Birthday thread: MMO Stories

[Twittlebug]

Happy be-lated Birthday, Ross!

 

My submission falls under, "I'm breaking the game and scaring the devs".

 

The game is, Marvel Heroes 2015, an MMORPG based on the Marvel comics.

 

The "breaking" happens within the zone called, SHIELD solo-sim. You just fight wave after wave, gaining gear, unlocking achievements, and proving you're a badass. However, it's programed to randomly insert sims you can't win. Basically, teaching the player you can't always win and dishing out a harsh sense of reality.

 

Built similar to the fabled sim in Star Trek, like Kirk, you need to "think around" the program.

 

Knowing your abilities/powers, or through sheer dumb luck, you can push through the impossible sims and win. No big deal, right? Now, keeping pushing through and winning and watch the game lose its mind!

Mobs start to freeze so they're easier to kill, chests release fountains of gear, the dialogue appears scrambled, etc. I was able to push the sim until the game crashed!

 

Supposedly, the devs know about this but nothing has been done. I doubt that they do, or this would have been patched out long ago.

 

For now, I'm happily collecting the best gear in the game until it crashes ;D

[BTGBullseye]

Knowing your abilities/powers, or through sheer dumb luck, you can push through the impossible sims and win. No big deal, right? Now, keeping pushing through and winning and watch the game lose its mind!

Mobs start to freeze so they're easier to kill, chests release fountains of gear, the dialogue appears scrambled, etc. I was able to push the sim until the game crashed!

 

Supposedly, the devs know about this but nothing has been done. I doubt that they do, or this would have been patched out long ago.

 

For now, I'm happily collecting the best gear in the game until it crashes ;D

They're happy to let people become Deadpool.

[MrWankman]

This one is a very fucking funny reading of an event that happened one round in Space Station 13 this guy played in. It's short but great.

I also hope hope some of you motherfuckers here would think the game is interesting enough to play as it's population per day is barely around 300 people on a good day. If not, enjoy this and the bonus below. If so, then I personally recommend Hippie Station as the server of choice if you want some nice retarded action.

 

 

BONUS: For those of you who can't get enough of this man's silky voice I'm sad to say there's only one other reading on his soundcloud account as of writing this, so unless you want to hear all his 10 second to 3 minute soundbites of him doing various characters and voices here's another story but for a tabletop rpg instead.

[SmiteSmithy]

Hey Ross, I think I've got something that flies under the flag of a "...determined and motivated psycho."

 

A good couple of years ago my friend and I played an MMO by the name of RuneScape. It's currently suffered a somewhat painful fall from grace among its most dedicated players, but still stands as THE free MMO; at least, one you can play in your browser at work all day. The game had developed some powerful clans shortly after the official introduction of the clan system. My friend and I were still in high school at the time and given our extremely lazy scheduling that year, had ample time to pour into the game. We decided to try and join a clan, seeing as we could do a lot together, but the recently added "Clan Wars" game was completely blocked off in certain ways to groups without high numbers. To say nothing of the benefits of working as a massive clean-up crew. Hell, even the basic level bone drops were useful to a noob back then.

 

So we joined up with a mid-ladder, so-so clan.

 

This is the point at which everything starts to lean downhill.

 

The clan members were alright people, a couple of jerks, couple of good guys, some people who took looting a little too seriously, some people who just hopped on every once in a while when they felt like it- the usual mix of people in an MMO. The Clan Leader and his Stooges were something altogether different. He didn't request, he demanded the members of his clan use the "Bow" emote whenever he walked by them. His Stooges would take "tithes" from the lowest members of the clan, usually the newest recruits. Those that refused were immediately wiped clean from the clan listings and were forced to move on. You wouldn't think that'd be such a big deal, right? Everybody would move on to another clan and forget this asshole the second this started.

