The Greystone Chronicles: Book One: Io Online

by Dave Willmarth

  The captain nodded his head as Brick mumbled, “A little physical harm wouldn’t hurt…”

  The captain smiled at Brick, then looked back to Alexander. “No mercy”.

  “Aye, no mercy,” Brick and the others repeated.

  Alexander and the others walked to the side of the square where the prisoners were held. They were lined up on their knees into two orderly rows of 30 and 29. He stood in front of the middle of the first row and shouted, “HEY!”

  The prisoners all looked toward him. Some spat in his direction, recognizing him from the videos. “I don’t know if you’ve heard yet, but I killed your leader about half an hour ago!” he yelled loudly enough for the entire square to hear. There was a roar of approval from the citizens.

  When the noise died down, one of the prisoners shouted, “Bullshit! A noob like you couldn’t kill Henry!”

  “Ahhh… so that was his name!” Alexander smiled as he shouted. “I didn’t bother to ask. He was as stupid as his brother. Are you all morons? None of you noticed that he greyed out when he died? I taunted him into attacking me before I killed him, which is when you all received those pretty red skulls.” He smiled again, “Kinda fucked up your plans, didn’t it?”

  Alexander began to pace back and forth as he talked, eyeing each of the prisoners, looking for the dumbest of the bunch.

  “So here’s the deal! Your guild is done. We have 72 of you in custody. Members of your raid group have killed several NPC’s tonight, and you know what that means!”

  At that, his entire group, nearly every player in the square, and a good number of quick thinking NPC’s started waving at the prisoners. “Seee ya PWP!”

  When the noise died down again, he continued. “I need to know how many of you are still here in the city. I need names, and where they can be found.”

  “Fuck you, noob!” drifted up from the back row somewhere.

  “Yes, well. It’s not me that’s currently fucked, now is it?” Everyone laughed. “You all know the rules against adventurers torturing each other. Anyone caught doing so is banished from this land forever. I have further promised that I would not harm any of you.” He coughed and glanced at the captain, who winked at him in return.

  “However, as I mentioned before, several citizens and guards were killed in your attack tonight. And the captain here’s unhappy about that. The guards and citizens of this land don’t have the same rules about… obtaining information. And they really, really want to find the rest of your homies!” At this, the captain nodded, and many of the prisoners were bumped, kicked, had hands stepped on, or were less than gently prodded with sharp points.

  A woman in priest’s robes stood up. “My name is Amelia. I was an officer of PWP from its beginning. I can tell you what you need to know.” The captain motioned for her to be brought forward. When she was close, she began to whisper. “Several of us didn’t want to be here. We came out of fear. Myself and four of the other founders were in an inn when the marks appeared. I blocked those who attacked us with a shield while the other 4 ported back. We brought our whole membership, a total of 88 bodies with us, including the 6 that you killed earlier. If you tell me who else you captured, and let me compare the raid list to those sitting here, I can tell you who’s left and what they are. But I’m afraid I don’t know where they are. I can tell you that Henry, the four officers that were with me, and two others are showing on the UI as ‘out of range’, so they either ported out or ran out of range. There are 6 others that were showing as killed.” She didn’t have to mention that they’d respawned.

  He appreciated that she’d been subtle. “Captain, by my count that leaves 3 unaccounted for.” I suggest taking this woman into the closest shop and let her make a list of who is not accounted for. We might get lucky.” Alexander said. Then more loudly, “I recommend you question the others quite vigorously to confirm this information!” There was another round of kicks and pokes from the guards.

  “Captain, sir,” Lainey volunteered, “if it were me, I’d head to the harbor. Harbors are full of wooden ships and cargo crates that burn easily. Sneaking into a ship’s hold would be a good way to escape.”

  Amelia volunteered, “I know there were two teams of 4 who were supposed to torch the harbor and the warehouses. If you haven’t caught them yet…”

  “Why are you cooperating with us?” Alexander asked. “Why turn on your own people?”

