MMORPG: How a Computer Game Becomes Deadly Serious (8 page)

They went to a small Italian restaurant, which was only a five minute walk from where he lived. The pizzas were so large that Robert was truly amazed that he actually finished his Pizza Vulcano, his favorite
pizza picante
. His appetite was caused by a combination of feeling famished by an afternoon of playing World of Warcraft, the skill of the Italian cook, and the company of Rebecca. They didn’t talk about the game at all.

She told him an endless parade of hilarious stories about her childhood in a small village in northern Scotland. She was a gifted storyteller who could turn the most mundane happenings into glorious events. Her undertone of sarcasm had him laughing all the time. It was nearly eleven o’clock when Robert poured the last drops of their second bottle of Barolo into her empty glass. He paid the bill and, without any discussion, they walked back to his place together. He felt a quickening of his heartbeat when she followed him upstairs to his room. Inside, she tossed her coat on his bed and sat behind his desk.

While Robert searched the small wine cabinet for a suitable successor to the Barolo, she brought the computer back to life. A few seconds later, he heard the distinctive music of World of Warcraft.

“Robert, come here, look at this!” She sounded truly distressed.

In the restaurant, the thought of a romantic turn of the evening had crossed his mind several times, and he felt a momentary pang of disappointment. It was going to end in playing a computer game together.

He crossed the room and looked over her shoulder. She had her friends list open and was pointing at it. He could see that most of The Hammer of Grimstone were online now.

“This isn’t making any sense!”

He didn’t understand what was bothering her. “What’s not making sense?”

She tapped the screen with the point of her index finger. “Do you see that? They’re all in Ashenvale. That doesn’t make any sense at all!”

“Why? What’s the problem with Ashenvale? Is it a zone?”

“Yes, it is. The problem is that there’s no reason at all for ten level eighties to be in Ashenvale. No reason at all!”

“Why not?”

She took a deep breath, calming herself. “Because Ashenvale is a level twenty-five to level thirty zone. That means that the enemies, called ‘mobs’ by the way, are all between those levels. Players of those levels find worthy opposition and quests there. That doesn’t mean that you’ll never find a level eighty there, as there are always people helping a guild mate with a difficult quest or something.”

To show her that he was paying attention, he said, “Just like your Killermage is in Mulgore to help my Gunslinger.”

“Exactly, and Mulgore is a level one to ten zone!”

“So what does this mean?”

She held her hands up in the air to show her incomprehension. “I don’t know. But we’re going to see what they’re doing!”

She clicked on one of the many icons surrounding the screen and Killermage started to cast a spell:
Teleport: Ogrimmar
. Bolts of light appeared at her fingertips.

A few seconds later she materialized at another location, on top of some wooden platform. Killermage summoned her mount and jumped off the platform onto the path below. She galloped down the path. Suddenly she veered to the right and jumped right on top of the roof of a house built on the ledge below the path. This was definitely not the official way down. They hopped to another roof and again to another. One final jump brought them on the ground.

There were a lot of other players around, Robert guessed there must be hundreds. Rebecca charged right through them on her horse and rode straight into a building. Briefly, Robert glimpsed the sign on the outside of the building, which read
Bank of Ogrimmar
. Inside, she dismounted and walked up to one of the men standing there. She clicked on him, and a window opened. It held a lot of slots, and to the bottom was a row of purple bags. She opened a few of them, searching for something. After a few tries she found what she was looking for, some bottle. She took it before Robert could read what it was.

She ran outside and mounted again, turning sharply around. In a gallop they skirted around the huge bank building, following a road that veered rather steeply upward. She charged into another building consisting solely of a spiral staircase. Halfway up, she dismounted, apparently automatically. A few seconds later they arrived at the top. Robert saw they were on a tower, higher than all the other buildings around. Killermage headed straight for the character standing on the edge of the platform. His tag read
Doras,
Wind Rider Master
. A new window opened, showing a spider web of flight routes and destinations. Without hesitation, Rebecca selected one, a puff of dust appeared, and a split second later they were on the back of a huge winged animal carrying them upward and away at incredible speed.

