Chapter 46 - waking from the dream (2)

The shady sites online which purchased items and game coins had pros and cons. Pro - obviously, you don't have to wait till you go to town to get hard cash. Cons - No guarantee. These worked in shady areas, the players would not get protection of the law. So, if they lost the items, they lost it, they can't even complain. Second, exuberant transaction fees. These sites taxed both sellers and buyers with high transaction and facilitation fees. Buyers were rich people, so throwing away something extra did not matter. They already had prepared plans to recoup the losses later in game. But to recoup, consolidation became a necessity. So these 'fees' were necessary devil for them. To sellers... Fear not, dear puny seller players. Sell it in bulk to pay less 'fees'. That brings to the biggest block seller would face while trying to sell his item.

This meant a player could not sell a single herb, a single potion bottle or one 'common' type of weapon. Buyers preferred to buy in bulk and they had specific needs too. These rules meant a normal player would use the sites when he got uncommon skill book or costlier weapons, uncommon type of consumables etc.

The game coins, a special section in the sites, could be sold in batches of 500 coins. ( The site's minimum limit was just 200 coins, but minimum 500 coins got the seller more money. Any more, the calculation rate would remain the same.)

This was the reason for despair in many students and others who were playing the game to earn money. To even know if the game is worth playing or not, they had to waste minimum of 2 months of their time.

(Unless one got special drops that could be sold, one may save around 800 coins on average. Assuming he played same way next month too, he could potentially save around 900 or 1000 coins. Buy then town level of gaming should be open. It would not matter if the player was in town or not, once the coin to cash conversion started inside the game, the dubious sites would either close down or drastically reduce the fees to get coins. That is conversation estimate time needed to gauge if the money could be made through the game or not. The unfortunate thing is most of the players, especially players like Saachi's despairing classmate, did not have time to wait patiently.)

Saachi was now wondering if the trio in the party were all rich or one of them was rich. Why else would they talk about collecting coins. Not even half month has passed since the launch of the game and the players flaunting their levels were not even in level 6. so he asked directly, what does collecting coin mean?

The answer....

No one among them were rich 2nd generation heirs. (Tch! What a waste of MC level game plot!)

They were previously members of famous guilds - names redacted-, but they were not too keen to join them. (Now, this is type of plot we are talking about.) They did not want to alert members of previous guild about their future plans, thus they could not buy coins from the sites. ( And the plot gets more and more interesting). The details shared by them woke Saachi from his dream completely.

There were only few top groups in gaming community. Based on some sort of deal, these groups divided themselves in to various types of games. For example, one of them was very good in hack and slash type of game. It did not mean they would not play shoot-you-till-you-die sort of games. They would place their sub groups in such games and would mute their presence.

(Royo's explanation - That means they will not fight for number 1 place but will be happy after they entered top 5 list.

Saachi's musing - Is this even muted presence?)

After some time, these subgroups became famous as super guild consortiums. They had bunch of super guilds under their control. These super guilds were actually made up of ...yep, a bunch of top 5 or top 10 guilds. These guilds were like seperate entities enjoying freedom as top leaders. Most of the time, they would not even care about sister guilds, in fact, there would be competition between them for more recognition. These guilds were what the elite of players would see and discuss deals. Normal players would only know sub guilds or tier 2 guilds.

Heck, most of the time, other than select few members like leader and vice leaders, all the members would not even know if they worked for some one else or not. Sometimes, even the sister guilds would fight and exterminate and the supervisor would remain silent and not divulge that they had same owner.

So, the top people were select few and they behaved like this was investment. Only when it came to tier 1 or lower guilds, would the intense competition seen and felt by normal players.

Good news - the top people had the art of managing, thus they never interfered. They had other methods to manage. They never let others know of their presence. Heck, for initial 6 months or so, the managers or supervisors would not even ask about balance sheets and as such IRL. They may or may not entry by the time guild does multi-million credit transactions. Bad news - this game was not divided at all, it was free for all session and anyone could try to be Number one.

And Saachi finally realised the size of Goliath he would face in the future.