Compared to talk of the day with Sama, the call with his brothers took very less time. One was ready to snooze, so he was half out of mind. The other was running behind the schedule, so scrambling everywhere and no interest in some maybe bonus.
Was he happy that his younger brother handled such a big deal? Yes, he was. But right now, his as* was on the line. Pardon him on thinking of saving his sorry self first. Call him again when that cold hard credit is in hand. Then maybe he'll be really happy. He had seen too many cases where broth had fallen from spoon even when it was very near to mouth.
Thus the saga of Atharva sharing his windfall and turning into a millionaire ended. With no one believing or believing incorrectly or not listening properly at all. Was Atharva sad at this state of affairs? Not really. Even he felt it was a dream, though he had checked the bank account ten times already.
Now all he had to do was to prepare enough items to fulfill the contract and he would become a bona fide millionaire in three days.
All he was lacking right now were XP. It seemed he was always thinking about this point, repeatedly, endlessly. It was a torture but unless he found a better method, this torture would continue.
He read news, posts in forums, even saw few interviews. As a complete newcomer, he noticed few things.
Majority of the players right now were independent players. However, there was a strict hierarchy among them too. The most basic.one and practically zero step would be noobs and novices like Atharva. They had never played before, so information has to be spoonfed to them. And many a times such spoon feeding costed money. Yet, the detailed guides were all paid posts. You pay and you read or listen or ask to get the answers. So the posts catering to noobs and novices were numerous and obviously majority of them were locked.
The next step, a bit better than noobs and novices were relaxed and once a while players. The would treat themselves to games once a while , so they may or maynot splurge within the game. So many pay-to-win sort of items were aimed at these type of players.
Next type was dedicated casual players. They played to unwind. They would play regularly but for very limited time. They would form groups and cliches based on temperament or even on free time available. They never cared about their levels and never thought of using shortcuts like pay to win items. These were the most boring type of players however Guilds paid attention to them too. These people were best mouth to mouth advertisement.
These people worked as free labour for advertising. Want to show off your guild's player? Just exaggerate and show some details to few of these players. Within 2 days, even more exaggerated tale would be in trend within the game. Moreover, these players would become passby fans of actual events held in real life and this netted even more profit. The clubs or consortiums backing the guilds would be even more happy for this.
And then, there was another type of players. Enthusiastic gamers. Their life isn't complete without games. They cheered for their game idols, attended offline matches, promoted their favourites, purchased collectibles, and played cheerfully. A bunch of them had even turned into mindless fans. Another bunch liked a player from one team, but liked another team in total and maybe wanted to join some other guild. This bunch was most rationale one. Still the clubs preferred former type of enthusiastic players.
Then there was another group. Sometimes they were part of enthusiastic players, sometimes not. The main distinguishing feature was that they cared about their levels, they wanted to better themselves whether it was PvP or PvE. Guilds kept an eye on them because they could become members of the guild, even reserve elites.
Another peculiar group was pay to win players. They wanted to show off. They may or maynot have followers within the game but their social network accounts had lots of them. They might spend thousands to millions of credits and not break a sweat. You could throw despots and flexors to this mix too as they spent lavishly within the game just to stroke their ego.
There was another major group which was never mentioned openly, who had least footprint in the game forums- the grunts, the sweepers. They were players bound to workshops or money farming teams. They worked within the game, doing whatever the employer wanted. They didn't play because they wanted to play but because they had to. Their items were of lowest grade, their levels often less than the general standard and they didn't spend any money within the game. The gaming company knew, the clubs, the consortiums, the guilds, workshops, teams all knew but didn't acknowledge this group at all.
After all, their game life was decided by someone else. They were in the game to gather resources, work as porters, or die as cannon fodders.
Atharva had burning sensation in his chest when he thought of poor grunts. Was working inside the game was so shameless, unworthy of even simple pity? Was it even more degrading than those working in sanitary fields or in housekeeping? Just why did everyone behave as if one falls to that level, then one is not to be considered human? If it was so abbhorent, why were they even recruiting and paying these people to do such demeaning work?
It took some time to cool off. He didn't realise but whenever the matter regarding those grunts or sweepers came up, he would suffer. As if he had suffered as a grunt. As if the people and the society had spat on him and thrown him into garbage. It was not a good feeling. However, he was not in a position to do anything but to swallow the disturbing feeling and move on.