Robert was watching all this in awe. “Wow, this is amazing!” They had now left the city behind and were floating down a river. “Where are we going?”

“Splintertree Post,” she answered, opening the Friends Window again. They saw that all the members of The Hammer of Grimstone were still listed as being in Ashenvale. “Splintertree Post is the central flight path in Ashenvale.”

“Will it be easy to find them?”

She shook her head emphatically. “No, not at all. Ashenvale is, in fact, a huge forest, with all kinds of secluded areas that are way off the roads. I can’t think of many zones that are worse for trying to find someone.”

Now they were descending toward a small settlement. When they landed, Rebecca opened her bag and clicked on the bottle she had retrieved from the bank earlier. Next she summoned her horse and they charged out of Splintertree Post.

“I just drank an Elixir of Detect Undead,” she explained. “Because it’s so hard to find someone out here, we need another way to scan the woods for them. Two of their members are Undead, so they’re going to show up on the tracking screen.”

“Is this like the Track Beasts ability my hunter has?” Robert asked.

She gave him a wide smile. “Good, you’re learning fast! Yes, it is, but hunters are the only class with the ability to track all kinds of races. Other classes have to rely on elixirs, but there are only elixirs for tracking a few races. Hunters can learn to track literarily everything.”

***

They had been at it for over two hours today, for the fifth day in a row. Drimm thought it was enough. He’d been thinking that for at least forty minutes, but he knew better than to say anything about it. Pharad was the leader, and they wouldn’t stop before he was completely satisfied.

“We do it one more time,” said Pharad. They were standing in the woods outside the gate at the backside of Raynewood Retreat. “Last time was almost perfect. Now we do it one more time to make sure that nobody will forget what he has to do.”

“I think we’ll have to clear the building again first,” said Gilead, who stood next to Drimm.

Pharad turned around and peered at the structure of Raynewood Retreat that loomed over them. The entrance to the building was over a kind of terrace-like bridge, and Drimm could see that a Cenarion Defender had appeared in the doorway and was looking out at the back garden. That meant that there would be others inside the building as well. Gilead was right. The lower floors had to be cleared first. Again.

“Yes,” said Pharad, and he pointed at Gilead. “You do it, but be quick about it.”

Without another word, Gilead took a few steps forward and raised his gun. The shot boomed through the forest and Drimm could see that the Cenarion Defender was critically hit. He went down immediately. Gilead went inside and they could hear him shooting. The sounds diminished, then vanished altogether as he moved deeper into the building and went up the stairs. It was no easy task that Gilead had been given. His assignment was to leave an exact number of enemies alive in the building and kill the rest.

Pharad turned back to the little group. “Okay, we wait until Gilead has finished, then we do it one more time.” He made a rude gesture to one of them. “And you, Jakky, will not try to loot again. You leave the bodies where they are and just try to control yourself. Besides, what do you expect to find? Some epic item dropping here?”

“Yes, Commander,” Jakky said, and Drimm wished he could see the expression on his face. Drimm himself had suppressed the urge to search the bodies they left behind because he knew how much Pharad hated their greed.

Shortly after that, Gilead returned. “It’s ready, we can start,” he said.

“Okay, let’s take up the positions. If we get it right again, this was the last rehearsal.”

Immediately everybody moved into position. Drimm had the farthest to go. He moved all the way around the building and halfway down the path that led to the road. He scanned left and right. Nobody in sight.

“Team X in position. All clear,” he reported in.

“Acknowledged, X. Everyone is now ready and in position. Wait for my sign to commence.”

After that followed maybe twenty seconds of silence. Drimm kept looking left and right. The road remained empty.

“Go, go, go!”

