Feel the Weight of the Armband (5)
[Event's about to start and these bastards are already swarming in wtf] (193)
[You brought an update so why can't you deliver] (35)
[I've been sharpening my blade for this event] (237)
[People who are gonna lose their minds over the event update delay.jpg]
There was a reaction, at least. But contrary to what I'd expected, it was surprisingly smooth, ordinary — almost mundane. Watching it all, I found myself wondering if the vast majority of players weren't actually chasing events or clan wars at all. Maybe they just wanted to survive this world without dying — the quiet, modest ambition of ordinary people living long and thin.
Thinking along those lines, I passed the time mining resources and running daily quests. Before I knew it, thirty minutes had gone by.
Ding♪
Oh, finally.
The message alert I'd set up earlier went off, and I immediately opened the status window to check the new notification in the UI. At my hurried gesture, the translucent status window resolved into a fresh message right before my eyes.
But what appeared thoroughly betrayed every last shred of my expectations.
> We have discovered that certain updates are not applying correctly, and temporary measures are currently underway.
> If Commanders are currently interacting with any faction, or have newly accepted or ongoing quests,
> please pause those activities and wait for further notice.
Oh.
They had finally drawn the last of the Four Dark Blades of game ops — the dreaded "temporary maintenance." My own reaction was nothing compared to the gallery as a whole, which promptly flipped on its head.
Anyway, with the ops team deploying all four of their legendary dark blades as a finishing move…
A minor screw-up like that set both the gallery and the chat channels ablaze — but the ops team, having dragged the update out for as long as humanly possible while furiously working on something behind the scenes, finally managed to put up a clear notice explaining exactly what the new event was.
And as for what that event actually entailed… I only got to see the contents a full eight hours after they'd first announced the update was starting.
"…Oh."
Unlike the "Pirate Raid" event, this one actually felt like a proper game event — complete with the right format and structure. I found myself quietly satisfied.
That said, satisfaction aside, I also got the sense that this event was more cunning than it first appeared.
For people who just wanted pure profit — players who didn't care about rankings at all — the exclusive shop listed in the notice was a golden ticket to load up on sweet rewards. But for anyone chasing admin privileges through the rankings, or simply obsessed with climbing the board itself… well, using that exclusive shop would come with some serious restrictions, wouldn't it?
Looking at the notices so far, they'd only ever mentioned the top ten, which had quietly led some players to assume that only the top ten would get any rewards at all. But that was nonsense. As far as I remembered from my own gaming days, even low-ranked players still got something.
Common sense: if only the top ten got rewards and everyone else got nothing, who'd bother chasing ranks at all? The lower ranks might not match the top ten, sure — but the higher you placed, the better the rewards. That much was obvious.
All in all, the event's design felt deliberate: if you want to climb the rankings, give up the event rewards. If you don't care about rankings, just scoop up those sweet event prizes and walk away happy. I figured most players would read it the same way.
With that thought in mind, I headed for the biology lab with Jessica to pick up some quests.