The next day, Li Shenyang went to his class as he normally does, but the professor called in sick in the last minute so now, they have a self-study period instead. It was a period of free time so of course, Li Shenyang decided he should play a match or two on King's Arena. Taking out his laptop, he booted it and as soon as the desktop screen showed up, he dragged his cursor towards King's Arena icon.
The client launched, and Li Shenyang waited for it to enter the login screen as per usual but instead, he received a notification.
[Error: Could not connect to the server at this time]
"Huh?" Li Shenyang was surprised and the first thing he checked was if his laptop is already connected to the internet. Seeing that it was, his second step was to check if the internet was working. He opened a video streaming platform and the site loaded up well. He even chose one stream video to check on the speed, which he found to be of no problem. "Let's try it again," Li Shenyang mumbled to himself as he launched King's Arena client once more.
[Error: Could not connect to the server at this time]
The error prompt popped up once more, making Li Shenyang frown. He tried it for the third time, only to get the same result. "What the hell… are they having a maintenance update?" Li Shenyang wondered as he went to the game's official website. The result was, he couldn't access the game's site even after refreshing several times. In the end, Li Shenyang took out his phone to check on his social media. Sure enough, he finally found out the reason why.
"What the fuck?!" Li Shenyang cursed out loud, making the rest of the students turn their head towards him. "Ah, I'm sorry…" he said with an apologetic expression. He returned to check his phone and began to read the one article that was posted.
"Alphacom, the parent company of Moonweb Games, was recently caught embezzling and is also charged for tax evasion. Alphacom was forced to stop all of their production and Moonweb Games studio was also forced to shut down their game, King's Arena…"
Li Shenyang didn't bother to read the rest of the article and he quickly closed it. The article was released 3 hours ago, which was at 7:30 AM. He moved to another article which was recently released.
"King's Arena was forcefully shut down by the authority. Both game server and website are no longer working. Players will no longer be able to play…"
Li Shenyang continued to stare at his phone screen with a blank expression. He has spent his money on the game ever since he started a year ago, and if it was totalled together, it would amount to a six-digit number. He suddenly felt like he had thrown his money down the drain.
"Yangyang, what are you looking at that makes you look so… dead?" Li Shenyang's deskmate can no longer suppress his curiosity and quickly leaned over to glance at Li Shenyang's phone. "King's Arena was shut down?! Wait, let me read it!"
As he said this, he took Li Shenyang's phone and began to read the article. Li Shenyang noticed that his phone was taken away, just frowned at his desk mate. Then his eyes rested on the desk mate's fingers which were stained with oils from a cheese cracker that was laid on the table beside the other. "Jiang Jiahao you bastard! Have you wiped your hand before touching my phone?!" Li Shenyang quickly snatched back his phone and saw that it was stained with oils. Feeling slightly disgusted, he quickly took out a tissue and wiped it clean.
"So does that mean we can no longer play King's Arena?" Jiang Jiahao asked Li Shenyang, ignoring the other's glare. They were friends since high school so Jiang Jiahao is already used to Li Shenyang's attitude.
"Don't remind me, ah! That was the only game that I enjoy and now, it is gone… I even promised to play with someone good last night but now…" Li Shenyang let out a heavy sigh. "If I had known class was cancelled and this would happen, I would've played more last night!"
Jiang Jiahao just pats Li Shenyang's shoulder only to have his hands slapped away. "Wipe your hand first, ba!" as he said this, Li Shenyang quickly threw a pack of tissue for Jiang Jiahao.
"I'm sorry. Here, I'll wipe it," Jiang Jiahao just let out a burst of small laughter as he took the tissue and wiped his hands clean. "Anyway, I don't think you need to be this depressed. It was just a game. Just find a new one to play with," Jiang Jiahao said in a lighthearted manner.
"Easy for you to say…" Li Shenyang mumbled as he stared at his laptop. He opened up his game folder and stared at the game lists. Unfortunately, nothing caught his interest so he quickly shuts the laptop down. "This weekend… I'm going to be so lost with nothing to do…"
"Don't say like that, ah! Since you can't play King's Arena anymore, how about join me in Battleground?" Jiang Jiahao tried to cheer his friend up. "We can play duo and rank up together!"
