World of Eternia: The Complete Collection (43 page)

Mark offers a friendly
wave at her as Lisa approaches. “I’m glad you could make it,”
he says. “Let me take you to my office so that we could talk.” He
turns and stands in front of the doors, which slide open to allow his
entrance.

Lisa quickly follows
him, while looking around. The building is much bigger than Virtuous
Gaming’s rented office space. EDE owns the building itself, and
apparently retrofitted the interior space and customized it for the
company’s specific needs. The entrance empties into an atrium with
a visitor’s desk in the middle, escalators on the left side, and
express elevators along the walls to the right.

Mark stops in front of
a turnstile leading to the escalators. He turns around, and hands
Lisa a visitor’s badge. “You’ll need this to get in,” he
says. The short man fishes out his own identification card and slides
it through the reader. He then pushes through the waist high
turnstile. The man takes three sets of escalators to reach the fourth
floor. Finally he gets off and waits for his guest to join him.
“We’re almost there,” Mark says and starts walking towards his
office.

When Mark arrives, he
sees Britney Valentino from the art department looking at the
reference book on human anatomy. “Hi! You could take the book back
to your desk if you want. I kind of need the office right now,” he
says sheepishly.

“Oh! Um, sure thing!”
The blond woman, who is wearing a red and white checkered shirt,
jeans, and white sneakers, quickly takes the hint to leave the office
with the reference book in her hand. On her way out, the employee
takes a quick up and down inventory of Mark’s guest waiting
outside.

“Please come right
in,” Mark invites Lisa, who quickly enters the room. The project
manager closes his door, and walks over to a workstation at the left
corner to fire up the computer. The computer is already set up to
connect wirelessly to a virtual reality headset and gloves. There is
ample space in front of the computer for a user to use “live
action” mode in World of Eternia and enhance the virtual reality
experience.

The guest from VG looks
around the room, and notes that the project manager’s office is
quite big, almost as big as her boss’ office. The room is full of
bookshelves stuffed with reference material. “I see a lot of books
here. That’s quite unusual when people nowadays can simply search
online for materials,” she comments.

“While it is true
that there is a lot of knowledge posted online for anyone to do
research, there is no assurance that the materials will stay online
forever. For example, universities may post classes online for people
to watch and learn about various subjects. But they may eventually
decide to add pay walls and require fees to watch the courses.
Nothing is free in life, and someone has to pay for internet
hosting,” Mark replies. “The books on the wall are reference
materials that our artists and writers utilize to create content for
our game, World of Eternia. Whatever they can’t find, our content
creators will simply search online to supplement the material here,”
he adds.

Seeing that the
computer has completed its boot up, Mark enters his log in
information into the computer, and starts the WoE Oriental Expansion
program. Mark turns around to face Lisa. “The reason I asked you to
come in today is to try out our expansion yourself, and see how you
could incorporate your department’s content into it,” he
explains. “From what I’ve seen of your progress, I would estimate
that you’re, at most, twenty percent toward completion for your
game.”

“That is a fair
assessment,” the VG employee agrees readily.
Charles
Winter gets double my loss of reputation
, she reminds
herself.

“Since we’re done
with our expansion already, I think the upcoming match should base
off this expansion and your work at Virtuous Gaming should be merged
into it. By ‘work’ I mean the graphical stuff, since your world
setting is based off classical Chinese opera and its mythology, if
I’m not mistaken,” Mark continues.

“That is correct,”
Lisa agrees.

The project manager
smiles at the confirmation. “Then I think it will work, because our
expansion introduces some Asian themes into WoE. Our theme is a
mixture of Shintoism and Buddhism, but yours could be a subset of
that cultural interjection.”

Lisa jumps on the idea.
“We could make the players from Virtuous Gaming belong to a
different kingdom seeking to invade Eternia.”

Mark nods and continues
the train of thought. “These guys will try to invade by entering a
special portal. Eternians will be tasked with defending the portal
against VG players seeking to enter it to invade Eternia.”

“And that becomes our
‘tower defense’ style of match, turned into a portal defense
match,” Lisa concludes.

“Yes, I think that
will work nicely,” the project manager agrees. “We will need to
confer with our respective bosses to get the go-ahead for this new
arrangement. But in the meantime, I want you to experience our
Oriental Expansion first hand. So I’ll need to teach you how to use
the headset and gloves, after you create a WoE account of course.”

“Yes, I would like to
try your game,” Lisa smiles sweetly.
Everything
is going according to Charles’ plan.

Mark knocks on the door
and enters the office. He has been visiting Richard’s office quite
frequently these days.

Richard smiles at his
project manager and says, “Just give me a moment while I save my
work on the computer.” Once the file is saved, the boss turns to
face Mark. “What have you got?”

“I invited Lisa
Huffman, the R&D head at Virtuous Gaming, to visit my office and
try out the oriental expansion. She was quite impressed with the
overall quality and polish of our game. I floated the idea of
integrating her company’s visual content into our expansion, and
she really liked the idea,” Mark reports.

“I sure hope so. If
they insisted on using their own game as the template for the
upcoming match, then the match is not going to happen,” the CEO
says with a shake of his head.

“It is fortunate for
us, then, that she is quite reasonable,” the employee replies.

“Unlike her boss,”
Richard quips. He waves his hand. “Sorry, let’s stay focused. So
how do we go about having this match take place? What’s the goal
line?” he asks.

“Lisa agreed with me
that the match could be a variation of a tower defense match,” Mark
says.

“How so?” the
employer raises his eyebrows.

“We could make the
match a portal defense match instead,” the project manager answers
succinctly.

“You want a portal
defense match?” Richard repeats. After a moment of consideration,
he understands what Mark wants to do. “You want our players to
defend the portal leading the We Tang Kingdom into Eternia?” he
asks.