 

Turns out he had discovered an incredible system for multi-way stakes combat in the PvP area. He'd actually wager the literal maximum amount of in-game currency on his clan being able to kill and defeat the enemy clan in the PvP areas. He ran a private forum for the upper rungs on the ladder of RuneScape clans, and even had some of the Mods in on it too. When the money pot was completely full, extremely high value items, consumables, and other commodities got tossed into the pot. However, the group-oriented combat style the Clan Leader and his Stooges operated on hinged on complete obedience. It was a work of true mastery if I've ever seen it, an understanding of player intelligence that is forged only through multiple years of constant play.

 

Essentially the first phase of the fight would go down like this:

- the mages would all freeze the rangers, warriors, and other mages in combat if they could, to keep the fight from getting out of hand

- the rangers would pick off the mages if they could, to keep them from retaliating effectively

- the warriors would stomp up and cut the enemy rangers to ribbons, if they could manage to avoid getting frozen

 

So you'd think, "Duh, of course. Everybody knows that basic crap, easy unit tactics." You're totally right. But at this point the Clan Leader's genius shone through.

 

He'd purposefully keep some clan members underleveled before combat. On top of that, he'd give those clan members some of the mid-tier expensive items to hold in their inventories. This sly bastard had figured out that the greediest of the enemy would be sprinting at the front, and eager to pick up any so-so loot that dropped the second it dropped. He'd let the underleveled fodder take the first wave of damage to engage the second phase:

 

- unoccupied mages, warriors and rangers focus down those moving towards the corpse of the friendly clan member

- those on the opposing side of the battle would consume whatever extra potions they had, fire up their buffs, and do as much damage as they could

- the front line on both sides shifts so that the warriors must stand in front of the rangers, then the mages at the back

 

Every clan member death was a calculated move in this mad man's chess game. He wanted to wipe out the more aggressive and powerful enemy players to chance fleeing on the enemy side. Every item dropped was accounted for in a book we never got to see. He kept the clan at mid-tier because it brought less attention to the clan, allowed easy entry to fresh mid-level recruits, and kept the richer higher-level players from attempted to steal his spotlight or steal clan members from him. He got fresh blood, fresh gold, fresh recruits, and stayed exactly where he wanted. You could call it strategic racketeering, except it wasn't against any black-and-white rules at the time.

 

However, the Stooges were relentless in their pursuit of honoring their Leader. They'd actually pressured him enough to ensure that Roleplay was mandatory, not a fun thing. If you wanted to talk to them, you'd have to hire somebody to pretend to be a messenger, to walk to another room, trade them a piece of parchment, then Private Message the Stooge regarding whatever it is you wanted to speak about. The Stooge would either agree or decline, with some delightfully snarky elitist response. Members got very tired of this but over time it became tolerable.

 

Where do my friend and I come in? Right about here.

 

We were so completely fed up with this taxing, demanding behavior. Were we in the right to be fed up? Probably. Should we just have left the clan entirely instead of strike out against the tyranny we faced? More than likely. Did we do the former? Oh hell no, we chose the latter. We were high school students with too much time and a new reason to spend it. And spend it we did.

 

We would stay up late and wake up early solely to train our accounts. School became a barebones thought- we'd go through the motions but it lacked any attention anymore, we became totally CONSUMED with the idea of teaching those bastards they couldn't do whatever they wanted and have everybody else pay the price for it. Weekends were spent entirely in our rooms as we poured hour after hour into leveling. My friend almost had to go to a doctor for the pain in his hand, but I convinced him to switch hands instead. We physically timed experience-farming methods for the objectively fastest ways to level up; damn whatever forum posts swore were the fastest ways to get experience. It came to the point at which we debated while playing the significance for half a second, and had to call up another mutual friend on Skype to do the math as to whether or not it'd be worth it to spend the time moving to the new area, to save that half a second per experience gain.

 

All the while maintaining the best cover we could, and attempting to get on the good side of the Stooges while we could stomach it. "Yes my liege!" was one of their favorites, and we made sure to pour on the sugar should they stroll around our corner of the fight. Still on the clan list, still attending, still fighting.

