Operation Heathrow

Chapter 13: Chaotic Deconfinment

In Perseria, on Saturday (players' world time), because the city council decided to increase patrols on the main roads leading to the city, as well as reinforce outposts' garrisons, they had no choice but to loosen the lockdown in the city because of a lack of manpower. Visitors to the city, who can now venture beyond the marketplace and haunted parks, would find heads on pikes at the main entrances to the city, as well as on the city's main streets. However, as the grip loosened, the city's residents still feel like some griefs went unaddressed. As an angry mob marches on the city hall, with ghosts watching their every move:

"Down with the ghosts!" an angry protester shouts while a few others distract the ghost packs.

Elsewhere in the city, riots are erupting, especially around the "haunted routes" of Lower and Upper Perseria, whom the residents perceive as the symbols of the city's ineptitude. Of its failure to control the ghosts, and the torments they inflict upon the population.

Back in Jutudiel's camp, her rebel cell, filled with rogues and other elements who fell on hard times, realizes time is short to act. Monseigneur changed cells for this occasion.

"The city is on fire, we must get to the sewers, now!" Jutudiel hollers, before turning invisible and leaving the camp with her cell.

Karine didn't take me to Perseria since I warned Karine not to go there, a little over a week ago. I warned her about the consequences of doing so, but perhaps I can use these consequences to the advantage of the rebels. I cast holy flare on a tower top, then fall back with guards on my back, and celebrate high mass later, Monseigneur ruminates while she approaches the city's main gate.

Then another player, who's taking a character new to max level into Lower Perseria, finds himself caught in the crossfire:

"When I ran this place last week, there wasn't any trash; now, mobs are breaking windows and burning buildings down!" the player tells his guildies about what has changed since his last run of the dungeon.

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As that player submits a support ticket, the manufacturer starts realizing that bugs have vastly increased in variety over the past two weeks, most of these being non-reproducible. First from Karine, and then from other players...

The manufacturer's QA and CS teams then hold a meeting with the engineering team as well as the game's management.

"What's happening? It seems like the number of bugs we can't reproduce has increased to the point we might need to re-code the game from scratch!" the QA lead shouts.

"After over a week of the Perseria dungeons being trash-free, we have reports of players seeing trash in Lower Perseria, and of that dungeon's background assets being vandalized by NPCs!" the CS lead rants.

"Dungeon background assets aren't supposed to be vandalizable by NPCs!" the game's chief engineer retorts, while he keeps ranting. "Add to that demon corpses being thrown into the river, sleep deprivation debuffs on adds that are absent from the code, and this happened in a single-boss dungeon that hasn't been released yet!"

"Do you have any idea of what re-coding the game would imply? The things people loved about MAA before these bugs began were mostly about the following: character creation, fashion and housing, and how you can interact with content without necessarily having to grind for it!" the manufacturer's CEO is taken aback by the suggestion of his staff to deal with the rash in bugs. "However, I don't think everything is lost. We can have the character creator, housing creator, music and outfits carry over"

"If you feel like re-coding the game is necessary, or even create a new one with assets reused from MAA, how can we ensure that we won't be exploiting the new world's residents?" the CS lead asks the QA lead.