MMORPG: How a Computer Game Becomes Deadly Serious (19 page)

Once inside, they turned to business again.

All enemies in the Underbog were Elites, which meant that they were a lot harder to kill and did a lot more damage than those of similar level found in the regular world. On top of that the mobs were linked. This meant that if one enemy was attacked, two or even three others joined the fight immediately. If the attacker wasn’t careful, he could be swarmed by many more.

Instead of in the normal WoW world, the mobs always attacked the player who was hurting them most, which in this case was Magekiller. This so-called threat was especially difficult to manage as they were playing in a team of only two. A normal team consisted of five players, amongst whom a ‘tank’. With a lot of armor and hitpoints, the tank should be able to endure a severe beating. Robert and Rebecca made Casper play the role of tank in these encounters, while Gunslinger and Killermage did the damage from a distance. They had worked out several tactics together, and they both knew exactly what they should do.

Today, there was something different about Rebecca. Usually she played carefully, planning and executing her moves like a chess player. She was always mindful of her fragility as a cloth-wearing mage, with a lot less protective armor and hit points than most other classes. She was a ‘glass cannon’, as she liked to put it herself, and always made sure that her enemies couldn’t lay a finger on her. She was the master of crowd control and long-range killing.

This time, in the Underbog, she was almost reckless, pulling mobs early and letting them near her, almost as if she relished the beatings she was taking. Not that she was in real danger, because she was so superior with her epic gear and vast experience. The difference was that the corpses now fell at her feet instead of in the distance, just as if she wanted to actually feel the blood she was spilling.

Suddenly, without warning, she walked right into a large group of enemies, who all had the word ‘bog’ in their names after the area they were in. Without a pause she continued into the next group, deliberately pulling no less than twelve of the elite mobs at the same time. Robert was stunned. This was completely contrary to any of their usual tactics. Not only that, it was suicidal. He didn’t know what to do.

“What are you doing?”

“Let me!”

Among the mobs that were furiously attacking her were two Bog Giants, who were even harder to kill than the normal elite mobs. She froze them in a Frost Nova and proceeded to hit them with Arcane Explosions that radiated from her in angry purple circles. When the Bog Giants were on low health, she called down a huge pillar of fire that consumed all of the lesser Bog Lurkers. The two Bog Giants were still alive, pounding on her with a vengeance. She cast another Frost Nova, but didn’t move away. She remained where she was, taking the beating, while summoning one of her devastating Blizzards. This killed one of the two Bog Giants.

The other Bog Giant was standing remarkably unscathed. Now she concentrated on her last opponent, dealing out massive burst damage with a Cone of Cold which looked like a whirlpool blast of frozen air. This was followed by a fiery Fire Blast. A few more Arcane Explosions, and it was over. The Bog Giant let out a loud bellow and started to sway. Then it tumbled spectacularly to the ground. She was left standing in the middle of a heap of corpses, her mana drained completely and with less than a quarter of her health left.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Robert asked.

Killermage sat on the ground, right in the middle of her slain enemies. She started to eat and drink to regain health and mana.

“Robert, we need to talk.”

It was a completely surrealistic setting. They were in a large cavern with dead bodies strewn all over the ground. To make things worse, the cavern was several hundred feet under the surface of a huge lake. The place appeared to be constructed of living tissue, the floor and walls seemed to be made of vines, covered with moss and grossly inflated mushrooms. The entire place gave off a disgusting greenish glow.

“Could you sit down please? I hate talking to someone who’s standing over me.”

Robert shook his head in disbelief. They were in a digital world, controlling computer-generated avatars, yet she was insisting on real life courtesies. Still, he did as she asked and sat next to the mage.

“What do you want to talk about?”

“Everything,” she replied. “I have a bad feeling about what’s going on and how we’re handling it.”

“What’s the problem? I think we’re definitely making progress. I’m nearly level seventy!”

He heard his phone buzz and to his surprise he saw it was Rebecca. He picked it up and Rebecca started talking immediately, seamlessly continuing the conversation they had been having by typing messages to each other.

“That’s not the issue. I’m worried and frustrated about the fact that we’re back to square one. There’s just the two of us, maybe three if we count your friend Andy, and we haven’t got a clue how to handle things. We have no proof. We have no plan. We have no support. All we have are a lot of dead people. Now the attack on a ship has already happened, we don’t even know what their next target will be. Even if we did, we’d be powerless to do anything about it. Just ask the four dead people on that boat. They may have been drug dealers, but their death could have been prevented.”

“I agree. But I don’t see what we could have done!”

“Neither do I. That’s why we need a change of tactics. If we go on like this, we’ll keep trailing behind, mourning the dead. We need to take some action.”

“How?”

She remained silent for a minute. “You need to become friendly with Khalid. Not only that, we also have to follow him in real life, not just in the virtual world. And we need to find a way to know exactly what they’re up to. You told me that you think that Pharad was giving something to each member of the Hammer of Grimstone. We need to know what that something was.”

“I’ve been thinking about that. The only things that can be traded are gold or WoW items. How can that be significant? I just don’t see it!”

Rebecca laughed. “That’s what I thought as well. I’ve been wondering about that for the last days. An item is an item, so what could be important about it? Last night I finally figured it out. Look at your screen again!”

With these words, she opened a trade window with Gunslinger. Robert saw that she wanted to give him a piece of paper. He accepted and received the item. When he opened his bag, he saw it was called ‘Plain Letter, written by Killermage ’. He did so, and a new window opened. The letter contained a message:

25/11/10 1700 EDI-AMS U26923

From,

Killermage

He read it twice, not understanding what it meant. He asked her to clarify.

“What it means is that it’s possible to physically trade information or instructions between two players.”

“I see. Why would they give instructions in this way?”

