After the announcement that Federation troops had landed on Era, the Horus forums were filled with excitement.
Most players considered the Federation's actions to be unjust and idiotic, considering that they'd caused the game to change completely and the real-world value of GC to plummet. Somehow, the mindset of players quickly shifted from blaming the developers to purely hating the Federation.
Within only a few minutes, a handful of anti-Federation hashtags circulated online.
#DieFederation
#RevengeNuke
#NoMoreForEver
Of course, the biggest guilds who had been profiting off Era's cities lost out the most. The nuclear bombing, considering how much income had been generated from taxing NPCs, had literally atomized their business model!
However, the decision of which side these guilds should support in the war was a complicated one.
After all, the Federation clearly had far superior firepower compared to the players. It seemed entirely possible that the Federation could keep the players stunlocked, constantly dying and respawning on Era with no possibility of doing anything in retaliation.
Since the first-rate guilds and SuperGuilds had to report to their shareholders, their situation was extremely complicated.
In the end, most of the biggest guilds declared neutrality in the war. Instead of diverting resources to supporting the Federation or to siding with their fellow players, they simply tried to cushion the financial loss by focusing on Dungeons and quests—but this was difficult since most non-Dungeon quests were impossible to complete without native NPCs alive, and most of those were now dead. Even still, it seemed that a PvE focus would surely be profitable in the long run.
As an emergency measure, guilds began directing their members not to attack the few remaining peaceful NPCs on Era, those who hadn't been living in the major urban centers which were obliterated by the nuclear strike. It didn't seem worth it to risk another war like the one they'd just gotten themselves into, one which had, in a few moments, reduced most of their earnings to ashes.
Moreover, the guilds realized that, if they wanted any future success in Horus, they needed to restore the reputation of the Eternals! It simply wouldn't do anyone any good to walk around with the label of "genocidal" slapped onto them!
Counter to the decisions of the bigger guilds, many smaller and independent guilds came to a different decision. They agreed that it was necessary to respond to the unforgivable Federation aggression with an attack of their own.! This part of the community quickly came up with a name for their new initiative: "The Great Riposte!"
But these were not the only two mindsets, of course.
While the biggest guilds stayed neutral and many smaller guilds planned an all-out war against the Federation, there were many individual players who actually decided to join the Federation.
For many players, this was the perfect opportunity! The Federation would allow them to challenge the tyrannical guilds who had asked a hundred things from them without giving much in return! In addition, this was the first opportunity to interact with the vast world of Horus which the developers and advertising had promised.
This third camp was Apophis's own choice.. He'd decided from the moment that he returned to this new life that the most logical option was to side with the Federation and oppose the Eternals at this time.
In his old life, the Eternals had put up pathetically little resistance to the Federation at this stage of the game. Slaughtering the pacifistic Tyottings was one thing, but the Federation was something completely different.
Unlike the people of the Republic of Tyo, the Federation was neither peaceful nor underdeveloped. They possessed a state-of-the-art professional military, equipped with modern weapons and trained for stellar combat.
And, when one thought about it, the difference in technology was obvious! The Tyottings were not only peaceful—and so didn't focus on developing advanced weapons—but their technological level wasn't very high compared to most of the galaxy.
At the beginning, the players were limited to whatever technology they could get their hands on, and Planet Era had little to offer. Things would change quickly for those who could access Federation technology.
In Apophis's old life, the galaxy had been divided into five technological stages.
First: Civilizations which had not yet achieved interstellar travel. The Republic of Tyo was a good example.
Second: Civilizations who had achieved light-speed travel, but had not yet surpassed it. This allowed them to reach nearby systems in a matter of only a few years, rather than the tens of thousands it would take at conventional speeds.
Third: Civilizations who had achieved Subliminal Speed, the technology which let them travel from a point to another in the same sector of the galaxy in a brief time. The United Federation of Planets had achieved this stage at this time.
Fourth: Civilizations who had mastered the use of wormholes, letting them travel anywhere at will. These immense interstellar empires were made up of tens to hundreds of thousands of solar systems! The fallen Zetark Empire was a perfect example.
Fifth: This level was strictly theoretical in Apophis's old life. Fifth-stage civilizations were theorized to be able to travel from one galaxy to another, but as of his return to the past, no technology had been discovered that would make this possible!
Of course, technological level didn't merely describe how much freedom of movement a civilization had. It was merely a standard which described levels of advancement in many sociological areas, such as military, society, architecture, and broader culture.
In general, this technological level was a shorthand for one particular quality:
Threat level.
At this time, Apophis knew, the Federation's threat level was considerably higher than that of the players who sought to resist them. Though other players had an idea that the Federation was powerful, only Apophis knew exactly what lay in store for those who opposed them.