 

Eventually it came time to prove what we were worth. We had built up our characters to such a degree that they were adept at all three methods of combat; melee ranged and magic. Obviously it's difficult to use all three at once without significant time spent switching combat styles, but we thought it better to cover all bases than sit idly by and underestimate our enemy. In order to keep away any suspicious questions as to just how fast we rose in levels, we would merely state that we were on vacation at the moment, and had nothing better to do, or were recently fired or something; any excuse to change the subject or get them off our backs. We were about as nonchalant as two teenage boys on the internet are capable of being, but we weren't found out.

 

The day came when the pot was huge. Full stack of maximum gold, top tier everything. If it was cheap, there was a lot of it. If it was expensive, it was there. This completely compounded all of the problems and risks the clan would face normally in battle. Every single death would have to have HUGE cash or items/gear on them to make the kill worth diving for. Only the highest of the highest loot, only the grandest weapon, only the most spectacular gold would do. The clan couldn't afford to bait any more deaths than they could possibly manage to even the odds between them and the enemy. Even so it would be incredibly risky.

 

My friend and I immediately hush on Skype as we're briefed on the battle: this was our moment, the time that we'd waited so long for. The Clan Leader and his Stooges made sure to state that today no mistakes would be allowed in battle. This one was for real, the stakes were high, and our standing as a clan would hinge on our performance today. Stragglers and deserters would be removed and banned from the clan the moment they faltered; no explanations, no appeals, nothing. You fuck up, you're done. And, those that succeeded would be rewarded with ample spoils; even the lowliest of the recruits would get a fat wad of cash to throw around this time.

 

Their warnings fell on two sets of deaf ears. Hearts pounding, minds racing, mouths anxiously babbling over Skype, we followed our clan into battle. It commences.

 

But this time? We do things a little bit differently. Today, we chose to do something that nobody had foreseen. We turned.

 

Our first targets were the Mages that didn't use their freezing spell yet. We spec'd them; a "spec" is to use the special ability of your weapon in combination with your extremely high stats to one-shot your opponent. We spec the two closest Mages. Then, we immediately turn to the two closest Rangers and shred them to bits as well. By this time the Clan Leader and Stooges fully caught on. The Clan chat was ablaze with panicked messages, WHAT ARE THEY DOING???!!! and the like. In an instant my friend and I bolted for the hills. As the battle faded from our field of vision we saw the enemy clan really start to tear into our clan. Some deserted, some stayed behind. We logged out shortly after we saw some deserters coming towards us; the last thing we wanted was some poor innocent recruit to spoil the adrenaline rush.

 

Two cans of ice-cold Diet Coke in shaking, hyped up teenage hands to celebrate.

 

In one blink of an eye, trillions were lost that day. Some of the poorest of the poor skyrocketed to the richest of the rich, in one foul swoop.

 

As of right now? That forum's gone, and so is the Clan Leader, along with the clan itself. I'd give dates and name names, but I'm still a little afraid of a late-night knock at my door.

[Panicintrinsica]

Although I've spent a somewhat ludicrous amount of time playing various MMOs (EQ2 mostly) I cant really recall anything particularly dramatic that happened to me personally, just the unusual drama like a "friend" of mine who was "dating" a girl he met in-game, only for me to then meet her actual boyfriend in the game a couple weeks later. Or the time I helped steal back a guild that was itself stolen and being cursed out and threatened in public chat for weeks. They're not really "stories" just "stuff that happened"

 

However, I do know of a couple infamous EQ1 stories (someone linked to some cracked articles that also mentions them, but here are direct alternative links). These are not my own stories, I was not there and I take no credit for them, but there was the time that…

 

...Almost 200 players got together to murder a mob that the developers never intended to be killed.

 

And also that time when...

 

...a level 5 bard decided to troll absolutely everyone on a "no rules" server so hard that they had to invent rules for it

[Mathadar]

1st Story: Mastermind Madness!

 

City of Heroes as you may or may not know is a MMO that allowed you to make characters with special powers to summon up to 3 individuals to follow you around, as a Hero. The most prolific was with illusions, able to make a grand illusion as well as 3 weaker illusions that do illusory damage. The only damage that's permanent is if the enemy dies from it. Cut to release of the 1st major expansion to the game, City of Villains!