  “What PWP has become is just wrong. Myself and the other officers who were with me formed PWP as a guild for priests, monks and paladins; those who follow the paths of their various gods. Henry was a friend of our former guild leader. He was invited into the guild and made an officer and vice guild leader before we’d even met him. He started preaching about growing the guild, about being strong enough to take what we need to get stronger. When Martin, our founding guild leader, rejected his ideas, Henry set him up. He took Martin into a small town with him, saying there was a new dungeon. They’d partied up, and were headed out of town when Henry stabbed one of the gate guards in the eye, pushed Martin into the other guards to slow them down, then ported back to the guild house. Martin was, of course, locked up. That was 7 months ago.”

  She lowered her head as she continued. “I’m not proud of it, but the rest of us officers decided we’d bide our time until Martin was released. Henry began recruiting and encouraging PVP as an easy way to gain xp, gear and gold. He recruited noobs and power leveled them to gain loyalty. Things got steadily worse. Any who openly opposed him were driven out and spawn camped back to level 1. We figured we could tough it out for five more months, then put things right. Obviously, we were wrong.”

  “I see,” Alexander said. “Well to be brutally honest, I don’t know if you’re telling the truth or not. I hope you are. You know that you’re getting the same mandatory sentence as Martin, yes?”

  She nodded her head.

  “Well, if you’re being truthful, I recommend you tell your fellow founders to port back here and turn themselves in. Serve their time and clear their record. Martin’s got 5 more months. Hopefully in that time I can deal with Henry and those loyal to him. Then Martin can reclaim the guild unopposed when he gets out. Then he will have several months to rebuild before having to confront Henry. And you’ll be able to rejoin him in time to help.”

  Tears came to Amelia’s eyes. “I will pass the message along.”

  “When you do, remind them that many people came to this land to earn a living. Their unwillingness to oppose Henry has caused hundreds, if not thousands, of players who could not defend themselves to lose time and money that they may have needed to survive in our world. All of you should think about that while you serve your time.”

  ****

  Richard, Angela, and Michael had decided when they released Europa, their first MMORPG, that players would be allowed to earn real life money from the game. Previous games going all the way back to the 2D keyboard games of the early part of the century had tried to maintain a contained economy within the game, but it hadn’t taken long for a black market to grow, selling bot-farmed gold, cheats, and power-leveling runs. Real currency auction houses appeared for selling high grade weapons and gear. The black markets invariably unbalanced or outright destroyed in the in-game economies. Simultaneously, as time progressed and technology replaced humans in more and more functions, jobs became harder to find. Agriculture became mostly automated, as did most manufacturing and distribution. Drones controlled by sophisticated AI’s ran entire operations. Retail stores were a rarity, as most goods and services were purchased online. The advent of the first generation virtual reality gear meant that more and more was accomplished in VR. Travel lessened as meetings could be accomplished in virtual conference rooms, and virtual vacations became a low cost alternative to the real thing. More and more people had turned to virtual occupations. Whether that was graphic arts, virtual sales and marketing, or gaming for a living. Whole new industries arose.

