Five screens were hanging over the open doors, showing live in-game footage of players entering the world and running through the opening city. Statistics on the center screen of just how many in the world were active on the server. The game had dropped less than two hours ago, at Noon Central Standard Time… So far, forty two thousand eight hundred and ninety-six players were online in the world. There was a round of applause that erupted, drawing the attention of those sitting on stage to look over at the Assistant to the President, Gretta Wilson, as well as the Public Relations Manager, Anthony Rudenbacher, as they approached the stage. Kristine clapped along with the rest of the staff, sitting behind her mentors Megan Harvey, Event Manager, and Marcel Tate, Director of Writing, looking past the heads of people, she furrowed her brow not seeing the President standing off to the side waiting for his introduction.
“Hello everyone,” Anthony began to speak. “And thank you for all your support leading up to this moment. I know I speak for all of us here today. That we could not have made Tales of Three possible without the commanding presence of our community and our team of creators!”
Another round of cheers and applause filled the room.
“I am sorry to say that our President Christopher is unable to join us this afternoon as he is scouting out new locations for servers, to expand the population of Tales of Three and create a stable network for everyone to enjoy! Now I know we have talked over the many years of the claims he has made. I know ten years ago when I was first hired, at that fateful E3 in England. I just about ate my suit when he declared that we would be launching the most realistic looking and feeling dive MMORPG that anyone had ever seen… Though now I am looking to eat my shoe after losing this bet.” he laughed. “Though no one is here to listen to me ramble on about what happened in the past. -”
The words began to fade out for Kristine, she knew this would be the worst of the events they would be facing in the days to come with the launch of the game… but, that wasn’t what was distracting her at the moment. Her brothers were seated just a few people over from her… but one, Jason, had stood up and ducked behind the curtain. So not to be seen leaving during the speech. Her attention was drawn to the screens that were hanging over the front doors now. Several different in-world shots of players leaving the starting town to do the entry quests, laughing meeting up with friends from around the world. In the middle… Players online status.
Sure it would be a constant flux through the day, work, family, food, all valid reasons to need to log off… there was another line of numbers though that piqued her interest.
[PLAYERS TIMED OUT] : 14
She had never seen that code before, looking at the rest of the students before her attention went to her mentors, she knew one of them would be standing up to talk soon. It had been Christophers plan to have each of the Team Heads to speak on just what they did, and how working with the students had been… she was thankful for being short, since Marcel blocked her chair entirely with his stature. Slipping down between the stage and the curtain she followed after her brother, leaving the wheelchair next to the stage. He wasn’t one to just up and walk away from a conference unless there was a good reason.
She was at a jog as she reached the elevator, one already on the move to the upper floors, from what she could tell. He was on his way to medical. Pressing the button repeatedly she waited for the elevator doors to open so she could follow.
After the elevator chimed the arrival onto the Medical Division, it was chaos. Every monitor had someone sitting at it, with the player population on the largest of the screens adorning the walls. Kris stepped out, trying to look for her older sibling in the mess of moving bodies. She had been here several times before, but it had never been this busy… not even when they were fitting the Beta-Testers for their suits. It only took a minute for her eyes to fall onto Jonathan. “Jon what is going on?” she called out walking over to the panel of screens he was frantically tapping at.
“You should be down stairs, you have a speech to give.” he retorted, before looking at her. “Where is you cha-”
“Don't give me that, what is going on. Why is there a timed out list?”
“I am trying to figure that out,” he said, clearly frustrated. “Go back downstairs. All of you.” His brown eyes swept over the group.
“JON! I got them.” A voice yelled, fourteen screens lighting up with the Vitals data paired with IP Addresses and Serial numbers for the Dive gear. All Powered on, showing that a player was wearing the gear… but no signs of life.
“What does that mean?” Kris asked.
“I don’t know, but not now!” Jon stated. “Everyone, out now.” he said, motioning for several of the medical staff to escort the team back to the elevators.
“Damn it Jonathan, you can’t keep treating us like kids forever!”
“We will talk LATER, when I know what is going on.” he snapped just before the doors shut behind the group as they were led back to the elevator.
Frustration started to boil as they loaded into the elevator, something was nagging at the back of her mind. Pulling her phone from her pocket she sent out a text to the group chat to meet up in the event’s office as soon as possible. As the medical staff member hit the button for the ground floor, stepping back off to return to the task at hand. The metal doors closed and the elevator began to descend, Kris slapped the button for the third floor which would lead to the Programing Team and Lore Team floor.
As soon as the doors opened Kris stepped out, her hands digging into the pocket of her sweater for the keys to the office as well as her keycard so the chimes wouldn’t go off when she left the door open for the others to get in.
“Something went wrong… Claudia, was there anything weird in last night's update code? Anything abnormal?” Sitting down in her desk chair, she started to boot up the computer. The familiar background of a lake picture one summer day came up, she tapped the space key to pull up the password screen.
Digging through the log files, Kris stopped as she realized there were more logs than there should have been. The server was supposedly shut down two weeks ago, in preparation for the launch day. Even the server room in the building had been powered down while installs of new towers and air conditioning units to support fifty-thousand players. But there were historical logs dating from the shut down day all the way to the current update. “I thought we put everyone to sleep for a week.” she muttered. Starting to tap into another program on her tablet next to the main screen.
Advanced AI wasn’t something foreign for the game, it was how a lot of the interactive NPC’s would be in the faction cities. They would be needed to understand what group was with which faction… For the player to align and pick a side for PvP. As the screen booted up, a room that should have been familiar to Kris filled the screen, but something was very off… The papers on the walls were different, there was a new face sitting at the desk behind the window of the medieval looking room. “Ho-Ly ********… He never shut it down….” she said quietly. “The world was still running for two weeks.”