Raynewood Retreat was built along a rarely travelled road in the Nightsong Woods, which covered most of the province of Ashenvale. The retreat was separated from Splintertree Post, the nearest village, by the Falfarren River and some steep hills. From the road Raynewood Retreat was nothing more than some dim building on a hill. What was happening up there couldn’t be seen from the road, as the entrance was in the back garden.

Drimm had an important job, because he was to ensure that nobody would know what was happening. He was to raise the alarm if anyone was actually approaching, or maybe even to prevent that from happening.

In his mind Drimm saw the carefully rehearsed plan enfolding. Team Y was approaching the main entrance from the left, Team Z came running in from the right. At the same time, Team Q had taken up position at the back entrance to cut off any possible intruders.

Y and Z entered the building. Team Z immediately went for the stairs, while team Y secured the ground floor. After doing that, one of Y guarded the door. The other member covered the stairs.

The two people from Team Z, Pharad being one of them, secured the first floor, silently and swiftly killing the two guards stationed there.

“Phase one concluded. Execute two. Go, go, go!”

On cue, one of the members of Team Q left his station at the gate and moved up to the entrance. Like a relay race, the one guarding the door moved up to the position of the other member of Y, who ran up the stairs to secure that floor.

“Phase two ready.”

“Execute three, go, go, go!”

The two of Team Z sprinted up the second stairs and exploded onto the floor above. An incredible burst of violence killed the two guardians there in a matter of seconds. Next, onto the main target, total surprise and again an explosion of extreme violence.

“Phase three concluded. Execute four, go, go, go!”

Now, Drimm came into action. His responsibility was to make sure that they had a clean getaway. He ran up the path and stopped next to the building. He drew his gun and started to sweep the area with his eyes. No enemies moving. Only a few moments later, he was passed by team Q, then team Y and after maybe twenty seconds, team Z.

When he was sure that everybody was clear and that there was no pursuit, Drimm, too, ran to the road below and to safety.

***

Rebecca had swept the areas close to the main road that ran from east to west twice now. They were standing near their starting point again. She had opened the zone map and they were discussing where they should go next. Robert suggested they follow the main road to the north that ran just to the west of Splintertree Post, whereas Rebecca thought they should go to the coast all the way to the west.

“We’re now close to where I want to go,” he pointed out. To stress his point, he tapped the screen with his finger.

“True, but we can fly to the Zoram Strand. While we do that, we have another sweep from above.” She sighed. “Your guess is as good as mine. Let’s try your suggestion first.”

She turned Killermage around and veered to the north when they reached a junction. Robert was studying the mini map.

“There!” he shouted. “I saw a golden dot on the map, but it’s gone now!”

Rebecca turned the horse around and trotted back the way they had come. Close to a place marked ‘Raynewood Retreat’ on the map, two golden dots appeared on the mini map. Rebecca moved her mouse over the dots.

“Bingo!” She checked the names against the printed list again, just to make sure. “Yes, here we have Frakk and Caliburr close together. I think we can assume that the others are there as well.”

Robert cheered and put a hand on her shoulder. “Well done!”

“We still don’t know what they’re doing here. They’re at Raynewood Retreat, but what the hell are they up to? I can barely remember the place, I believe there’s only one insignificant quest that involves it.”

“Can we get closer?”

She waited a moment before answering. “Yes, we can, but they will see us as well. And we’re just as much out of place as they are. If we assume that they‘re doing something in secret, they’ll be alerted by the sudden appearance of a level eighty mage. There can be only so much coincidence, and we might want to save an accidental meeting for another time.”

Robert felt like a balloon suddenly deflated. “So we came here for nothing?”

“In a way.” Her response made Robert feel even worse. Tired he stared at the screen.

Suddenly she hit her hand on the table. “No! I disagree. We saw that they are behaving strangely. For nearly five years I have been playing this game, and I have never seen a bunch of level eighties crowding around a level twenty-six building before.”

***

They were all standing just outside the back garden again. An Elder Shadowhorn Stag had wandered into the grounds, but everybody ignored the huge beautiful deer. They were all focused on Pharad.