 

City of Villains had this special archetype called a Mastermind!

Article below.

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Mastermind

 

Now, it wasn't until a few years in, they released this special type of Mastermind called a Thug Mastermind! These Masterminds not only had the 6 that normal Masterminds could have, 3, weak, 2 moderate, and 1 strong! These masterminds could also summon 10 as part of the power "Gang War".

 

Now... imagine a Supergroup.

Article below.

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Supergroup

 

Not only that group, but several Supergroups, working as an Alliance, together, consisting of nothing but masterminds, and an entire supergroup of 150 people, entering into a PVP zone. The game was designed to create what is called "instances" if more than so many people entered a zone (I do not know the max limit). Now, all of those individuals fought on the highest level PVP zone.

Article below.

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Recluse's_Victory

 

All of them summoned their minions, because their leaders were on teamspeak. That goes from 450 People (3 Supergroups where everyone participated in this event, to around 2700 to 3750 entities. When the server itself (Justice in this case) was in double-XP weekend and was seeing around 1000 people on. For some odd reason, the server crashed completely, and it took them a few hours to get it up again without it crashing again immiediately as players logged back on. It also glitched and killed a lot of characters, as well as getting them stuck in the terrain, buildings etc. It was a big mess up, and after that, they implemented a delay system for when you summon minions, so that if the server is experiencing high latency, it would just not summon them and needlessly ping the server. I wish I had gotten it on fraps, then I could link the video, but alas this was back in 2008, and at the time I did NOT have experience recording game footage like I do now.

 

2nd Story: City of Heroes Protests.

Months of work, and thousands upon thousands of players, there were so many players in Atlas Park, to create 33 zones, protesting Zenimax closing down City of Heroes. NCSoft had been acquired by them the previous year in 2011, and by mid year 2012, they were closing down the largest game NCSoft ever made, and my favorite MMO, City of Heroes.

Goodbye City of Heroes video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLtqCR6-n3Y

3700 heroes who stood, to try and stop the closing of City of Heroes. I was there with them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRsj2DtLCQs

Documentary on City of Heroes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGcFC197rfQ

 

Edit: Oh, and a note, the Soundtrack to the game was amazing. Since they never officially released a soundtrack, and I have access to the entire soundtrack, I can upload it if desired.

This is a youtube playlist of the soundtrack, but I have the raw files, since compression and more lowers quality of the audio.

 

Edit2: Right, I should tell you how to run it for footage of character creation, and customization.

Issue 24, the final issue, that can still be downloaded and full character creation is accessible using cohtitan's paragon chat. The game otherwise is pretty much inaccessible, because once again it was like the category you mentioned as "online servers" so almost nothing was client side. There are commands to get you to other maps of the area, and if you look at the soundtrack you can find out different maps' music to play for your review if you do it.

http://www.savecoh.com/p/download-issue-24-beta.html

 

Paragon Chat

http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,11060.0.html?PHPSESSID=8j7fbhqdgm9lgi3ho1mq03rsf0

 

Personally I use this to play borderless mode.

http://westechsolutions.net/sites/WindowedBorderlessGaming/download

Edited January 16, 2016 by Guest (see edit history)

[TSBasilisk]

Happy belated birthday.

 

While playing pick-up with a guild in WoW I learned one member had been to Naxxramas in the original version, which was probably the most difficult raid the game ever had. He was an officer with his guild at that time and the officers came up with a prank to play on their raiders.

 

In the first room of the raid is a siamese cat named "Mr. Bigglesworth" who, if killed, causes the end boss to shout death threats. The officers started a rumor that if they could defeat the final boss without ever killing the cat then they would get him as a pet. The raiders loved this idea and made sure to not use any damaging spells nearby - one hit would kill Mr. Bigglesworth. Whenever they were getting ready for the final boss one of the officers would sneak off and kill the cat, triggering the boss and the raiders to start shouting.