“Two reasons. The most practical could be that certain information is so valuable or important that the receiver should keep it for later reference. In case he forgot it for instance.”

“Yes, that could be. And the other reason?”

“The second reason could be security. Suppose you were leading a terrorist organization. You’re using World of Warcraft as your communication channel because you need something secure and unmonitored. You also know that, sooner or later, someone will get smart and start tapping the information in WoW, just like they’re monitoring your phone calls and email.”

“And this would be the answer?”

She walked up to him, standing so close their virtual characters were almost touching. “At least it would minimize the risk. If some agency was monitoring online computer games, it would concentrate on the chat channels first, don’t you agree? Or the team speak channels. Who would suspect items traded between characters? Consider, we didn’t even think of it!”

Robert thought it over and had to admit she was right. “What’s the meaning of the message you just gave me?”

She smiled at him. “Oh, that? That’s my flight information. I’m coming over to you. I arrive Thursday at 17:00 hours at Amsterdam airport. Will you pick me up?”

His heart jumped. “Sure! I’ll be there. Where will you stay?”

“At your place, of course. Where else?”

~~~

Chapter XVII

Robert
put a hand to his chest to feel the pounding of his heart. He tried to steady himself by taking some deep, slow breaths. It didn’t help. He felt beads of perspiration forming on the nape of his neck. Telling himself to stop dithering, he finally knocked on the door. For a split second he felt the urge to run away, but he suppressed that thought with force.

His knock resulted in the sound of a chair scraping on the floor. Footsteps approached, then the door was opened.

“Yes?” Khalid looked impassively at him.

Robert forced a smile. “Hi! How are you!”

“Fine. Can I help you?”

This wasn’t going as he had expected and rehearsed in his head several times. But there was no turning back now. He plunged ahead. “Well, you offered to help me a little with World of Warcraft, remember? I bought the game a few weeks ago, but it’s confusing. I’m a little stuck.”

A spark of interest gleamed in Khalid’s eyes. Rebecca had predicted this. She claimed that nobody as involved in the game as Khalid would be able to turn down such a request.

We’re all addicted and we all like to show off how great and fantastic we are, and we all like to flaunt our superior knowledge around.
Her words resounded in his head.

As they had been hoping, his neighbor nodded. “Sure. What’s the problem?”

Robert noticed the beginning stubbles of a beard. His mind conjured up images of bearded Mujahedeen fighters, but he pushed them away.

“Well, I’m at level eighteen now. I must do a quest in some place called Wailing Caverns or something. Suddenly, I get killed all the time. I don’t understand it. I was doing all right but it won’t work anymore.”

Rebecca and Robert had prepared all of this beforehand. Rebecca had opened a new separate WoW account and leveled a Tauren hunter up to level eighteen yesterday and last night. No small feat. She’d explained to him how Khalid would never believe that he was already at level sixty-five, so he needed another low level character for the charade. If their ruse worked, Khalid would probably come to Robert’s room at some point, to show him things. It wouldn’t work if there was another high level character on Robert’s account. So he needed a new account as well.

“Do you mean that you’re actually inside the Wailing Caverns?”

Robert nodded. “Yes, I finally found the entrance at the end of some large cave. Another player pointed it out to me. Since I went through some strange gate, the game doesn’t work correctly anymore. I just get killed over and over!”

For the first time, he saw Khalid actually laugh. For a second, he feared he’d overdone his story, but that fear was groundless. There was no suspicion in the man’s response.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to make fun of you. Your game isn’t broken: it’s just that you entered an instance. A dungeon. Those are many times more difficult than regular play.”

“Why did I suddenly enter an instance? I didn’t mean to.”

“No, there’s just much to learn about World of Warcraft.”

Robert smiled back at him. “Could you help me a little? Explain some things to me? Please?”

Khalid looked at his watch. He nodded. “Of course. Show me what you’re doing.”

Still with a pounding heart, but jubilant about his successful performance, Robert led the way to his room and his computer. He drew a chair near for Khalid to sit on and pointed at his computer. “That’s me!”

On the screen, the hastily created hunter was visible. It was at the far end of a huge cavern system that sprawled underneath a minor mountain range just to the southeast of Crossroads. The entrance to the caverns was hidden in the lush vegetation of a deceptively tranquil-looking oasis in one of the drier parts of the Barrens. Hunterino, as the new character was called, was standing in front of the entrance of the hidden instance called Wailing Caverns.

Khalid reached over Robert’s shoulder and gently took the mouse from him. He clicked open the Character window, staring at the various items equipped on Hunterino. They were nowhere near as good as what had been equipped on Gunslinger at that level. The gear Hunterino was wearing was exactly what was to be expected from a novice player at level eighteen: complete crap.

“I can give you some advice, but I can’t help you,” Khalid said. “For that, we need to be on the same server.”

Robert managed a blank expression. “I don’t understand. What’s a server?”

With a sigh, the other sat down. “There are millions of people playing this game. They can’t be all in the same world because it would be far too crowded. Therefore, they created many different Realms that function on different servers. The worlds are all exactly the same: it’s just that people are not in the same place, so to say.”

Robert nodded slowly, as if he had trouble comprehending. “And how do you know that we’re on different servers?”

“Well, the chance that we’re on the same is small. You should have chosen my realm out of a long list.”

“How do I know on which server I am?”

“Don’t you remember?”

He shook his head, trying to look as stupid as possible. “No. I selected a random one out of the list. I don’t remember which one. I didn’t understand what I was doing: I just wanted to get started.”

Khalid rose again and took the mouse for the second time. He logged Hunterino off, not quitting the game, but going one step back to the screen where the character you wanted to play with was selected. He studied it for a second, then turned to look Robert sharply in the eyes. He held his gaze for several seconds.