[Game] Satisfying Values

Mic glances at Val logging off, noting another pony below him doing the same and sighing, logging off himself and sliding from his VR chair to his laptop."Singing was the best part of that, but I do that on the daily. Might see if I can speak with Phoenix again but other than that..." He searches his browser and opens up a review board for EO, simply typing out his thoughts.

Before Rose can have her character enter the Amoury, it gets collapsed by a sudden pegasus. "Why do these things always happen to me? Now what am I supposed to do? Caking strudel always caking happens to who? Caking me! Cake! Cake cake cake cake cake CAKE!" She takes a few deep breaths. "Bad, bad, no more out-of-character moments for you!" She turns to Olive. "Sorry about that. Is there anywhere else, now that the Armoury is collapsed?"

The three remaining ponies in the game continue talking for a minute, getting things sorted out as the three who left get on the official EqO forums. The three find that their sub-par experience in the game if far from the norm. As they search a little deeper, they find that there hasn't been an unsatisfactory review filed since a few months after the game was released.

More strangely, in the past week or two there have been dozens of bad reviews popping up at an unprecedented rate. In the first few months there aren't even twenty negative ratings, but now there's almost forty new ones, almost half in the last day alone.

In the game, all the NPCs then freeze simultaneously. The world keeps moving, their own ponies move as they were, but the NPCs stop.

The game remains this way for a good thirty seconds, with no notifications or otherwise, before their screens black out, then show the text,



At the same time, all of their computers let out a tone indicating an email has arrived.



The strangest part is, you never shared your email during character creation.

Mic stares at his computer, having finished a new cover on youtube and the upload being... for lack of a better word, hours long. He was contemplating opening up an emulator, but seeing the email notification going off, he turned to his email, reading the English lettering with ease as he scratches his chin, standing up and brushing off the VR chair he decided to keep. "Eh, what the hell. I spent around fifty thousand yen on you. May as well." The musician slipped into the seat, tapping the screen on the side and sending an email out to the other members of his shard once he gets their info, if he does.

Mic Aura wrote:
To: All
Topic: Why the heck not. Second Chance for the Game?

Hey, gonna hop into EQO for a short while. Hoping that it really was just a bug or at the very least, we have permission to skip the tutorial stuff for playing it before

The musician gets things set up before he actually logs in, waiting to see if someone else messages him back.

APC's first reaction to this e-mail was to try and use all of his hacking skills for a good ten minutes to both find out just HOW Equestria-Online got said e-mail... And try to block it from being able to do that, again... But after those short ten minutes. He couldn't help himself but go back and see if somehow the game had just gotten at about 20,000% cooler...

skill check:

Rose, after reading the e-Mail, sighs relief. "Well, hopefully this means that the Armoury is fixed! It would be nice if there were also some more plants and gardens. Fauna is the best way to test a game's graphics, after all, and an orchard is just a little... copy-pasta-ish." She boots up her Pony Pad, having never gotten to do more than explore the town.

While she waits for her Pony Pad to boot up, she decides to play around with her virtual pets, Kitten the puppy, and Cthulhu the cat. "I'm hungry, nyaa!~~" "Food? Food! FoodfoodfoodfoodfoodfoodFOOD!"

Lena sighs at the email, looking over at the package on her desk. It'd been a while now, and she'd since returned the seat - only for this package to show up on her doorstep. They really wanted people playing, for some reason. "Well, if they want my time so badly, Sputnik..."

She opens her desk and pulls open her stanley, slicing open the box and setting up its contents next to her computer.

Lena Nystrom wrote:To: All
Topic: Last chance

Alright, one more try. See you in there.

"Well, Sputnik, you can help me play this time." she hoists the cat up onto her desk, and switches on the ponypad.

Alexander can't find any trails that would lead back to Celestia in his search. From what he can piece together, all she did was follow the information he always leaves behind in any interaction. Nothing truly invasive, like hacking into his accounts; more like jsut checking the PonyPad's serial number agaisnt his purchases. Or face recognition, that camera is really good.

When all six log back on, they appear to all be back in the starting location, except still have all the equipment they had when they logged off or when the game crashed. Everything appears to be exactly the same, including the earth pony sliding down the hill in the distance yelling to them.