 

---

 

Another story I read about was a guy who, for one reason or another, asked his friend to look after his Alliance character while on a trip. Said guy logged on after his trip to find a few problems:

 

1.) His character was completely drunk.

2.) His (male) characters was wearing only a white wedding dress.

3.) Every slot in his bags was filled with stacks of booze.

4.) He was in the middle of a Horde city.

[BTGBullseye]

Another story I read about was a guy who, for one reason or another, asked his friend to look after his Alliance character while on a trip. Said guy logged on after his trip to find a few problems:

 

1.) His character was completely drunk.

2.) His (male) characters was wearing only a white wedding dress.

3.) Every slot in his bags was filled with stacks of booze.

4.) He was in the middle of a Horde city.

I helped a guy set that up for all of his brother's characters once... It was a way of getting back at him for getting drunk and puking on the floor. (this was of course after that original story)

[Vriska]

ok I have a story from Gmod Dark RP

 

The Hobo Uprising

 

I use to play on this RP server on the map RP_Bangclaw

one day I was playing a hobo and living in a box on the streets, at that time there were alot of people playing as hobos so the mayor (who was acting like a dictator) ordered all hobos to go underground and if they were seen on the surface they would be KOS

 

so me and alot of other hobos were force to relocate underground so me and three other hobos started exploring it, at the time I had never been in Bangclaw underground before so I was shocked that we found a huge catacombs with alot of interesting areas including a abandon car park, what look like parts of abandon laboratory and a abandon rail way system and the most interesting area some kind of organic room that one of my hobo friends said look like the inside of a UFO or something but the place was big and had only one entrance so me and the 3 other hobos set up camp there and turn it into a living area we also set up cameras that connected to the surface so we could check what was going on up there

 

so after a while we kept gaining more people who join us (most were hobos but some were gun dealers who set up shops) so at are height we had about 25 hobos and about 5 others who were living with us, we pretty much made are own self sufficient underground society

 

but things change after we elected are first king to keep order because are king did not believe we should be living underground and many of us agree with him so are king called a meeting with everyone who lives in the underground and declare a call to arms and that we should fight for are freedom to live on the surface! so he ask the gun dealers to give us guns and they did at no cost (that was nice of them)

 

so we prepared to invade the surface and take it back from the dictator like mayor! before we began the king sent a declaration of war via advert but the mayor did not believe us and that just piss us off even more, so about 30 hobos stormed out of the undergound entrances and on to the streets and within mins the whole city was a war zone with hobos and police fighting on every street so after a hour of fighting me and 10 other hobos stormed the city hall and took the mayor hostage, at the time we declare victory over the mayor and his men but we soon saw that the police were preparing a counter-attack so we defended the city hall for another hour before we were force to retreat back to the underground because we were out gunned and had taking alot of casualties

 

so we regrouped at are underground base and prepared for a 2nd attack but just as we were heading back to the surface admin came on line and told us to stop but we did not listen to him

 

so in a bit of a anti climatic ending, me, the king and the 30 other hobos were banned by the admin (later I heard he was a friend of the mayor)

 

so that was the great Hobo Uprising and it was the best RP experience I ever had sure it had a disappointing ending but over all it was great fun if we have any questions about anything just ask

[Ross Scott]

Hey, just wanted to say thanks a bunch for so many submissions. I'm going to be VERY slow going through all these, this was a gift I was planning on lasting a long time.

[TemplarVami]

A series of Dungeons and Dragons stories from an experienced DM.

[Mathadar]

A series of Dungeons and Dragons stories from an experienced DM.

Love it, even if this is "MMO Stories" which means Dungeons and Dragons isn't even close, unless you mean Dungeons and Dragons MMO, or Neverwinter Nights, or Neverwinter Nights 2, or Neverwinter MMO.

[void]

PlanetSide (The original... not "PlanetSide" 2) was a pretty special game in more than its massive scale which was first or second when it came to First Person Shooters.

