click on your backpack. It’s in the right hand corner at the bottom.”

Inside the leather bag were all the things he had looted, and also the note. When he clicked on the note, it opened in a large window. It was written on some kind of parchment and detailed how important hunters were to the tribe. The sender was Lanka Farshot, who offered to train him in the ways of the hunter.

“I have to go to the hunter trainer,” he said. “Where’s that?”

“Where does it say it is?”

“Here in Camp Narache.”

Killermage sat on the ground, right in front of him. “I’m supposed to introduce you to WoW, but that doesn’t mean I have to tell you exactly what to do all the time. One of the challenges of this game is that you have to find out where you have to go. If the message says she’s in Camp Narache, you’ll just have to look around. Good luck!”

Robert felt a bit rebuked by her. On the other hand, wasn’t it fun to find it out for himself? He left her behind and walked the short distance to the main building, which was in fact the largest tent. When he entered the large tent, he saw another Tauren with an exclamation mark. Rebecca explained to him that you could be on more than one quest at the same time. The Tauren was Grull’s father, Chief Hawkwing. Also in the tent, he found Lanka Farshot. After some introduction text, she offered to train him. For nine Copper she would teach him something called Track Beasts. He had no money at all. This time, Rebecca didn’t make fun of him.

“Money is incredibly important in this game. Without Gold, you miss out on a lot of things. You can make your first money now by selling the other things you collected while killing those Plainstriders. Come!”

He followed her out of the tent and she led him to Kawnee Softbreeze, a General Goods Vendor, according to her tag.

“You can sell your stuff to her.”

Robert sold everything in his bags for a total sum of fifty-six Copper. With the money, he returned to Lanka Farshot and was taught a skill called Track Beasts. Apparently, this skill allowed him to see the location of all animals around him on the mini map in the upper right corner. Handy indeed.

“Now let’s spend the rest of your money,” Rebecca said. “Hunters must always have enough ammunition!” She motioned him back to the General Goods Vendor. “Fill your ammunition bag with Light Shot. She sells it.”

He did as she told him. The cost was nine Copper for two hundred Light Shot. He now had more than a thousand bullets.

Suddenly, with a thud, a new window opened on his screen, accompanied by the text
Killermage wants to trade with you
. He studied the new window for a moment and saw that she wanted to give him one hundred Gold.

“Press ‘Trade’ now,” she said.

After receiving the money, he asked how much it was worth.

“There are one hundred Copper in one Silver, and there are one hundred Silver in one Gold. So I just gave you a present of one million Copper.”

“Wow, that’s a lot. Do I need that much?”

“No, not at all. There are many players who don’t have that much money until they reach level fifty. You’re now officially the richest newcomer on the whole Realm!”

“Thanks.” He didn’t know what to say.

Killermage clapped him on the shoulder. “No worries. I have to go now. Keep on playing. I’ll drop by your place at about eight o’clock tonight. Is that all right?”

Before he could answer, she disappeared, as if she had dissolved into thin air right before his eyes.

~~~

CHAPTER VII

By
the time it was eight o’clock, Robert had reached level six. He had finished all the quests in and around Camp Narache, which included going into a hostile village at the far east of the area. A hard challenge, which taught him what happened when you died in World of Warcraft. Although dying wasn’t the right word. His character was transported to a graveyard. Well, actually it wasn’t the corpse but the spirit of his character that appeared at the cemetery. This spirit turned out to be alive: it appeared as a ghost. This ghost had to run all the way back to the corpse to resurrect. Then the difficulties arose. Back to life again, you were at half health, at approximately the same location where you had died. This meant that the enemy who killed you in the first place was all over you again in a few seconds, while you were only half as strong.

He was jolted by a knock on his door. He had been playing so intently that he had forgotten the time. It was Rebecca.

“Well done, level six!” she congratulated him after a glance at the screen. “Now let’s start doing some real work. Could you log off now?”

When he got back to the opening screen, she gently pushed him out of the desk chair. Robert pulled another chair close and sat next to her at the computer. Rebecca poked his arm, laughingly accusing him of being a WoW addict already. He smiled in return. It was fun, he had to admit. He suddenly noticed his stomach grumbling. An addict indeed; already he was neglecting the needs of his body. He opened a can of Pringles, Bolognese flavor, his favorite.

“Now let’s take a look at what our friends are doing,” Rebecca said. She pulled a paper out of her pocket and unfolded it. It was a print of the website of the Armory, listing the members of the guild called The Hammer of Grimstone. “I’m going to put them all on your friends list now.”

“My friends list?”

“Amazing, isn’t it?” She opened a tab under ‘Social’ and a window appeared. She started with Drimm, typing his name and hitting Enter.
Drimm added to friends
came the confirmation.

“Can he see this?” Robert asked.

She shook her head. “No, that’s the beauty of it. When you add someone to your friends list, he doesn’t get a notification or something like that. Once a person is on your list, you automatically get a notification when he comes online and also when he goes offline. What’s even better, when he’s online, you can see where he is.” She pointed at the friends list, which only showed Drimm. His status was listed as ‘unknown’ Quickly, she added the rest of the names. Done, she logged off and entered the virtual world again using her own account. She opened the same tab to show him how she’d already added the Hammer of Grimstone to Killermage’s contacts.

“When one of them comes online, this tab will show us in which zone he is.”

“What’s a zone, exactly?”

“A zone is much like a province. Or maybe a state of the United States.” She opened the map. “Look. We’re now in a zone called Mulgore.”

Robert peered at the map, noticing that the map of Killermage showed all of Mulgore, whereas his own map only showed about one third of the area. The rest was grey. He’d already noticed that new areas were revealed on the map when you discovered them, simply by going there. The map of Killermage showed him that Mulgore was a huge piece of territory.

“You may think that Mulgore is big, but in fact it’s one of the smaller zones.” She clicked on a button that read ‘Zoom Out’ and now the map showed a large continent called Kalimdor surrounded by oceans on all sides. By moving her mouse over the different zones, their names came up. She clicked on one to the north called Winterspring, and he could see in detail all the different areas, roads and villages. She opened a few others at random to give him an impression.

“Holy shit, it’s huge!” he exclaimed. “Have you been everywhere?”

She smiled wickedly. “Yes I have, but you haven’t seen anything yet!” She zoomed out again and now he saw a world map showing three large continents. Two were parallel to each other, stretching all the way from the south nearly to the north. They were separated by an ocean. Near the northern polar cap, another large continent lay between the two others. The western continent was called Kalimdor, the opposite one was called Eastern Kingdoms, and the landmass to the north was called Northrend. She zoomed out again. This time a fourth continent called Outland appeared that looked nearly as big as Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms combined.

“What’s that?”

“Outland, which came with the first large addition to the game. It’s the Burning Crusade package you installed.” She held up the box still lying on his desk. “A new continent was added, and the level cap was raised from sixty to seventy. Outland is restricted to players of level fifty-eight and higher and you must access it from a portal situated somewhere in the deserts in Eastern Kingdoms. She clicked on it, and Robert could see that it consisted of only ten different zones, each of extraordinary size. She opened one called Terokkar Forest, and he could see that there were two major cities, two smaller ones, and about eight villages.

“Now let’s finish the list and get some proper food,” she said, closing the map. She quickly entered the names of all the guild members of The Hammer of Grimstone. Only one was online, a character called Pharad. According to the displayed information, he was in a place called Dalaran. “Dalaran is the capital city of Northrend,” Rebecca explained. “No use trying to find him. There are too many players crawling around like ants over there.” She exited the game and turned around. “Now, what’s for dinner?”