Starting to flip between different screens to look into the virtual world through looking glasses that they had planted to monitor different areas of importance. Every scene would have slight changes to them, the furniture moved, new AI roaming about, children of known AI couples running around. How much time had passed since they were last in the game? It had only been two weeks in real-time. Swiping at her tablet, she made it to the Kingdom of Silver’s Throne room. It was the easiest way to figure out the date as they kept some form of calendar on the far wall, but as she tried to look across the room from where the looking glass was placed. Confusion crossed her face. “Two years? That can’t be right.” she muttered out loud. Returning her gaze to the main screen where a diagnostic panel had completed loading.
[PLAYERS ONLINE] : 43 824
[PLAYERS TIMED OUT] : 19
They needed to figure out what the timed out message was for, shaking her head she began scanning through the recent list of ip addresses that were listed. She should be able to pull up the last 60 seconds of a character's game play.. If it was within the last ten minutes. They wouldn’t be able to record everything, hopefully they would get enough. Nothing for recordings. But the player logs were still available for 24 hours. As she started to read through, every single one ended in the same line.
[ PLAYER HP 0 // RESPAWN POINT SET // CODE : KO3015821245 - TOMBSTONE_932 ]
[ MEDICAL SYSTEM ERROR : 036212 ]
[ MEDICAL SYSTEM ERROR : VITALS NOT DETECTED ]
[ SYSTEM TIME OUT : 00:00:05~ ]
Kris had never seen a sequence like that before, it had never popped up in any of their death logs during the beta… The anomaly started with the Tombstone code… Players weren’t ever assigned a tombstone specifically. They would be at the fountain and wait for a Silver Angel to bring them back to their body. Looking back at her tablet, she started to flip through the looking glasses, trying to find the graveyard within the silver kingdom. Finally, the lush green field and tall stones marking the empty graves. . . but there were no angels waiting to bring the souls back to their bodies. Just as she was about to flip to another graveyard. A flash came from one of the tombstones, then another.
[PLAYERS ONLINE] : 43 862
[PLAYERS TIMED OUT] : 21
Kris felt her mouth go dry as the thought raced through her head, she was sure all the color in her face drained as well. The thought couldn’t be real right? “The players… are dying?” she said out loud, using the controls on the tablet to try and get closer to some of the tombstones, screen names of players engraved in the tombs. Leaning back in her chair she stared at the screen. How could this have happened? The suits couldn’t kill right? The Dive systems had been tested. So how… How were no vitals being read? What in the headsets could cause it? Was it suits? A combination of the two? What was the factor that created it?
The alarm on her phone almost had her jumping out of her skin as it blared in the office space. Looking down, she expected to see a call from her brothers, but no it was an alarm. Signaling three hours until the Welcoming Event. The introduction of the story and allowing players to pick a side to be on… The beginning of a war, launched by the Golden Kingdom. “We have to shut down the game.” shes said standing up abruptly, causing herself to get light headed almost falling over in the process. Though someone had pushed her chair right back under her, so she wouldn’t hit the ground.
“We can’t turn off the servers? Wouldn’t that cause issues with those that are in the game?” One of the members of the event staff chimed in looking at her.
“No.. s**t. I don’t know. The event is in three hours… and it’s going to be a bloodbath.” She groaned. Though from the confused looks that crossed her friends she let out a long breath. “The opening event… The Golden Kingdom launches an attack against the Silver Kingdom. After the scene is over everyone is able to start doing quests to join one of the three kingdoms. It had been something players were requesting. So yea there are arenas and stuff, but it would have gotten people exclusive items, gear, spells… A different perspective for the story and all that… With Crimson standing in the center of the two preventing anything insane from happening between players.”
Leaning forward she started to type into the computer, maybe the logout button was locked? It should be easy to enable it from their admin tool right? As she typed in her log in, the computer made a loud buzzing noise. She was stressed, maybe she put it in wrong? She tried again, and the same incorrect password. Again. BZZZZ. Again?! BZZZ. “What the ********> she snapped, starting to type in the president’s login information. BZZZZZT. “Screw it. I’m just going to get into the terminal at the Crimson Castle.” she snapped starting to stand up again. Though she paused knowing how insane she possibly sounded. Looking at the others her green eyes blinked slowly.
“I’m… I’m going in. If I can unlock the logout button from the terminal in the Princess’s room everything should be fine. I can push a Game Master announcement asking everyone to log out immediately.”
“And if you can’t.” This time it was James, another Event coordinator. “Then you would be stuck in game.”
“At least then I could do something about the s**t situation. Tell the AI at the gates to shut the doors. Tell them the Red King is coming? I would be on the Princess’s avatar so might have them at least heed her warning?” she sighed. “I can’t just do nothing. My brother’s aren’t exactly solving the problem faster. So, I’ll suit up. As soon as I am in I can call through the terminal, if I can’t I will go to the looking glass int he graveyard. Keep your eyes on it.”
“What do we tell your brothers?”
“You tell them I locked you out and cleared your codes.”
The game is Live! Beta testers and players can be in the game for as long as they would like, but they cannot log out! At this time, no one but the Development team knows what is going on in the outside world.
Development team. You’re Admin accounts are locked, but your Beta Tester accounts are still active and able to log in.
Everyone is Level 1 and in the Kingdom of Silver.
Development team. You’re Admin accounts are locked, but your Beta Tester accounts are still active and able to log in.
Everyone is Level 1 and in the Kingdom of Silver.
