Running the Valley

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. Tryna remember what version it was; 9.13? When they got added in?

9.15

You know better than I.

Do you recall what it was like just before they arrived?

Brother; it was beautiful! There was balance, y’know? Balance in the gameplay. I could kiss it. Like wolves and deer and grass and bugs and all that circle of life Lion King shit. Like a great big fuckin' boulder sittin’ happy on a lil’ pebble or something. The Valley was absolutely spot on; I don’t know what they were thinkin' bringing in that update. They didn’t need it. We didn’t need that update. The game was perfect, no cap.

So players were generally satisfied before 9.15?

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Ask anyone. Absolute madlads not askin' us before bringing it in, know what I mean? Mental.

Well, no. That’s why I’m asking.

Alright, alright; I get you, I get you. Think about it; mate and I could grab a horse each, run from Bogondu to Igobo in a half day - maybe we'll take a night, wha’ever, right? And it's a good pace, and everyone else is steady with it. And we take time, and we enjoy the pace because it's good to have a steady pace with life, and that was the whole point of it; a chill game.

Players enjoyed the game because it offered a slower pace of life?

Compared to the shit we deal with IRL? Hunner percent.

And the dragons upset this pace?

Dragons had no chill. No chill whatsoever, right? That's why, y’know, eventually we had to do what we did.

We will circle back to that later; I just want to build up a picture of early interactions at this point. Can you describe what happened as they were introduced?

Yeah, I mean, they don’t announce updates, right? Keep everything mysterious. It’s cool though brother; I liked it. We were all cool with that way of doing things because it meant there was always something unexpected and everyone wants to be the first to figure it out. Or maybe you keep it to yourself, do you. This update felt different though; it was crazy impactful on gameplay.

Ok, so I remember this rumour started spreading over half a year; that people were disappearing up north in the desert. Maybe there is this new mob, right? New boss. No-one knew though.

Recent memory is wiped, after death, I take it?

Yeah for sure, an hour of it. Like going a bit heavy down the pub on a Friday, get me? You respawn, but you don’t know what got you. All you know is something did. Unless you battlin' for an hour, but that’s rare though. Can get enhancers to lessen the penalty, but that shit’s spendy so not usually worth it unless you’re really tryna crack a toughie. Whatever this was, killed quickly; none of them remembered much beyond roughly where they were.

There was no recording either?

Live-ing video and audio out of game is definitely bannable. You do get streams on Webchain, but once they find you they go after everything; gov name, IP, bank accounts. Mad hard makin' an account again after it. People do try, but wha’ever; that’s their thrill, forreals not mine. You can do live text though and stream voice. I follow a couple creators that way though. They let that happen cus it still keeps the mystery of not seeing, right? Like radio, I guess. Though none of the ones that had gone up north were talkin' at the time.

Anyways, we all thought it was some new boss so a bunch of mates and I - those who could get time off work, anyway - got a party together to try and be the first, you know? There’s always a bonus for being first, and you get yourselves in the walk of fame so it's worth the risk for new shit. We knew others were doing the same or at least planning for it, so we had to be quick about it. Decided to take about a week or so, I think.

That’s a serious amount of time in-game.

Not unusual for big expos. Do you not take a week off for a holiday?

I do, although that’s-

Aw, come on brother. Don’t tell me you think there’s a difference?

I-

Nah. For us, this is real. This is what we choose to do; this is our holiday. Subjective reality, you get me? It’s as real as running up any mountain, except we’re off-world. Real world’s kinda shitty, so we take a break; does it matter where we take that break?

Ok, we’re getting a little off track. So you left with a group…

Few days in, we bump into another group. Normally, maybe you start fightin' in these remote places; cheeky bit of PVP. Mate knew one of the other group, so we thought wha’ever let’s team up, join chats. Must have been about fourteen, fifteen at that point; a decent size of group; plenty high levels; enough to take on most of what’s out there. Right. So we’re wandering about for a couple days; in an area of the desert that mad rocky. Big outcrops. Low level mobs is all we really encounter for most of it, right, but then out of nowhere this massive fuckin' dragon just starts plowing into us; flame everywhere, eatin' people, claws, going after the horses, wha’ever. Those of us not dead ran into hidin' spots. There were still about ten of us, I think. Now we take a bit of time to assess the dragon, as you do, and think you know what? We can take it. It was super high level, for sure, but nothing crazy-crazy. So we get our chanters to bind it and force a ground battle. Pretty gruelling, I shit you not brother; biggest fight of my life so far, easy. Few of us end up at respawn, but seven of us survive the thing.