"... Please don't tell me we have to tutorial again." Mic grumbles, waving over to the Earth Pony. "Hello there!"

"Ok... Now I feel like smashing this thing for it's creepy Xbone-ish actions..." APC muses from his findings before he decides to just log on again... Cause he did wonder if anything did really improve or not. "Oh well... The smashing can wait... Lets see what improvements to the system was made." He sighs as she has his pony head off to greet the shouting NPC character.

"The tutorial again? Great..." The blue unicorn murmured to himself, a bit annoyed.

"Ahoy! What are you guys doing way out here?! You ponies don't look nearly prepared for adventuring out in wilderness like this. I'm Bun-" He freezes partway through his introduction, just as the NPCs froze before, but this time there is no crash, the pony in front of them instead flickering out of existence.

"Hmm, sorry about that. I thought I had blocked all AI loading." The smooth voice comes directly through the speakers, startling the players. Up until now all sound came through as if the ponypad was just a window to a real place, this seems much less organic, playing as any stereo soundsystem would. The male voice comes through again. "And no piddling little 'tutorials' for you. Celestia coddles her ponies so~"

"... Ooh this is a lot more interesting." Mic bounces on his hooves, looking around. "Already making it better than the last time! So, who we talking to? Evil Overlord to defeat? 'Benevolent' caretaker? King who wants us to be the heroes while he sits on his throne?" Mic grins, flapping his wings eagerly and chuckling.

"Also said tutorials bored us "ponies" enough to put down the game for good..." APC comments... Shocked at this turn of events, but trying his best to hide it for the moment... Just seeing where this was going.

"But I never even got the chance to finish the tutorial! Now I won't know how to play the game very well..." She sighs. "Sure, long tutorials bore me, but I at least like to finish them!"

"Oh! This is different! Is this a plot point? Because that would make this whole game a lot more interesting..." He said with a tinge of excitement.

Mic promptly covers his fellow white-pony's mouth with a hoof. "Ignore her, no tutorials. Please."

"If anything, just have us learn as we go... Be more proactive in what things we'll be doing here... Would enjoy a learning like that. The best tutorial is the tutorial nopony knows was even there..." APC notes. "So then... Discord I presume has taken over this gameworld I take it?"

"Discord? Ah, if only." The voice rings out with laughter, and he continues with a light British accent, "No, just a concerned denizen of cyberspace. 'CelestAI' can't hear us for the moment, so we can speak rather freely. For the record, I was the one who crashed the server and got rid of those pesky NPCs that were on the original shard. You're welcome for that, by the way. Celestia doesn't get humans sometimes, when they just want some... mindless violence, for example. Her bloody guidelines keep her from some things, the poor mare. Feel right sorry for her in that regard." The voice pauses for a moment.

"But that won't stop me from doing this!" The game jolts in front of the players, and a portion of the map glitches out. Eventually the glitch resolves into a familiar shape: that of a draconequus. In this case, there's a bit more ram-horn, dog-paw, pheonix-wing and a few other differences, but he is still a draconequus. "Glad to meet you, my name is Elegy."

Mic's eyes widen at the name, jaw rigid as he rattles off: "An elegy is a mournful, melancholic or plaintive poem, especially a funeral song or a lament for the dead. Why would you have that name for yourself? It's.... A bit of a bad omen, especially as a Glitch."

"Alrightie... This is starting to remind me of that TOME web-cartoon... Next he'll offer us some forbidden power..." APC mutters to himself, then comments to Mic's Pony. "Well... Then it's a perfect name for one of Discord's race... I'd speak it's name but never could figure out how to say it... Nor even spell it that well..." Finally he turns to the group's Host. "So we're talking with a specialized AI system? That's kinda awesome..."

Valks' ears perk up a little at this. "That's ä bit møre interesting." she comments, even distracted as she is by her other screen, "Sø, what dø yøu wänt?"

"NononononononononononononoIdon'tlikeglitchesIdon'tlikeglitchesIdon'tlikeglitchesKITTEN!!! C'THULHU! FIX!!!" She backs away from the dragonequus, eyes wide and ears back.

Computer Roll via AI Pets: