Chapter 580: Chapter 551: The Flames of War are Burning!
English players use English, while players from the Ottoman Republic use Ottoman Turkish.
If both sides couldn’t understand each other and were just playing the game simply, there would be no problem.
After all, in the whole of Europe, there are no more than 30 million Mirage Consoles combined.
— Last week, Cloud Dream delivered 20 million consoles to European partners, and a small portion of users paid high shipping fees to buy directly from Cloud Dream.
People who can buy Mirage at this time, calling each other “fellow enthusiasts”, would not be an exaggeration.
The problem is that Cloud Dream’s technology is so strong that both sides’ native languages can be translated in real-time, allowing everyone to understand each other.
As a result, conflicts happen.
No one can say for sure which side started using profanity first, but before they even reached the middle game, both sides were shooting each other while spewing trash talk.
Then, a British player escalated the situation by bringing religion into the conversation.
Although the Ottoman Republic is now a secularized country, its predecessor, the Ottoman Empire, was indeed a hardcore and devout religious state.
The reformed Ottoman Republic is indeed a secularized country in name.
But in a country where 99% of people follow the same religion and the remaining 1% follow other religions, no matter how secularized it is, it cannot remain indifferent to insults to their faith.
Adding insult to injury, British players even dared to claim that the Ottoman Republic’s black tea was not authentic, lacking any sophistication, and a complete waste of tea leaves!
They even suggested that they come to England to learn “how refined people drink black tea.”
Without a doubt, the Ottoman Republic’s players were completely furious!
During the subsequent battles, they were no longer satisfied with long-distance fighting, they rushed forward with roars, preferring to use knives instead of bullets whenever they could!
Of course, killing with tank guns is always the best!
If both sides had strong command and execution ability, such an “irrational” state could have been a disadvantage.
But now that both sides are scattered, it’s a completely different story—
The players of the Ottoman Republic were all eager to tear the British players apart, sacrificing themselves fearlessly.
The British players, who were already at a disadvantage, were immediately hit with a heavy blow, their heads held down by the fierce offensive, forcing them to retreat step by step.
Nevertheless, they didn’t let up on their verbal attacks.
When Ottoman Republic assault players charged into their bases with explosives and anti-tank hand grenades, they still couldn’t resist taunting: “You’re so good at being human bombs, your faith must be very devout, right?!”
Hearing this, not only were the Ottoman Republic players on the battlefield furious, but the viewers watching the live broadcast also couldn’t stand it any longer, cursing aloud.
They not only cursed in their own live broadcast rooms but also rushed to the British anchor’s live broadcast room to curse the Brits.
The British anchor was also a bit dumbfounded.
At least as a public figure, Dan definitely wouldn’t participate in such tasteless actions— at least not publicly.
He and a few fans formed a small six-player team and chose the National War Mode to experience a 200-player battlefield together.
But now, he wishes he could slap himself!
Why couldn’t they just play a regular game? Why the National War Mode?
Now they’re stuck riding a tiger, unable to dismount!
As an ordinary anchor, he can’t command nearly a hundred players, and he certainly can’t control those who enjoy trash-talking on the battlefield.
He has already tried hard to appeal: “Everyone, please pay attention to gaming etiquette, and don’t attack other people’s beliefs and ethnic customs!”
Obviously, such appeals are having no effect whatsoever.
With gunfire and explosions all over the battlefield, who can hear his appeals?
Now Dan is even considering something: “Should I stop streaming?”
“If they keep cursing like this, will my live broadcast room be banned?”
No need to think about it; the torrents of unintelligible language flooding his live broadcast room are undoubtedly from netizens of the Ottoman Republic coming to insult them!
— The Ottoman Republic and the United Kingdom are both part of the European Alliance, and in terms of geography, the Middle East is quite separate from tightly knit European countries, but networking, commerce, transportation, and the like are interconnected.
UK netizens were not to be outdone, and similarly, they enthusiastically ran to the opposing side to curse back.
