Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch - Chapter 296
Chapter 296: Chapter 294: The Nemesis of Wealthy Players
Translator: 549690339
Let’s not talk about the monthly meetings between Cloud Dream and NetDragon.
The honorary citizens of “Assassins’ Alliance” have received another system notification.
This time the notification was only in-game, so the first group to receive the message were actually the professional gamers.
It’s inevitable. As soon as clubs received the news that the “Assassins’ Alliance” competition is about to take place, professional players started their training early in the morning.
Instead of the 10-player battle during “Freedom Day,” it’s now back to the traditional 5 -player team battle.
The clubs have also started frequent training matches with each other.
But apart from professional players, other players are sweating it out on the
Candy Track in “Paradise.”
New players of “Assassins’ Alliance” are still entering the game in droves with the launch of the console, the basic players are still there, but in terms of popularity, it naturally can’t compare with a new game that just launched a few days ago.
Especially the gameplay of the Candy Track, it’s very addicting and has great live streaming effects, the game zone is full of live streaming rooms featuring “Paradise” continuously.
Under such circumstances, it’s not surprising that only professional players received the notification among the 1,380 honorary citizens.
It wasn’t until lunchtime that Camille Victoria, prompted by her live streaming audience, learned about this matter and quickly exited “Paradise” to log in to Metropolis.
As soon as she entered the map and was still inside her virtual house, a card and two invitation letters emerged from thin air and automatically floated in front of Camille Victoria.
Camille Victoria picked up the card first and read its contents for the audience in her live streaming room:
“Dear Metropolis Honorary Citizen:
We are delighted to inform you that you have been here in Metropolis for one week.
We hope you enjoy your stay in Metropolis.
Here are two invitations. You can now invite your friends to Metropolis officially, becoming permanent residents of Metropolis.
We hope your friends’ arrival will add more joy to your life in Metropolis.
—Metropolis Citizens Council.”
Camille Victoria then looked at the system introduction for the two invitations:
“[Metropolis Permanent Resident Invitation: Can invite friends in the player’s list to enter the Metropolis Public Map. (Can be used without purchasing the “Assassins’ Alliance” game)]
Camille Victoria was surprised at the hint in brackets, which meant that she could enter Metropolis without buying the game!
With this, the scope of these two invitations would be greatly expanded!
Of course, even if they didn’t expand, there would be no worries about using them up.
From the launch of the public map up to now, there have always been a large number of players hoping for Cloud Dream to open up access, even willing to pay extra for it.
In other words, even if these two invitations have no takers, selling them isn’t a concern!
Considering that there are only 1,380 honorary citizens, each with two invitations, a total of 2, 760, it’s not an exaggeration to say that the rarer the item, the more valuable it is.
Camille Victoria guessed that one invitation could sell for tens of thousands!
Having ridden Cloud Dream’s coattails to become a top anchor, Camille Victoria is now more financially stable and won’t easily sell the invitations.
She plans to give away these two invitations as raffle prizes in her streaming room.
But she also knew that some members of her team, even those she led during the Metropolis Bank robbery and ultimately got promoted, were ordinary workers who probably wouldn’t give up such a windfall.
Shuihua, who secretly surfed the internet on her mobile phone during breaks, even got the news earlier than Camille Victoria.
But Shuihua was in a tough spot: she still had a day of classes and had to wait until school was over in the evening before she could rush home.
For now, she could only keep her emotions in check and focus on class.
When Shuihua sprinted home after school, the initial buzz around the invitations had died down, and there were no longer any heated discussions about it.
It’s worth noting that when the news first broke, more than a dozen well-known wealthy players openly tried to buy invitations.
The “biggest sucker” among them paid 100,000 Yuan upfront for the first publicly sold invitation.
This term “biggest sucker” is Shuihua’s description.
After the initial wave, the price quickly dropped, but as of the time Shuihua finished school, it was still crazy high at 50,000 Yuan per invitation. As for the function of the invitations, the news has already been made public on the internet:
Players can indeed enter the public map of Metropolis through these invitations, but the “privileges” they receive are not as significant as those of the original 1,380 honorary citizens.
The most obvious difference is that honorary citizens directly transfer their in-game real estate as well.
However, those players entering through invitations only get the permission to access the map and do not get real estate. They still need to buy their own properties.
Please note that the properties on the public map are not the same concept as the properties in players’ game worlds.
Having a fixed house that everyone can see on a map that can accommodate at least 10,000 players is gimmicky compared to a game world property, right?
Players don’t know yet, but Lincoln has increased the maximum number of players the map can accommodate to 100,000, and there’s still plenty of room.
