Solo This Blog is Not a Metaphor

[Ash Vargold]

This Blog is Not a Metaphor
I just think gamers don't know what's going on

Comments​

GNU

Most of this post contains no commentary or opinions. Instead it's just a list of names and links - some to news articles, other to obituaries. All of them have a source link and an archived snapshot, and more than a few of the source links are gone.

The only thing shared between the entries is the date of death - the day Szofrit attacked in Terrasphere - and the cause of death being unknown.

It's not hard to guess the message Aisling is trying to send.

If you're reading this, you're one of the lucky ones.

This is what the game is. This is what it does.

Never forget that.

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[Ash Vargold]

This Blog is Not a Metaphor
I just think gamers don't know what's going on

Comments​

Important Warning

The area ruled by Falderen has become neutral-to-hostile to players. The use of Magitech has been outlawed within their territory, and Magia are purportedly being taken into holding.

Falderen's territory includes Eastern Brisshal, the area where new players start the game. More than a few officials are taking advantage of this, either harassing or actively hunting down new players.

If you are new to the game and haven't been convinced to not play, I recommend not playing a Magia character and/or using the Magitech skillset. If possible, find a way to get out of Falderen territory and into the western Astorean area.

DO NOT JUST WALK WEST. Western Brisshal is incredibly dangerous. There are traders' routes that circumvent the region. If you can't find a higher level player to help you get out of Falderen, travel as a group or see if you can sell your services to a caravan. (Despite everything, capitalism still holds a lot of sway.)

Or you could just not play the game. That's the smartest move in the long run.

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[Ash Vargold]

This Blog is Not a Metaphor
I just think gamers don't know what's going on

Y'all need Ys

Did you know that there's a fandom for this game?

Like, an honest to god fandom with fanworks and ships and even smut?

Like, I know some of this stuff is probably you raving about your own characters and more power to you, but the rest of you do realize that there's a lot of real people in the mix here, right? Even the UI-locked ones were people once.

So to the person who keeps posting AstorXSzofrit in the comments, please stop. That last thing we all need is some royalist seeing it and deciding to pass it off to him.

And learn what spellcheck is. What are you writing this shit in, notepad? It is 2034, my dude. You have offline options.

Comments​

 

[Ash Vargold]

This Blog is Not a Metaphor
I just think gamers don't know what's going on

Comments​

@Tinúviel

regarding gamedev:
even before the AI boom we had the concept of procedural generation in games. maps, quests, npcs - you make sure you have the bones set up and then let your engine play adlibs with it. generative ai is even more powerful now, so you don't even need a huge team - you just need enough to train your model and keep it on track. fantasy stories are actually probably the easiest thing for something like that to train on, because there's so damn much of it.

that includes fanfiction, by the way. there were lawsuits about that. that might explain how an npc might "fantasize" a pornographic scenario.

regarding rumors:
even before fulldive and the metaventure incident you had people getting affected negatively by things that couldn't actually physically harm them. screamers and shock images and the like used to be way more common before ai moderation learned how to tell the difference between a beach and a boob.

I don't doubt that people are feeling negative effects from their experiences, because as far as their brain is concerned, they did experience it. its the reason why fulldive is so heavily restricted. human brains are squishy and vulnerable to stories, and fulldive can create a very realistic story.

regarding research:
there's laws against human experimentation.

not that that would ever stop a govt, but if it exists we'll never see it. there's fulldive tech explainers out there, but they're pretty dense. a lot of the public interest dropped off once the tech was neutered by vrsa. I can't imagine it's much different from how other fulldive works though - the serverside is what's weird here, not the client, and most of what makes it weird is how no one can find where they're running the damn thing. might be a distributed botnet, might be some billionaire fucks. maybe one day we'll even find out.

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[Ash Vargold]

This Blog is Not a Metaphor
I just think gamers don't know what's going on

Comments​

Unfortunately, capitalism

Had a weird encounter recently in a small town called Ripplethorpe.

The vibe was weird the moment I walked in - people milling about but refusing to talk to each other. Prices were at tourist levels of inflated, and if people were talking it was mostly shouting at each other about money. Probably wouldn't have cared much about it otherwise - it was one of those places that you just go to for a safe place to log out, but then I ran into some Tertorian NPCs.

Now, I still don't know much about Tertoria. They got revealed around the time the whole Titanius debacle happened, and I was still a newbie then and didn't really care. But they've been pushing their way into Astorea since Szofrit, so they're worth keeping an eye on. Especially since they're heavily tied in with Dissonance, which, once again, will fuck with your interface, can cause psychological disruptions, and should be avoided as much as possible.

Speaking of psychological disruptions - shortly after arriving, we learned that there was some kind of... curse on the town, that caused the townspeople to be obsessed with wealth. The Tertorians described it as a "fate alteration attached to the concept of money". I think the translation for that is "Dissonance-induced greed", but I can't be sure.

This led, eventually, to an angry mob. We didn't stick around much - took shelter in an old house until the crowds calmed down and we went our separate ways. It's probably still that way now, so probably avoid Ripplethorpe if you find yourself in that area, or at least don't go flashing your wealth around.

I found some notes I took a while back, and it might be tied to a "Golden Curse" of sorts - some mage turning things and people into gold. Hints to a future plot, maybe?

Speaking of plots, if anyone's interested in a bit of a sidequest...

One of the Tertorians, man called Maximilian, is looking for someone important. An "Oracle of Gardibrook" named Priscilla. Apparently she was kidnapped by a "bandaged woman with a smell" and a "loud and scrawny person", one of whom was named Trizzaline. Might want to keep an eye out for them - I'm sure Tertoria would be happy to have their VIP back.

Comments​

 

[Ash Vargold]

This Blog is Not a Metaphor
I just think gamers don't know what's going on

Comments​

you ruined a perfectly good npc is what you did

Just a suggestion based on some recent experiences - please consider not saddling NPCs with the knowledge that their world is a simulation and we're all thrillseeking idiots? Ran into a lander that somehow had learned about the concept of video games and had a lot of opinions

Like, they've got enough reasons to dislike us, and this game's unpredictable enough without tossing out-of-context lore out there to try and integrate into their eurofantasy dataset.

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[Ash Vargold]

Shortly after certain events...

There's no warning when the blog is unceremoniously deleted. The site is still there, with none of the signs of a VRSA takedown, but none of the previous information or comments remain.

Instead, visitors are treated to a single image...

 ㅤ
Those with basic cryptology knowledge or the resources to find someone that does might connect the image with the concept of steganography. Following this line of thought might lead to the discovery of a zip archive hidden within the file.

Unfortunately, it needs a password...

...strange.