A Jaded Life

[...

Last but not least, we have an earth-shattering announcement out of the world of e-sports, the number two team on the Craft of War-Ladder, team Amarantine, has anounced that their long time co-captain Titania will separate from them due to personal reasons. This separation will also remove the last player using one of the hero-versions of an old class from the ladder, as Titania with her Harbinger of Light the ascended version of the old Lightbringer class was the last holdout against the wealth of new classes Hailstorm Productions has introduced over in the last couple of years. As a replacement for the healing and shielding Titania provided the team will bring in Acrasia the gamer turned model who was featured in the last CoW-Commercial. We certainly look forward to Arcasias debut-game next week and wish Titania luck in all her endeavours.

And now we have some breaking news, just came in, if we'd use ink, it would still be wet. After a couple of announcements that they would be ready soon™, the new challenger to the Throne of Games is finally announcing that beta-testing will begin in two months. Yes, you heard right, Pantheon Entertainment is claiming that their VR-Capsules are ready to be shipped and will be installed for the first draft of 10.000 Beta-testers in the coming months so they can start testing the first, fully immersive, virtual reality massive multiplayer online role playing game with the simple title of Road to Purgatory. If they can live even up to ten percent of the hype, it will be the biggest sensation in video gaming since the introduction of online gaming. Sadly, there will be no dedicated press-passes for the first draft of testers but Pantheon Entertainment promises that every testers stream will be available, with testers having the ability to temporarily disable the stream to preserve privacy and their keep their character strengths and weaknesses confidential.

As always, I'm Jill Ankerton you are watching GNN, the Gaming News Network, ...]

I managed to keep from throwing the remote at the stupid screen, it would not have helped, just broken one of the two. Not that I really needed the stupid thing, either of them, the wall-screen was simply connected to my tablet running my news bots. Sadly, I had yet to take my handle, Titania, the team I had founded with my best, well only, friend, in school and pretty much everything with CoW out of the displayed tags. At least that bit about Pantheon sounded cool, maybe now, after quite a few failed attempts of making virtual reality games they'd finally get it right. That would be awesome with capital A and an A grade-cherry on top.

But that part about Titania 'separating' from Amarantine due to personal reasons? Such a load of bull, it made my blood boil. As the person behind the Titania-handle I knew the truth. CoW-management wanted to promote the telegenic Regina Flind, aka Acrasia, so they made a deal with one of the teams and our team-management caved. Yes, I was a founder of the guild that spawned the team and I played on the team since it's inception but I never wanted to do the business part of things, schmoozing with people to get advertisement deals was simply not in my nature so Chris, the original captain and my old schoolfriend had quickly got a professional and then sold the whole shebang for a nice chunk of cash.

Well, I guess what goes around comes around, we didn't want to deal with control and management meaning they will follow the money. The joke will be on them when the team starts tanking as I'm sure it will. See, few people really know what made my Harbinger-Class the hero it was, it wasn't player-shielding or healing, both were mediocre at best, what made the class strong was quite literally light bending, making minute adjustments to the enemies vision, making me or my team-mates appear in slightly different positions than they actually were, messing with the enemies positioning and aim.

Without that the 1 Defender, 3 Striker, 1 Healer setup would crumble like a sandcastle at high tide, there's a reason every team uses no more than two strikers, filling the rest with different roles. But I'm just enough of a bitch to watch perennial top ten team plummet and soothe my ego over it. Maybe it's ironic that the eternal team will lose its immortality after stabbing the fairy queen in the back. I guess now is the time to lay back and watch my creation burn.

[PING] You have mail...[PING]

Hm, flagged priority?

"Greetings Miss Samantha Jade Jacobs

We, of Pantheon Entertainment, salute you and we thank you for your interest in joining us on the Road to Purgatory. We are proud to announce that you have been drafted for the first wave.

If your interest has not waned since you submitted your application and you have no different commitments that keep you from taking fully part in the Beta-Test as specified prior to applying please notify us now so we can schedule the installation of the new Capsule-Technology free of charge for our first wave. The Capsule will need standard supply for power and network and the unit measures 90*210*60 centimetres.

So, remember proud warrior, ready your breakfast and eat hearty. For tonight we dine in purgatory!"

Well, paint me orange and call me president, Lady Luck must have had a hot threesome with Fortuna and Tyche, I got one! There is probably no gamer worth his or her salt that did not submit at least one application to Pantheon in the, mostly vain, hope to get into the beta test and they let me play from the get go? Hopefully I won't die now or the undertaker will charge extra 'cause he'd need powertools to get the smile off my face.

But first things first, send confirmation and get a list of possible installation dates so I can get used to that sucker, they claimed there would be a home zone available prior to game launch.