  So the founders of Jupiter Technolo
gies elected to eliminate the need for a black market in Europa. They created an in-game auction house that included a real-world component tied to the Europa Online website. So players could place a piece of epic loot up for auction in game, and it could be seen and bid upon by players in game, or in the real world. There was a straight exchange rate – 1 US Dollar equaled 1 gold, and 1 platinum was 1,000 dollars. Players had the choice of the auction proceeds being paid in either game gold or real life currency. This also reduced the annoyance of gold farming bots that took up server space, and physical space in the game. Because while there was no way for a player to use real dollars to purchase massive amounts of game gold, wealthy players would have been tempted to establish a currency black market that would allow them to invest real world cash in-game to purchase property, for example. But with the dual auction house, a wealthy player could simply put something simple up for auction, say a bundle of low level herbs like milkweed. Then arrange for someone else to bid a ridiculous million gold for it. Several forward-thinking banks had in fact created a corporate character account just to accommodate these transfers for their clients. This system had an added advantage for Jupiter Tech’s bottom line, thanks to some quick thinking by their lead accountant. The auction house had been designed, just like nearly all the games that came before, to charge a fee for each transaction. This had been set at 5% of the transaction amount. The original intent had been to “put some cash back into the economy of the game”. Which translated into “paying staff to monitor and maintain the auction house coding and website”. This percentage was set in contemplation of only occasional use by each player, buying and selling crafting materials or the occasional high end gear. However, with the unexpected growth of the game to hundreds of millions of players, and the increasing reliance upon the game for real world income, the auction house had become busier than even the wildest projections. Hence the meeting requested by the lead accountant, Seshat (Her actual name was Miriam, but everyone on staff had chosen, or had been given, a mythological name for themselves. Seshat was an Egyptian goddess of numbers and writing). She had posted a series of historic charts showing transaction levels, projection charts for the same, incomes from the fees, costs for maintenance, etc. The three founders all followed along with limited interest, as they had all been peripherally aware of these numbers already. And when she was finished with her charts, Richard said as much. “We’re aware of the numbers involved here, Seshat. I assume you have something else for us?”

  “Indeed.” She responded “I want to suggest we scale down the auction house fees”.

  “For what reason?” it was Michael asking this time.

  “Well, you see. For the average transaction of a few silver or gold, the 5% means nothing to the individuals making the sale. Just like none of you would stop to consider the amount of sales tax when you stop for a coffee.” All three nodded their agreement. “But when the transactions get into the thousands of gold, the sellers begin to balk at the loss. A player selling an epic helm for $10,000g has to leave $500g on the table as auction house fees. And obviously, the larger transaction by wealthy players investing millions into the game involve much larger fee deductions. So instead, sellers are going through a somewhat time consuming and inconvenient process of listing with the auction house and monitoring bids, or shouting out item adverts in trade chat (or annoyingly also in general chat), then private messaging interested buyers, convincing them to meet in person somewhere in-game, and complete a direct trade, gear for gold. Oftentimes buyers, who would be paying the same price either way, are reluctant to waste their time. And when they are willing, it is still a time suck for all involved, as it usually involves travel time and/or portal costs.”

  Still nodding her head, Angela said “We hadn’t considered that. For a player just trying to pay their rent every month from game earnings, leaving $500g on the table could seem like a tragedy. What do you propose?”

  Seshat took a deep breath before she continued. Despite the fact that she worked for three of the best people she knew, nobody liked telling their boss that they should take a hit to the corporate bottom line. “I propose a simple scaled reduction in fees. Leave them at 5% for any transaction below $500g. That is the vast majority of transactions. Something like 70%. For sales between $500g and $1,000g drop it to 3%. Between $1,000g and $1,000,000g drop it to 2%. And anything over $1,000,000 is 1%.”

  She paused to take in the looks on the faces of her bosses. None of them looked angry, or even displeased. Richard and Angela were looking at each other doing their mental telepathy thing, while Michael’s eyes were rolled up, obviously doing some math in his head. To save him a little time, she added “before you ask, we don’t have a realistic way to track the transactions that happen via direct trade, as we have rules in place that protect players’ privacy. But we estimate the loss in fees from the lower percentages will be offset somewhat by the increased number of transactions. Still, it may mean as much as a 20% drop in auction house income. Last quarter, the auction house fees averaged just over $1.25g per player, and accounted for a gross of $500million gold. Or $2 billion real world dollars per year.”

  “I like your thinking.” Richard said. “But if we’re really looking out for the ‘little guy’ here, the one who pays his rent from game income, then the 5% is still hurting them. I suggest we lower the fees to 3% for anything below $1,000g. If that accounts for, shall we say 80% of total transactions?” he looked to Seshat, who looked thoughtful for a moment, then said “that seems a safe estimate”. Richard continued “So at a current average of $1.25g per player, we reduce that to three fifths, or $.75g per player for 80% of the 400 million players, and we still earn $960 million per year. Plus whatever income comes from the other 20% making larger transactions.”

