Chapter Twenty three- Winding up (2)

The news channels, social media sites were spreading the news about the just launched game . The breaking news and trending articles, the hot issues in forums, hot hot update in other sites... it seemed the world was revolving around the game. The marketing and strategy of the game was indeed well rounded. There didn't seem to be any person on the planet who didn't know about the game.

As the first day in the game was winding up, these places seemed to be injected with chicken blood and they went into hyper mode. Ooh, this village had a welcoming ceremony. Wow, the fireworks to show the end of the day in that village was so spectacular. What? The villagers gave free alcohol to players in that village? Oh goodness, there was a street play by villagers in this village? Pshh, that village is so boring, there was nothing to show for the end of the day. This village is so poor, they wanted players to go to sleep (log off) early. Huff, this village chief is too much, he didn't allow for any player stalls near village centre at all. That's better than that village where players had to pay in coins to open a stall near village exit.

The game site opened up another segment. Vote for the villages. The non players could vote once(that is vote for a single village) every 8 hours. The players had another site, seamlessly attached to VR lounge area (also called Lobby) where players would be found soon after logging off. There, they had to rate the village from 1 to 10, one being worst and 10 being the best. Nice hype.

More than millions of villages had opened up in the game to cater to billions of players. The data collected was huge. The collating and infering could only be done by AI using supercomputers. Good thing that the game makers had spent so much and arranged for all that computing.

As the day in the village ended, players slowly logged off with mind brimming from adventuring in the new land. The VR lounge had also had another item other the satisfaction review page. The number of players left in the village. So many players waited in the lounge, waiting till the count turned zero. This inturn showed how many rich people were there in the village. Deep pockets meant that they had a chance to sell items for a bit extra.

While waiting, they spent time in the game forum exclusive for the players,commented on them or made new entries themselves. In short, they were still involved in the game. It felt just a moment when the alarms sounded again remaining them to log out completely. This day, nearly everyone turned up late to work or to college. Only the experts and scions went to sleep. The world was now just clamouring on and on about the game.

The guilds and workshops had numerous meetings discussing pros and cons of each village. Basically there was nothing to discuss on 1st day. They didn't even know if the point of the village would be in which city which state etc. What could be planned? This day was like an ode to experts who made achievements. First impressions were the deepest ones. So the villages with more achievements would get more guild members in the future. The guilds needed millions of these normal members to cater to the experts helming the guild. They made some talk on things that may be needed later on. They rehashed about various lifestyle players to ensure full coverage.

Many headed to have informal talk with game makers, trying to sound out any new thing and importantly how to get coins in the game.

In Saint Augustine, there were no less than 10 famous people planning to have a guild in the game. They were rich, they were brilliant and they were young. All of them were brimming with enthusiasm and knew, just knew that their guild would be well known in future.

In one of the private rooms in a posh cafe frequented by the uber rich students, a team was having luncheon meeting.

'Silver Lark' Sonjya Revi was talking."... according to what I saw today, the investment we planned won't be enough at all. And the old name guilds are hogging attention too much. If we can't grab a foothold now, it will be even more difficult when we leave village. Any ideas in this regard?" Their group had plans. They had not focused on a single village. Instead they had formed few independent teams. Whether their plan would work or not could be known on in the future. They had to grow and survive till then.

"Don't hope on me," said the foxy eyed 'Myra' Moira Nedgi, "I am unfortunate enough to face Sun Lord of Dragon Slayers and Baccara from Bloody Rose. I can't gather members for the guild. Maximum I can do is pay for few resources. I checked. My village pays very well for finished tasks." Sun Lord was well known by the guilds. He was just like a d*mn tortoise 🐢. Once bitten, would not let you go. Fighting with him would be exhausting yourself and finally saying GG, bye bye. Baccara on other hand was a top tier expert. She was considered as one of the top ten assasins and she was famous for pioneering new maps. There would a group of followers moving behind her, maximising the advantage of pioneering. With such big Kanuhas in the village, those who knew games would try to follow them. The only good news was that these guilds would choose their experts, elites and reserve elites meticulously, thus few might escape their nets. So, gathering few independent players of normal calibre would not be a problem. If the problem was just filling members, they could get it covered.

'Tiara' Lehya March asked, " Yeah, yeah. I wanted to ask about that. You people are getting more coins. Why is that? Did you find out?"