6/2
Auriel crossed her arms, and the world paused around the three game masters. "Alright, this had better be good. We have NPCs patching into the network directly."
The gnome made a dismissive gesture. "It's not that bad. All they've done is spoof an account as a player character."
The human shrugged. "Still a pretty major bug. We should probably nip it in the bud. How are we going to maintain continuity? Rewind?"
Silas smiled. "My dear Ghostwalker, you're thinking too small. What you call a bug, I call emergent gameplay. I say we just wait and see."
Auriel cocked her head. "There is no way that's the intended experience; this is a low intensity solo PVE world."
"Yeah and he's been doing that for a month and a half and he's a world power. What, exactly, are we going to learn by letting things continue as they have? That he likes dragon pussy and doesn't like murder? We might as well end the beta right now if we don't throw in anything to shake things up."
Ghostwalker sighed. "You sure you're not just salty about him cheesing your weird serial killer quest?"
"That was bullshit and you know it! Not every exploit and exception to the rules can go his way! I signed off on the resurrection thing, but seriously. He wouldn't last five minutes in Prehevil."
"That's because Prehevil is a setting for fucking masochists, Silas." Auriel groaned. "Just because you had to beta test a survival horror setting doesn't mean everyone needs to have a hard time. We are aiming for power fantasy here."
"Eh, I kinda see his point though." The blue hooded man scratched at his short beard thoughtfully. "The intranet is a closed system. It's not like they can do anything we can't undo. Hell, we aren't even properly hooked into the multiverse at the moment. If we let them run rampant, we get a worst case scenario to study in a controlled environment. Everything here is getting repurposed once we decide we've learned everything we can."
The spirit healer pouted at that. "Alright. So I'm outvoted. But I'm not going down if this goes poorly. I'm keeping track of everything the old gods do from now on, and if they touch anything beyond player tools, I'm shutting it down."
"Pause and bring it to us first. Like Ghostwalker said; we are on a closed system. Let's see where they go with it."
••••••••••
As it turns out, Raid instances actually do need a full group of forty people with diverse andcomplementary skill sets to have a chance of serious victory. We were able to beat back the invading horde, but once we were in their territory, it turned out that they hadn't been going all in.
We weren't entirely immune to fire as it turns out, but the resistance was enough to make the normal fire elementals a joke as long as we had healing on hand. Anything dumb enough to try to overpower our fire resistance with more fire was easy to deal with, but the molten giants and snakemen, called flamewakers, that made up a lot of the upper echelons of Ragnaros's command structure are a little bit more adaptable than that. The flamewakers in particular were quick to change tactics to crippling my troops with curses and other shadow magic.
My Royal Guards all used defensive stance as their go to; bringing 40 tanks into a fight is great if all they need is to hold the line against beings of somewhat comparable size, but a magma giant could just sweep them out of the way in his path to softer targets, as long as he was willing to accept some abuse against his ankles. I'd been using them to fight things they largely outclassed, and the weaknesses of the formation hadn't been clear until now. They were trained to protect their king, not punch holes in the enemy line.
Varian was the only person I had here who had a true taunt ability, and he could only lock down one enemy at a time. I quickly determined that I wasn't going to be able to improvise an assault on the Molten Core with an army of offensively anemic off tanks supported by a melee heavy team of elites. They'd definitely be useful for the real attack, but I wasn't going to get stuck in when I was already seeing the flaws in my strategy. My team retreated back to the tunnel for now. I, on the other hand, decided to do some scouting.
Blink, combined with a basic level of stealth, was more than enough for me to bounce around in the Molten Core and get a general idea of the layout. It formed a loose spiral pattern of caves with many side passages, each of which was occupied by at least one rather powerful seeming entity and their entourage. It seemed cramped; if I remembered correctly, Ragnaros was in a substantially weakened state. It's entirely possible that all of these elementals were only outside of the Firelands to protect him and facilitate his rebirth. I'd even be willing to bet that's why he agreed to play nice with the Dark Irons; they would serve as an extra layer of defense, but he didn't have any real affection for them.
I absolutely could not engage any of the beings in the core one on one. When I was caught off guard I unloaded on one with a fully charged Archaeus strike; the big obsidian elemental was staggered, but was already recovered enough to take another swing at me by the time I blinked away. Gina or Varian could probably take just about anything here in a one on one duel and I'm sure Aegwynn could take two or three Magma Giants without much trouble, but they weren't lining up for sabers at high noon and there were a lot more than twenty giants to fight.
My only saving grace would probably be that these elementals weren't streaming through en masse. Ragnaros has been here for over a century, and while he had a few hundred elementals guarding him and a decent number of agents in the city above and on the surface, he hadn't raised an infinite legion to overrun the world yet. Each one of his elementals would be worth three or four of my royal guards, at least, without the type advantage, but replacing them would be hard for the Firelord. I, on the other hand, had a marvelous party scheduled for tonight with the collected archdruids of Azeroth, a red leather clad resurrection specialist, and was very good at making new friends.
I realized with a shock that I really was at the point where grinding down Ragnaros would be an inevitability. The only reasons I was pressed were that I had a profitable mission to complete and I didn't want a city full of xenophobic nationalists to get further brutalized. Which I really didn't, despite that description. I can be realistic about their national character without being ok with their civilians getting a raw deal. By the light, I'm in the middle of reforming the Scarlet Crusade!
For now, the Dark Irons were under siege. This was going to be a total war, and in all likelihood they were cut off from most outside resources. Yeesh. This was… an opportunity.
I opened my amulet's communication channel and listened to the tail end of a speech about reclaiming Dark Iron pride, beating back the invaders, and putting down the disloyal. Once I was sure I wasn't interrupting, I chimed in. "Emperor. I have secured the tunnel to the Molten Core for now, but I don't think I can strike back effectively on such short notice. I don't have the authority to fully deploy everyone I have at my disposal unless you agree to join the Alliance, though if you would prefer I could also get you in contact with representatives from the Horde and get you some assistance through them. Our organization is technically neutral, but stretched thin."
"The Horde, eh? That'd tweak Magni's nose, wouldn't it? You sure you can manage it? I'll need to break the siege by the end of the month or start rationing and living off of conjured food and water."
"I assure you, Emperor, that the New Horde has nothing but contempt for the Blackrock Clan. If you join, there are many who would be only too happy to fund your war effort if you are willing to respond in kind."
This certainly wasn't ideal, but I could probably play both sides on this one. If my retinue served as a middleman for enough food to feed a city and enough treasure and finished goods to pay for it, I think this may work out quite well for me. I didn't get this far with raw power. I got raw power by taking advantage of opportunities.