Now here’s the surprise. Mind you we had just thought; new mob, maybe a boss; maybe we get something unique out of this. But when this dragon died there was no cinematic, no obvious loot. Bunch of weird inventory stuff was all. Got us thinkin', because someone had pointed out that the health bar looked more like a player’s, but we didn’t really think about it, yeah? Mostly because we were gettin' shredded and needed to get our shit together. But it got us thinkin', hang on a minute. So we look back at the death logs and it's like ‘our names killed jojo-macbean-face’ or wha’ever its name was, and we thought; that makes no sense. Only playable characters are human, right? And the devs are funny, sure sure, but not funny enough to call a boss fuckin' “jojo-macbean-face” and ruin all the atmosphere and get away with it. Know what I mean?

So you thought this was clearly a player?

At the time we thought we were trippin’. Or maybe it was a bug, or some dumb easter egg. We all decided to carry on anyway; see if there’s anything else to it, because let's be honest, we didn’t really have anything to lose; cus there wasn’t any rare loot in the first place. And we travel for maybe another day and then come across a couple lower level dragons; much smaller. We were at a far distance, so they didn’t notice us at all, and we had a scope to zoom in on ‘em. When you saw their movements; like if you played the game brother you’d know; those movements were just player movements. Definitely not AI. I remember one of them dancing to something on TikTok. Looked mad weird. Anyway, my period came early about then, and I get it quite bad sometimes so I logged off at that point. Followed everyone else on chat but they decided just to leave the desert and not risk another high leveller catchin' them if it wasn’t going to give them anything.

Did you tell people what you had seen?

We were discussing it. Someone must have cus about a week later I felt better and logged back on and the news was already everywhere. People were mad excited about the idea of a new playable race, but no-one had any idea how to sign up for it, ya know? Like, more people were headin' north, but they just kept dying. And no-one knew anyone who was a dragon; it was high-key sus. Nothing on the main site either; no upgrade packages, no add-ons; which isn't really the Valley's style, but other games do it so we did wonder. See, those of us that have been playing for a while, yeah, we knew that Nora-

Nora Shritki?

Yeah, yeah; founder Nora. They talked about wantin' dragons as a playable race, but that was ages ago - they got voted down at the time. So we kinda connected the dots on that one, and figured maybe they were behind this, right, but it was so unexpected. Even for the Valley.

How long were people in the dark about it?

A year, at least. People kinda lost interest; because the dragons didn’t move south at all, or interact; just stayed way up north. They must have added new land, but no-one got that far; dragon’s kept killing everyone and people got fed up trying. Obviously people were still curious; I know I was; but it takes a high level to travel that far and it’s kinda spendy to get there so you have to have some boss-level wealth to keep going back. Besides, the game kept addin' new stuff so it's not like they were the only thing on people’s minds...

...at least until that family arrived.

The family at the start of-?

Yeah, that’s the one; they moved into this little house in a scummy part of Igobo. Started telling stories to people if you completed a small quest for them. That’s when everyone began to realise; fuck, this is actually happening.

So it was significant information?

Oh, forreal. Once you talked to that family; you weren’t just in, you were in-in; it was juicy, juicy info. Like mango-level juicy. Easy the best quest start they’ve ever done; credit where credit’s due, hear me?

Did you ever suspect it would lead to all this? That the update would eventually cause so much chaos?

Nah brother, how could I tell the future though? But honestly, no cap; if I could go back in time I’d slap myself across the face and go ‘nuh uh; you ain’t touching that shit; it’s spicy; you gonna have a nice quiet life and not get chased across three countries for fuckin' up a game,’ but that clearly ain’t happening.

And so here you are.

You know it.