The rumours were flying all around. Each more bizzare than the previous one.
Meanwhile, there were lots of meetings. The guilds requested more investment. The investors tried to grab more of guild shares when the guilds were feeling desperate.
The so called gift crates may not be useful, much, to Indies. But to guilds, it was heaven sent blessing. The amount of coins they had spent in less than ten days of game launch would send the independent players into stratosphere.
Here, finally, the game had given the guilds the option to spend less coins and get more game resources. This was the only way to save coins till coin to credit conversion happened. Guilds made money but they are money too. And the game coins can't be used willy nilly. When the game progresses enough to buy lands or open shops, they have to pay the game in coins. Better to start hoarding them now. There was some whisper about auction houses. Those were coin drainers. So guilds decided to use this heaven sent opportunity to save coins.
They just had to ask their players to choose the highest level of gift crates and pay the price for them. (Guilds will pay the player. Player will purchase. Player will hand back the items received in the gift crate.) This however brought the need to inject even more cash into game quite fast.
Also, this was a window that allowed light of greed enter players' heart. The guilds may have to shell out some extras to use those resources in the gift crates. The guilds could sweep in indies' gift crates too.
Get money. Grab more money. All sorts of investors crawled out of woods smelling a money making business.
It was curious that Artharva did not realise that he will not have any business in few days. Probably forever. If all guilds can get the resources needed for them through gift crates, why should they even talk to Artha, a snotty trader? He would lose his usefulness. If angered, they might just kill him till he gets feds up and start a new account.
As the news percolated, many people came onboard to explain what it would mean to the players, the public opinion went in different direction. Now all were standing in queue, to preorder.
The power of media at its finest. No one talked about the actual subscription fee. How low or how high would it be. No one talked about that they are literally turning into relay stations if they agree to purchase the gift crates with someone else's money and hand over the the items within them. How much would a small relay station can earn? That too in each transaction? What will happen when market gets saturated and the demand for the resources within those crates come down? After than few alarmists and conspiracy theory makers, no one talked about them.
Why keep harping about the sad life? Talk about the beauty in it, however fleeting it might turn out to be. Talk about what you want that than what is needed.
Thanks to the new plan, lots of tiny little workshop would spring up, filled with family members and relatives, marching on under single company name. To make money together. They shall play together, earn together and continue to bicker futher inside the game too. But that would happen later. After all, not all the members of the family now had VR gears compatible with the game
Atharva dived into forums, to see red hot news, breaking news, click bait titles filling the pages. Nearly all of them talking about gift crates. The guilds opened up new portion dedicated to accept the gift crates items in lieu of credits. To make it more authentic, few even set up the limits. They would accept xx number of this tier and this grade gift crates, yy amount of gift crates of that tier and grade and so on.
The middlemen lined up sheeps to hustle up and make money in between the transactions. The initial sheeps- their employees, friends and relatives. The circle would slowly expand.
The power a single game help over human population was becoming evident. A single statement. The whole world is in uproar. Thank goodness that this world is run by businessmen not politicians. The game would have been banned for sure if it were so.
The above statement is slightly incorrect. There is obviously a government, lots of people working in it. But policy makers are just yes men for few key businessmen. Why only few businessmen dabbled in politics? It's closed club. They don't want to share the power. They come from long line of businessmen who always choose making money a long term project, with lots of dividends.
Any why would some poor snuck with millions of credits as education loan would know that? It's called know your enemies. More than 90% students from Saint Augustine have enough credits to drown Atharva . Their personal money or pocket money. So, needless to say, all of them were rich. To various extents.
As Atharva didn't want to mess up his life and his family's, he had to know whom to stay clear of. When mamoths fight, grass suffers. So one of the rules he followed through out his college life, never be the grass.
Soon it was time. Atharva was doing another experiment. He wasted some time to put in his details to play the game, temporarily in one of the pods in the hotel suite. Let's see for ourselves what is this hype about playing in pods.
It took some time to set it up. Then log in. A brief pause at VR lobby. No time to waste, the game is loading. Enter to game.
And it's a mess. As he changed into cleaner costume and did the clean up, all he could here was gift crates, gift crates and even more gift crates.
The players didn't forget the prizes of the present while having big talks of prizes of the future. They chatted, make tentative teams while replenishing the supplies before rushing to to conquer the dungeons.
Today is a good day, Artha thought because, he finally got something to show off from his apprentice cook job.