  “Well, boss. The math is not QUITE that simple, but yes. You get the idea. At those levels, we’d likely still make more than $1.5 billion in total auction house fees. The cost of operating and monitoring the website and the servers dedicated to the auction house, including equipment replacement, totals just over $15 million annually.” Seshat offered. Then she sat down at the conference room table and waited for them to talk it out.

  Michael took out an old school yellow number 2 pencil and a piece of paper, and made a few scribbles before asking “What’s our total annual payroll right now?”

  “Seshat knew the answer, but pulled up the numbers on her tablet just to be sure “We currently have fourteen thousand, eight hundred and forty employees. Total salaries, benefits, and insurance costs are $1,780,800,000. That is, of course, not counting the 3 of you.” She smiled at them. “We also currently employ approximately 180 people on various consulting contracts, most of them working on Europa expansions on the game development side, hardware capacity improvements, or research and development. Those contracts cost an additional $36,000,000.00 for this year. Two of our developer consultants elected to be paid with in-game benefits rather than taking salaries. So there is no actual monetary cost to us.”

  “Thank you” Michael smiled at her anticipation of his next questions “So, even a safe estimate of auction house fees with Richard’s proposed rate reduction very nearly covers our entire payroll for the year. Leaving us about $300million to cover from gear sales or subscriptions. Where currently, auction fees cover all of our payroll, and a big chunk of our hard operations, transportation, real estate, taxes and insurance costs. Is that correct?”

  Seshat consulted her tablet again, and nodded at him “Correct, boss. The game would earn roughly half a billion less annually. Safe estimate. With increased use due to lower fees, that number could shrink.”

  Michael shook his head, then ran his fingers through his hair. “If I had to be the one to present this at an investor board meeting, they’d skin me alive. Voluntarily taking a half billion dollar income hit in order to make life easier for average players, and more convenient for rich ones.” He chuckled to himself. Then he smiled at Seshat “Good thing we don’t h
ave investors! And the entire board is me, and these two romantics over here!” He pointed a thumb toward Richard and Angela. “I don’t think I really need to ask… but are we going with this?

  “Of course we are!” Angela slapped her hand on the table. “Done! Richard, please call down to the dungeon and have one of the auction house team prepare the adjustments for the next update. Michael, if you would, please meet with marketing and prepare a release announcing the change? Thank you.”

  As they all got up from their seats, Angela looked to Richard, then tapped Michael on the shoulder. When she had his attention, she looked meaningfully toward Seshat, then raised her eyebrows. Asking a silent question. Michael and Richard both nodded, smiling. All three sat back down. Michael took the lead.

  “Miriam. Please stay a moment?” Miriam, who had been gathering her things to leave, looked up with trepidation at the use of her real name. She saw the three founders had taken their seats again, and were all looking at her with stony faces. “Something else, boss?” she asked, remaining on her feet as if prepared to flee.

  “Miriam…” Michael used her given name again “Was this reduction in our corporate income your idea? Or did one of your people bring it up?”

  I knew it! There’s a REASON nobody likes bringing bad news to their boss. She thought to herself. And I just brought them half a BILLION worth. Oh well, it has been fun while it lasted.

  “The idea was mine, boss. My older son has been playing the game, working to raise money for college. He starts next year. I heard him on the phone talking to a friend who’s doing the same. They were both selling dungeon loot and complaining about leaving hundreds of dollars at the auction house. I know it sounds like I’m just trying to help my kid. But I’m not. They just got me thinking, so I had my people do some research and put together these numbers.” It sounded, and felt, like a confession to Miriam. She let out a long exhale, not realizing she’d been holding her breath.