This game was (actually IS, but the entire game is a ghost planet - worth visiting (it`s F2P now) if only for the views - it has some very nice landscapes))

a MMOFPS but some people went ahead and declared it a MMOFPSRPG since it had a certificate system which made it so that

everyone could be/do anything they wanted but were limited to a certain amount of certifications they could hold onto at the same

time with more points gained upon leveling.

This meant high level players simply had a more diverse arsenal - not a better one.

In other words - people had to specialize, and this effectively resulted in roleplay.

 

Why do I bother explaining this?

Because this game was very unique because of what I just described.

 

How many shooters do you know that attract both trigger-happy fellows AND people who like to role-play in the same package?

 

While the focus was obviously on shooting each other to death, engineers, medics, hackers and other player-invented roles

(Generator-dropping squads... the horror) had their place of honor.

They were not extras, oh no. The game was paced slow enough for them to be able to decide the outcome of a battle - and I`m not exaggerating.

When it came to holding towers and the tower was hacked - even for a second (towers did not have capture timers: they immediately

switched sides - turrets, spawns, and equipment terminals) - those people became the only lifeline of their allies trying to recapture the tower in what otherwise would likely have ended

as a rather miserable death facing a zerg rush from the basement of the tower.

 

Aside from the unique community buildup in the game there was another very noticeable thing about PS: It felt real.

That`s right. Even with alien technologies and the later-added walking robots (Battle Frame Robotics - BFR`s or biffers in ingame slang) the game had the intense atmosphere that I have not felt in any other game.

If a PS veteran meets another - they will likely begin telling each other personal achievements and war stories.

While I can`t remember any good ones right now I`ll point you to this article which might make you understand just how immersive it was while giving you a good story like (hopefully) the ones you asked for

 

I thought this would fit since you mentioned that you would like stories about how people take their games WAY too seriously - this, IMO, is a good example of that.

 

PlanetSide: The 1%:

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/12/30/planetside-the-1-2/

 

A short summary:

A server error (bug) made it so that the spawning point (sanctuary - a more in-depth explanation in the article) got locked for one of the 3 sides in PS.

This resulted in that side shrinking to eventually only comprise 1% of the server`s population (it was more of a protest for the weird bug - the CR5*`s encouraged it).

These people did NOT give up. They fought teeth and claws until they eventually got taken down.

If you think they did it because it was fun, let me tell you: Being outnumbered 1:~100 in PS is NOT FUN. (I won`t argue about it being a special experience, though...)

EDIT: After re-reading the thing it seems the guy actually claims it WAS fun. What do you know?

 

Super-late happy birthday .

 

 

*CR5:

There was a separate system for leveling aside from the Battle Rank in PS: Command Rank.

Leading squads and platoons while capturing/defending bases gave experience in that.

For each level, new privileges were given. Namely, at CR5 you could send a message to all of your empire which is how they did the encouraging.

[Noahnoah55]

Not technically an MMO story, but pretty close and still amazing.

https://i.imgur.com/tAV3wHl.png

[Mdisk64]

Elite: Dangerous is an MMO that is widely regarded to have the largest video game map in history with the overworld being an 1:1 recreation of the Milky Way galaxy. Distance traveled is measured in light seconds/years and the such. Without the Frame Shift Drives in your starship, you could take months of in game play to travel from one planet to another in just one system. There are over 400 Billion visitable systems in the Milky way, including Sagittarius a*, the black hole in the center. Making the trip to and from this black hole takes roughly a month of on and off in game play depending on your ship. If you die on the way, you have to start all over again with no progress saved.

 

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=219666

This is the Distant Worlds Expedition. 1,100+ people signed ledgers to venture off to the farthest star visitable in the game. A place twice the distance of Sag A. The trip takes FOUR MONTHS of nothing but jumping from star to star. They are almost there to this day. Almost to Beagle Point. They're been gone for three months and have kept an extremely tight schedule. Free time IRL has been stripped and only the insanely dedicated will make it. more than half of the people that set out on this journey have DIED.