It’s obvious that there are only a limited number of properties available here. Once one is sold, there will be one less in supply.
The most popular properties in the best locations are in high demand, so if you buy late, you’ll miss out.
If you want to buy back the properties from players later on, it’s probably not something that virtual currency can handle!
Therefore, without a doubt, at this moment, the property values in the public map are skyrocketing.
The only good news is: players can only buy one property per year, and honorary citizens can only have one and cannot buy more.
Otherwise, let alone others, Camille Victoria’s “Wealthy Aunt” in her team would have gone crazy buying houses in the public map, instead of pursuing the [Metropolitan Golden Key] like she is now.
The first thing players do when they receive an invitation is to buy property.
But they soon found out, with blood and tears, that they didn’t have the authority to do so.
The system’s prompt is: “Players entering [Metropolis Public Version] detected to have stayed less than 30 days, temporarily ineligible to purchase property.”
When the pay-to-win streamer Hao, the “big sucker” in Shuihua’s mouth, saw this prompt, he simply wanted to spit out a mouthful of old blood.
Money doesn’t really matter. It’s just the feeling of disappointment that is so annoying!
But there’s no way, for there is no precedent of Cloud Dream caving-in to wealthy players.
Want to spend money? Nowhere to spend.
Pay-to-win channels are scarce, and there’s a cap reached right after spending once, such that the gap between wealthy and ordinary players can’t be widened.
Finally found a way to spend money, only to find that it is useless after paying!
Frankly, if it weren’t for the fact that Cloud Dream is the only virtual reality game company in the world, and the games they make are truly fun, wealthy players would have long stopped participating!
But Cloud Dream is the only choice, and Lincoln has always had this production philosophy.
Moreover, Lincoln has already made enough money to last several lifetimes. He has long entered the “not interested in money” level.
So, in the foreseeable future, it’s unlikely that this production philosophy will change.
There’s really nothing the wealthy players can do about it.
Unhappy?
Put up with it.
In a sense, Lincoln and Cloud Dream are simply the nemesis of wealthy players.
After Shuihua received the invitation, she first asked Lance if he had one. Learning that he didn’t, she invited Lance to her virtual house and handed him one without hesitation: “Yours!”
Lance blinked but didn’t accept it right away, instead saying, “Hold on.”
Then, Shuihua stood by and waited as he opened the panel and chatted with someone for a while.
A few minutes later, Lance finished chatting happily and finally took the invitation, using it and then telling Shuihua, “Put 50,000 yuan in your little vault.”
Shuihua didn’t understand, “What for? I didn’t ask you for money.” Lance replied with a relaxed smile, “Don’t waste the club’s money.”
—This is a lie.
The club is indeed buying invitations. The [Burned Boat Club] is making this move to secure their virtual real estate on the public map in advance.
They’d rather not use it in the end than not have it when they need it in the future.
In fact, not just the Burned Boat Club, all clubs and teams that failed to make it to the final battle are trying to buy invitations.
After all, several thousand yuan is just a small amount of money for a club.
But the thing is, Lance really wants virtual real estate too!
So, this money is actually Lance giving Shuihua under the name of the club.
It’s not that he doesn’t want to take advantage of Shuihua but wants to make her little vault more abundant.
—Shuihua is about to go to university soon, having more money in hand will keep her from being easily deceived by bad people.
Sometimes he regrets insisting on taking a leave of absence from school to become a professional player.
Otherwise, he would still be in class with Shuihua preparing for the college entrance examination, maybe even sharing a desk, going to school and leaving school together every day.
But when he thinks about earning enough to pay off all the debts his family owed for his grandfather’s medical treatment in less than two years of playing professionally, he feels it’s all worth it.
After all, Lance can see that with the emergence of virtual reality games, esports is facing a shuffle.
Professional players with superior talents in VR games may not necessarily continue to rank top in virtual reality games in the future. Many current star players with net worth in the millions might be quickly eliminated from the competition.
That’s why clubs and professional players are working harder now, not wanting to miss any opportunities, and players train even harder.
After all, nobody wants to be eliminated.
Lance doesn’t know if he’ll be able to maintain his current position and keep making so much money after this round of shuffles.
So, he’s grateful he caught the boom of VR gaming and made enough money for his family to get rid of their debt troubles.
What could be unsatisfying?
At most, go back to school and resume studying!
His academic performance was excellent before he took a leave of absence, and he has been getting tutoring during his training these two years.
He’s only 17, just starting out in life, and there’s still time for many things.
Of course, the premise is not to let Shuihua be deceived by others!
Now, there’s a bunch of people in the live streaming room shouting “goddess” every day, which makes Lance feel a great sense of crisis!
