Chapter Sixty seven
The Indies, independent players have no idea about the magnitude of the guilds. Even the unrated guilds, the flash and forget type of guilds are massive money drains. The first rate ones or super guilds of the like were complex and worth more than few corporations. Their daily expenses could run few countries if it comes to that.
Yet...it is dream of many to own or become part of such operations. Why? Fame, fortune. You name it, you can get it here. Billions of credits spent daily would bring back that much and more if they stay and hold on.
The new game
Still, you can encash it later on or build a network or get few favours. Anything would be worth it.
While the poor dream of getting few extra coins at end of each day, guilds poured out coins like there is no tomorrow. They had previous games results to back them up, to allow them spend seemingly recklessly.
The new guilds or workshops...yeah. The budget was the issue. The initial investment to recruit good names into the guild would bankrupt few. If not, then the money or coins spent in the village level would decide if they could survive for few days or few weeks. If they could not spend more, thus staying in village for few more days, their chances of survival in town would drop exponentially. But if they spent recklessly in village, they would have cash flow problem when they move out of village and would be eaten by rich magnets.
The kids from Saint Augustine were in similar dilemma. They didn't have limitless budget to pour into the village. The investment would be increased only if there was something to show. Good news was that recruits from college meant that each player was rich enough to not worry the company needlessly. Bad news, the coins topped up at the time of creating game character was nearly over and nearly all of them needed coins rather urgently. The long sighted ones had already made preperations. Made gold farming teams or contracted with them. They just needed to scale them up. Others were scrambling around to get coins anyway.
It was not bed of roses to those who had arranged for gold farming teams. The coins they had collected could not be sent out of the village. No post or parcel service in the village. So only those teams who were in the same village could collect and handover the coins. In a village holding five to ten thousand players, how many could be from gold farming teams and how much could be collected. It's not as if these were the only people asking for coins.
So a side business of collecting coins for credits had sprung up silently. Why silently? There was no post, no talk, no mention of it anywhere. Else Atharva would have noticed it before. Who knows, he might have sold his gold to earn millions of credits in a single transaction.
But he would have suffered a loss though. The reasoning is simple. In other places, the players had paid in coins all these days to get resources, thus using up coins stored or collected. The coins were already circulated in the market and there was no excess or artificial dearth in the market. It was difficult to buy coins in such conditions. In Atharva's village, most of the guilds and others were saving coins by directly purchasing potions via credits. And, the NPCs paid handsomely for finishing the task. Thus, even if potions and others were costly, players hadn't felt the pinch. Guilds continued to hoard the coins like dragons. Even loosing the purse for the sake of finding dungeons sooner hadn't made a big dent in their collected coins.
However, there was only one Artha in the game. How could others enjoy such sight of coins getting piled up, becoming silver or gold ones. ( For ease, the stored/stacked coins would convert into higher value ones automatically. Don't know till how long this freebie would last. After all, NPCs didn't enjoy this freebie.)
The meeting was held because the lack of coins was hindering the growth. Let's assume that a guild player was using around 8 potions, 5 miscellaneous items and repairing two of his weapons a day. That's conservative to the extreme. The average spending of a guild player was more than twice of that, and it was just an average guild player. We will not talk about reserves or higher. So now and average Joe of guild doesn't have coins to purchase that much items. He has only few options. Go to lower level maps where he won't need that much potions. But the XP he gains would be a lot less. Get some tasks which are not dangerous and complete them to earn coins. Such tasks were very few and they paid less too. Less risk, less gain. Get some lifestyle job. Oh, can't do that. You need lots of raw materials and to buy them, you need coins, which you don't have. Or play conservatively and hope, just hope that you don't die. In anyway, his rate of getting XP would reduce drastically.
In the villages where dungeons were already open had different quandary. They got weapons and as such in the dungeons. Heck they even looted few better potions there. But they needed even more potions and scrolls to map the dungeon and reach the boss. The deaths had taken toll. The levels had come down. They had to grind in normal maps to get the necessary levels. The transition from dungeons to maps or vice versa would take some time. The method of fighting against monsters were different in each setting.
Everywhere there was only one cry. Coins! We want coins! Many had posted and requested the game to find ways to get coins. Atleast allow post and parcel service. The gold farming teams is in some godforsaken village and he needs coins now, here.
Typically, the game makers were silent. So were the forum moderators. If these people didn't pay through the nose for coins, how could the game hold on to its tagline of making credits while playing games? They had not even thrown the bomb out there about the subscription. If the regular people didn't make money, how horribly they would feel about the subscription later on? Better would be giving them sweets, credits via guilds and the ilk, to show them that money could be made in many ways and then give the devastating news.