 

Since the game allows for PvP in any place of the galaxy, you can imagine their horror when at roughly 30,000 Ly from home, having all but one body guard dead for the entire fleet, suffered a mutiny. While at one of the waypoints, one of the wings (a group of players that are flying together) decided to open fire on these defenseless explorer ships. People died, exploration data and months of dedication were lost, there was panic, and this one ship managed to take down all the pirates. He'd run dry on ammo and had one target left. From what I heard, he put all his guns away, put all system power into his engines and goddamn kamikazied himself into the last pirate, saving the fleet, but forfeiting his share of the data spoils.

 

The expedition is still on and the only reason the players are still there is because of that one brave soul.

 

Here's them at sag a:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYRSIK0bSxU

[Aquillius]

In Warframe (a semi action MMORPG), there used to be a riot dedicated to "cupholders", as to say they were blocking the main entrance point of a massive floating space station called Relay at it's docking bay...the twist is that there were more than 20+ players dressing pink colors as the riot...

 

Here's a screenshot of it: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=707894784

 

And I would like to personally thank you for creating Freeman's Mind, Ross, it's been great to watch the entire marathon again without Machinima's interference.

 

EDIT: Sorry if this was late...but just like what Ross said...better 20 years (8 months to be precised) late than never.

[TemplarVami]

I guess while we're necro'ing this thread, Dwarf Fortress!:

 

The Most Awesome Mayor of Ustomondul

Reddit's /r/dwarffortress, top rated posts of all time

[Morgbot]

So my story is from EVE online.

 

A little background; I was pretty young when this happened, like 12 or 13 so I'm probably gonna mis-remember things. I got roped in to EVE by my clan leader for a Day of Defeat unit, lets call him Dave. Dave was hardcore enough that he actually paid the subscriptions of me and at least 5 other guys from our unit. So I was a pretty happy kid to be able to play an MMO with all my friends, for free! Then I realized I was working for the mob.

 

Our corp worked as muscle for a manufacturing alliance. Usually we fought wars against other alliances because of disputes over payment and contracts and stuff, sometimes there were hits on people who owed money. I was young, I flew the ships people gave me and shot at the people they told me to shoot at, I didn't think much about it. One day Dave grabs a few of us and heads in to lowsec, we found a fat mining ship, minding his own business with a few people guarding him. We didn't think twice about wiping them out.

 

Turns out they were part of our alliance, Dave didn't pay them back and mocked them for not defending themselves. So having lost a couple hundred million isk, the rest of the alliance declared war on us. We ended up losing, but we gave that alliance a serious black eye. We had a good laugh and shacked up with another alliance who was going to pay us more.

 

Recently I was talking to my buddy about it and he said that someone pretty high up in the alliance insulted Dave's girlfriend and he started the war on purpose because he was going to pull us from the alliance anyway and wanted to try and really hurt them.

 

This wasn't the biggest war in EVE by any stretch, wars like that start and end every hour in EVE. In retrospect, to me at least, this blew my mind. I kinda felt like one of the random foot soldiers in game of thrones or something. I didn't know what was going on, I didn't care, I was playing a subscription based game for free. It's just weird realizing you were a pawn, ya know?

[UncleChickenHam]

While this is by no means a large scale or even an epic story, but is entertaining the same way Leeroy Jenkins is. But first some background. This took place in Elder Scrolls Online and because of weekly maintenance earlier that day, the servers where on their deathbeds. The guild also has a running joke known as gerping, gay-erotic-role-playing. Which the guildmaster had taken special amusement from.

 