“Correct,” Mark
smiles. “It’s simple. If a champion from Virtuous Gaming manages
to enter the portal, their side will win.”

“Do you think this
will work?” the skeptical boss asks.

“If we set up certain
restrictions so that forces from both sides start on equal footing,
then yes it will work. To be honest, I think we will need to limit
the number of participants for the event,” Mark suggests.

Richard hesitates for a
moment, and finally speaks his mind on the suggestion. “I’m
inclined to say no to limiting participants in this match, since
there is so much at stake for both companies and their players. And
assuming we charge an entry fee to participate, the match will bring
in a lot of revenue as well. But give me your best arguments in
support of that proposal and I’ll consider it.”

“I was thinking of
limiting participation to five hundred players per side. First, the
event will be streamed online and if there are too many participants
it will be impossible for viewers to follow the action and see when
the tide turns toward one side. Second, bandwidth considerations
would favor a smaller number of players and this would ensure that
the servers would not be overwhelmed. Third, five hundred
participants on each side would allow the players to organize
themselves and communicate much more easily,” Mark explains.

“I want you to
consult with The Strangers and get their feedback on this before we
finalize the number of participants in this match,” Richard
interrupts.

“Fine,” the project
manager readily accedes to the demand, and continues with his
argument. “Finally, the number of players on each side has to be
equal. Virtuous Gaming may have trouble getting many players to
participate, especially given the cost of the virtual reality
equipment and higher end computer specification requirements. I’m
sure VG could set up especially equipped internet cafes around the
world to bring in players for this match, but they may not get enough
VR equipment from us to do so,” Mark explains in great detail.

“You do bring up some
good arguments,” the CEO admits. “Let’s do it this way. See how
many VR sets we have in stock, and offer to rent them out to players
as part of the entry fee for the event. If this means only a thousand
players can participate, then we’ll go with that number assuming
that VG agrees to it and our player consultants think this is
workable. Also, you need to think about how to decide who will
participate on our side. Will you do a special invitation to players,
or draw lots from those interested in joining? Review our database of
players, and figure out a way to ensure that our very best players
will represent Eternia in this match. Do everything you can to ensure
that we will win the match,” he orders.

“Yes sir,” Mark
replies.

“Hello Wesley,” the
King’s advisor greets the cavalier.

Wesley looks around the
small tavern, and finally locates Mark in his blood red cape sitting
next to the hearth.

As soon as the player
consultant joins the EDE employee, Mark uses his special privileges
as system administrator. He turns the area surrounding the hearth
into a small instance, in order to ensure complete privacy between
the two. “How are the players reacting to Richard’s acceptance of
the gauntlet from Virtuous Gaming?” Mark asks out of curiosity.

Wesley sighs. The issue
has been contentious in the forums. “There are two camps that have
emerged. One faction is very supportive of this decision, and many
players in this camp are quite eager to participate in the
inter-company match. The other camp is completely opposed to it, and
there is a further subset of players in this camp that turned into
fear-mongers who believe World of Eternia’s server shutdown is
imminent,” he explains.

“What is the split
like?” Mark is intrigued. He had been far too busy to keep tabs of
the forums to check the mood of players lately.

“It’s hard to take
the forums as gospel, since an overwhelming majority of the player
base doesn’t bother to spend any time there. But if I were to give
an estimate based on my in-game conversations with players in Starter
Town, I would say the opinion is sixty-forty in support right now,”
Wesley replies. “Of course, sentiments could change in reaction to
whatever rules EDE and VG decide to adopt for the match,” he adds.

Mark nods and decides
to take the opening that Wesley has conveniently created. “I want
your take on this. What if we decide to limit participation in this
match to, say, five hundred players on each side or even less?” he
asks cautiously.

Wesley stares at the
younger man blankly for a moment, and lets out a whistle. “You’re
going to upset a lot of supporters because they are really looking
forward to playing in the match,” he replies quietly. “In fact,
some players are actually delaying their vacation plans until they
hear more about this competition. However, I understand that
bandwidth is an issue since the virtual reality equipment uses a lot
of bandwidth for each player. In fact, players groups are usually
segregated into smaller groups via instances inside dungeons, and
party size is limited to twenty players at most,” he points out.

Mark nods again in
confirmation. “Yes, the virtual reality equipment soaks up a lot of
bandwidth, and the growth of the player base has been hampered, to
some extent, by the bandwidth requirements for World of Eternia. Even
Starter Town is instanced when players enter various shops,” he
explains. “Let’s discuss the logistics a bit more. From a
player’s perspective in organizing members for this raid, are five
hundred participants too many for leaders to handle?” he asks.

“In military service,
the answer is no. The lines of communications are always open for
orders and feedback and supporting information. It gets a little bit
trickier in World of Eternia because we lack a private messaging
(‘pm’) system that operates contemporaneously,” the player
notes. “The closest ability that we have in the game is the divine
sphere’s Communication spell, but the continuous mana drain makes
it tough to keep the channel open for long.”

“I will ask our
engineers to create a quick patch to add that form of communication
in-game,” Mark responds. “What else?” he presses eagerly.

“If a pm system is in
place, the commander should be able to give orders to be carried out,
shift attackers and fortify lines of defenses as necessary. As long
as both sides have equal numbers, it doesn’t really matter how many
players get to participate in this match,” Wesley notes. “The
advantage will go to Eternians, though, because of our extensive
experiences with the virtual reality environment. Players from
Virtuous Gaming will need to practice with the VR headset and gloves,
and also get used to the stings from taking damage,” he frowns.
“Would it be possible to turn off the biofeedback loop function?”
he requests. “I think this would encourage more volunteers for this
match.”