Battleground is an online battle survival game. Players will be brought into a map where they will have to jump down from the plane and then loot for weapons, armours and medical items. But Li Shenyang didn't like the game very much. The reason was simple, he was very bad at it. His aims were always off, and he couldn't differentiate between the gun sounds. Not only that, he can't even hear where the sound came from properly.
"I'll pass. You know I will just die few seconds after landing," Li Shenyang replied.
"What if I bring someone to carry us?" Jiang Jiahao suggested.
"Still a no. I want to play a game, not spectate a game after dying," Li Shenyang grumbled.
After that, Jiang Jiahao didn't say anything else and they returned to whatever they were doing with the exception of Li Shenyang. With nothing else to do, Li Shenyang just opened a reading website and began to read his novels.
Few days passed and it was taking its toll on Li Shenyang. It was as if he was having withdrawal symptoms similar to the drug addicts. Jiang Jiahao who saw this can't help but feel distressed for his friend.
"Dude, it's just one game. Do you have to be this way?" Jiang Jiahao asked.
"Huh? Oh, its just Haohao…" Li Shenyang didn't seem to register what he was saying and just opened his book.
Seeing the lack of reaction, Jiang Jiahao simply took out his phone and then showed the content to Li Shenyang. "Yangyang, ah! Come see this! It's a new game releasing this weekend. How about it? Why not give it a try?" Jiang Jiahao introduced the game to him. "See, they also have PVP. What's more, the company planned to make a professional league for the game next year. Don't you always say you want to try to be in a professional league even for a day? Maybe we can make our own team and register!"
Li Shenyang heard what Jiang Jiahao said and took the phone to look at the game information. He only read it shortly before handing it back to Jiang Jiahao. "It's an MMORPG… you know I don't like that kind of game since its very grindy," Li Shenyang told Jiang Jiahao. "Doing quests every day, killing monster… there's no fun to it."
"Oh, but you can also gain experience from doing arena battle," Jiang Jiahao replied and Li Shenyang's ear perked up.
"Not only that… if the disparity between you and your opponent's level is huge, you will gain bonus experience if you can kill them," Jiang Jiahao added. "Also, they have a bounty system. If you managed to kill a red-named player in an open map, you will not only gain fame value, you will also get gold, experience and random equipment drop from said player."
By now, Li Shenyang already has a slight interest in the game. He took out his laptop and went to the game's official website. The game title, 'Lord of Supreme Immortal' was plastered on the top of the webpage. There are several tabs underneath it and Li Shenyang quickly navigated to the world setting of the game.
The game was set in a cultivation world called 'Xuhuan' and there are two factions in the game, demonic faction and righteous faction. There are also several classes, which is further separated by schools or also known as sects. Li Shenyang continued to read until he reached the part where the battle mechanic was explained. "Oh, so the battle mechanic is different from your typical MMORPG. A properly timed hit can land higher damage than simply spamming it. Skills can be combined to create another skill combo… this is interesting," Li Shenyang murmured to himself.
Next, he went to the PVP section which initially caught his interest. "So when you killed red-named players in the open field, you gain 30% of the total experience that the players have accumulated so far… then at higher levels, doesn't that mean you will receive a lot of experience just from killing a player?" Li Shenyang turned his head to ask Jiang Jiahao. "Won't players take advantage of that? For example, teaming up with a low levelled account to kill a red-named player to quickly raise the level of that low levelled account… It may even become business where people make money out of this loopholes."
"That's true… and the game company haven't addressed this, right? How about you send the suggestion to the game developer?"
"Too lazy," came Li Shenyang's short reply. "I'm sure those game developer also noticed of this loopholes already. We'll find out how they deal with it once the game is released."
"So, are you going to play the game?" Jiang Jiahao asked.
"En. I may as well give it a try since I have nothing to do."