That night my guild had decided that we were going to do some trials (raids) on easy mode. This is usually to train new guild members in the mechanics of fights and whatnot. So our GM decided it would be funny to bring his severely under-leveled character (I mean he made this character 2 nights before underleveled) he had dubbed Jesus and would only refer to himself in the 3rd person, using the name of the character, to this max level trial. While the group was getting ready at the entrance of the of the trial, I decided to strip naked and dance (search "redguard dance" to see it in all its beauty) to pass some time. So right has we starting and I was getting dressed, the GM ordered me to keep my clothes off, took his own off, and ordered other to do the same, though only a few listened. Fast forward to when combat commences, the server takes a sudden nosedive into Cerberus's steamy pile of shit. All but the GM on his under leveled and gearless character and this poor, also slightly underleveled healer who was high as balls to face a literal army of enemy NPCs. so while the other 10 members of the party where desperately trying to regain connection, all we could here was the panicked screams of GM trying to take on this hoard and keeping the healer on top of resource management. They by the power of Jesus they manage to clear the their way through the army and people make their way back online. Then we come to a part where group has to split in two, and it soon became evident that it was to be spilt by those who where clothed and those who were not. Of course those naked where dying left and right, but thats issue, for jesus can 'repent' their bodies and himself, it was not long before he was calling for those with him to commit suicide in the name of Jesus. After that particular fight everyone but myself had put clothes back on and the excitement was over. Though I will admit was chased with 'spears' by a few people near the end before I regained some modesty.

 

A year late for this post, but I figure thats just fine has your birthday will be coming up soon again.

[Noxifer]

this story is not particularly crazy in the scope or size of it, but its definitely an example of breaking a game in a significant and strange way

 

so i was playing world of warcraft with one of my female friends, and it was after the warlords of draenor expansion had released, this expansion featured the ability (more like inevitability) of building and growing your own garrison, which was like a miniature version of the towns you might build in the original RTS warcraft, certain buildings did certain things for you, and because it was basically the hub of your adventures in that expansion it had its own hearthstone. if you are unfamiliar with world of warcraft a hearthstone is normally an item you get pretty much at the beginning of the game that allows you to pick a tavern in a town or city as your "home" and teleport back there at will, with an hour long cooldown. the garrison you acquire and upgrade however has its own unique hearthstone that teleports you only back there, to your own garrison. well my friend had the expansion but hadn't yet done the quest to get her garrison or even entered draenor normally, she basically just came to my already developed garrison and talked to the NPC that gives out the hearthstone for it if you don't have one. at some point i wanted her to come to my garrison to see something i wanted to show her and she reflexively activated the hearthstone that was keyed to -her- garrison, the garrison that didn't exist yet (and its instanced so that detail is kind of important). she ended up teleporting into the alterac valley battleground (also instanced and impossible to enter without entering a queue and having that queue fill up with other players, and impossible to stay in after the match is up, normally this is an ironclad situation, you get in, fight, win/lose then are forced to leave) it seemed that by activating a hearthstone for an area that essentially doesn't exist, she ended up teleporting to the very first cell in the list of cells that could be teleported to, i assume this because Alterac Valley according to the dewey decimal system would go first in the list of places she could have ended up at, to make matters weirder we also figured since the level cap was 90, she more than likely also ended up in the alterac valley instance for lower level players (10-14 battlegroup). she was killed immediately by guards which we thought was strange, until we realized that not only had she broken into an instanced battleground that wasn't currently in use for any kind of pvp, she had teleported into the OPPOSITE faction's spawn room, killed on sight, and then spawned outside of the vanilla entrance portal for the battleground as if she had died in a dungeon and needed to run back in to resurrect herself, she ran back into the portal and resurrected back outside the portal.

 

we theorized after the incident that if she had accidentally done this and ended up in one of the instanced 10-14 level battlegroups that was in use, its possible she could have slaughtered all of the enemy team before the match even started, especially since the spawn room in battlegrounds nowadays feature an no mana cost buff that lasts until the battle actually starts, allowing any ability to be cast free to allow for pre-battle buffs. she could have griefed 40 enemy players just by showing up in the wrong place at the right time. nowadays since the level cap is no doubt 100, doing this (if it hasn't been fixed) would more than likely result in showing up into a mob of angry, pvp geared level 100's, and its worth mentioning that she only ended up the enemy one more than likely because the spawn points are tagged as alliance and horde in their respective areas, we are horde, but alliance again, goes first because of the dewey decimal system, so theoretically an alliance player could have done this and aided their lower level comrades in battle, and could have secured a very easy victory right before getting a perma ban for what looks like hacking.