Operation Heathrow

Chapter 14: In Private Servers We Trust?

By Saturday night, news of MAA's QA lead being fired sends a ripple wave among the MAA community remnants. For so many, including Karine, this move feels like a desperate attempt at damage control. Adèle who, by then, was allowed to join the Death Fiscalists' Discord server, would hear Karine sob over the events of the past few days. She starts streaming and, rather than log on a pre-existing character, goes to the character creator. However, since both her characters are busy fighting around Perseria, neither appear to her.

"What was supposed to be the happiest moment of my life as a MAA raider was ruined by the fight for that world's freedom!" Karine sobs on voice. "I lost my in-game friends over that! Ram, then Caro..."

Caro used to be my closest in-game friend! And I am not even on speaking terms with Caro anymore! She was feeling used at the Gates of Tartarus, she'd probably feel like I'm using my clients as an insolvency trustee. The only one I can still consider an in-game friend is Adèle, Karine reflects on the social aspect of the game being ruined by the revolt.

But then, her viewers ask her for how she feels about the firing of the game's QA lead.

"I think the QA lead is just a scapegoat, and the manufacturer hasn't addressed the elephant in the room. The game world's residents have clearly radicalized, judging by the various videos and other reports of bugs publicly available" Karine answers her viewers. "Not even two weeks ago, even I talked about the warning signs of unrest in MAA's world as the consequences of the manufacturer's choice of AI algorithms, but things have changed, especially my confidence in the game's survival being shattered"

"Would a private server solve the issue of exploiting the world's residents?" Yasama's player asks her on the chat.

"If someone starts working on a private server, there's no guarantee the private server operators would not keep exploiting the world's residents!" Adèle answers Yasama's player.

"Where do you think beacon-wearers fit in their society?" another viewer asks her.

"Personally, I would say that not all beacon-wearers are equally revered. Sure, the most accomplished are celebrated as heroes, while others have social standing from their wealth. However, those with neither will still live an adventurous life" Karine explains how her characters earned the respect of their fellow rebels. "Getting access to a beacon seems to be the best way for social mobility there"

"So why is it that we have come to control ever-larger chunks of that game's world in the first place?" the ex-QA lead starts to tune in on her stream incognito.

"Probably some wizard of that world who sought some form of immortality and obtained it with angelic beacons" Karine answers the ex-QA lead with a hypothesis on how MAA's world came to become gamified.

"If that's the case, some rogue beacon wearer feels like life as a beacon bearer is a fate worse than death" Adèle formulates her hypothesis on the revolt's causes.

Don't tell me it's one of my characters! Neither told me anything to this effect, but they did, however, mention that life when the beacon is active amounts to coercion, that they effectively function like RC-controlled robots, Karine muses, while pondering the implications of MAA's world being gamified because of a wizard seeking immortality. Their world has become politically dependent on ours, but not economically.

Most of Karine's streams prior to this patch revolved primarily around high-end gameplay as well as taking viewers into high-end content. But now that she's apparently the only major MAA streamer left still playing the game, she draws from a wider range of viewers. And this discussion about how a real world came to fall under the control of the manufacturer continues, until a weird question is asked. About what would happen in the game's world should the game close.

"I would expect a turbulent transition period as the residents of the world adjust to life without our intervention" Adèle answers it as she envisions it.

"The game's world would fall into obscurity and confined to our world's gaming history" Karine answers the players' world portion.

And then the early days of their freedom from our world would reproduce the social hierarchy between players while the game existed, Adèle starts thinking about what kind of society their world would live under should the game shut down. Especially because some ex-players plan on operating a private server, and just started working on it.

"Should the official game close, what would you want out of a private server, bugs notwithstanding?" Karine asks her audience. "It might be years before MAA is playable again"

"You already said the most obvious. I'd say player-made outfits and decos" the ex-QA lead parrots the most common requests for MAA from before this disaster on the stream chat.

"All raids dropping the same level of gear, depending on difficulty, and older high-end content being tuned accordingly" an ex-Kronborg player answers afterward, wondering why Karine isn't actually playing.

"And there's no guarantee that a private server, even if it had all the content it currently has, would be bug-free; players aren't always the best devs" the ex-QA lead tells Karine's viewers what he could expect from a player-made MAA private server. "Not to mention the time it would take for a private server to emerge, even if open-sourced!"

"Lastly, would you play on a private server?" Adèle asks the audience. "There is no guarantee the private server operators would exploit some other world, so I wouldn't want to play on one"

"Oh boy. I have my reservations about playing on a private server. Even if combat was going to remain mostly faithful to the current game, with private servers, the devil is in the details" Karine answers, while this discussion of private servers, and whether the manufacturer would allow one to exist for MAA, is happening. "It's easy, especially for an experienced player, for someone to feel like certain characteristics must be present, or absent, for a game to be worth playing on a private server"

"Yeah, I would play on a private server, since most of the things I disliked from the game had to do with the bugs of this patch" Yasama's player answers on the stream chat, while he plugs away at coding part of that open-source private server.

"So, even though MAA's return as a private server is probably years away, you can bet the operators will be able to get people to play it" the ex-Kronborg player follows up on Karine.

Yasama's player then asks Karine, in a Twitch DM, whether he can post the MAA private server's Discord on the stream's chat. I played MAA for years, I know how passionate the player base is, but the fight for the game world's freedom changed too many things in the game for most. It seems like so many liked their world subordinate to ours under the form of a game, Karine starts thinking about the request.

"One of our viewers even started a Discord server for all those willing and able to make this private server a reality" Karine comments on the link posted on her chat.

Which she joins immediately herself, but only because of the publicity it would bring the server among the remnants of the game's community, and the ex-players who recently left the game.

As she combs through the Discord server, she recognizes several Discord names, by virtue of having met them elsewhere in the game. And even ex-Death Fiscalists, but not Ram. Caro... she blocked me on Discord, but I should be fine on that Discord so long as I keep quiet, Karine sighs, upon realizing they need programmers, voice actors, animators and all the usual stuff any video game manufacturer, er, studio needs to, well, develop a video game. And people willing to salvage MAA game assets.

"Don't underestimate the dedication of MAA's community, past and present. That said, cross our fingers and hope this private server won't give rise to another war for the game world's freedom, a few years down the road!" Karine starts praying for the well-being of this private server project.

"This fiasco made me not want to play any other MMOs in the future" Adèle announces on Karine's stream.

"What do you mean?" MAA's ex-QA lead asks Adèle on the stream chat.

"In the future, I only want to play games that don't carry risks of exploiting another real world" Adèle answers the viewers.

This means, going forward, I must stick to gameswithout characters, nor worlds, so if I want to keep gaming, I might want toconsider playing puzzle games instead, Adèle lets the harsh reality sink in.