—— Players from the Ottoman Republic who were provoked to anger did not miss any opportunity to stab British players where it hurts.
Especially since the British players were being beaten on the battlefield, this upset many audience members all the more.
Are the players from the Ottoman Republic much stronger than those from the UK?
Not really.
In fact, it’s quite the opposite: as an old developed country, the United Kingdom has a more developed gaming industry compared to the Ottoman Republic.
In terms of the overall quality of players, the United Kingdom was actually stronger than the Ottoman Republic, which was the main reason why British players were extremely annoyed with this match.
So why were British players being suppressed in the match?
The key to the issue was quite simple: the internet cable.
Yes, it was just that blatant.
It had nothing to do with the market, economy, faith, technology, or anything like that.
It was all about internet speed.
Currently in the European market, many companies were seeking to cooperate with Cloud Dream, and most of the countries with substantial strength were included.
However, the progress in different countries varied.
The situation right now was: the sale of consoles had begun in many countries, but the construction of servers was not going so smoothly.
Small countries either had unsuitable locations or inadequate infrastructure, making it impossible to build the servers.
As a result, most European countries were still relying on the Moscow-based servers.
The fastest progress was being made by the server located in France, with all processes already completed and the server location chosen.
— As always, they chose the area with the highest population, which could cover nearly one-sixth of the entire national population – the Greater Paris Metropolitan Area.
Cloud Dream’s staff had already flown over to inspect the site, and it was now in trial operation, helping share the load of the Moscow servers.
However, other countries, especially the strongest ones like the United Kingdom and Germany, were not progressing as smoothly.
They insisted that the servers must be controlled by local enterprises under the pretext of “maintaining user privacy and information security”.
The United Kingdom even went a step further, demanding a security review of virtual reality technology.
Cloud Dream was unwilling to compromise.
And so, the situation stalled.
Under such circumstances, it was quite strange that British players could still buy Mirage Consoles, as their government did not entirely ban sales.
However, the Ottoman Republic had their own servers!
Thanks to their advantageous geographical location at the junction of Europe and Asia, relevant industries had developed rapidly after the cease-fire, with standard infrastructures and crucial geographical positions, making it an ideal place to build servers.
What’s more, their partners were not just ordinary companies, but the Foreign Trade Department of the Ankara Chamber of Commerce in the capital of the Ottoman Republic!
They were almost responsive to any requests from Cloud Dream and offered considerable tax incentives.
When Lincoln first heard about this, he found it a bit odd, but Jerome calmly analyzed it for him: it must have been influenced by geopolitical factors, as Europe was not entirely united, and the Ottoman Republic had been seeking balance between Europe and Daxia.
In any case, with green lights all the way, Cloud Dream quickly completed the construction of its server center in Ankara at lightning speed!
On one side, players had servers right in their own capital city, while players on the other side had to cross the sea and a lengthy distance to connect to the servers. No matter how advanced virtual reality technology was, it could not bridge such a gap.
With such an advantage of internet cables, the players of the Ottoman Republic eventually claimed victory in this match, beaming with pride.
British players, on the other hand, were furiously slamming the table.
But this was far from over!
As long as they chose the National Warfare mode, they had hardly ever won a game since then.
Not to mention the Asian countries, they hadn’t even won against their fellow Europeans!
What frustrated them the most was that they hadn’t even won against France!
Being mocked by the French players was even more unbearable for the British players than losing to the Ottoman Republic’s players, causing their morale to completely collapse.
It took them quite a while to finally realize the issue: As long as the server problem remained unsolved, they could not hope to win any National Warfare match against other countries.
Their anger finally found an outlet – cursing their domestic game companies, “Why haven’t you reached an agreement with Cloud Dream and built a powerful server center yet?”
“Can you afford the responsibility of humiliating the British Empire in front of the whole Europe?!”
…
The performance of British players was just the tip of the iceberg of Battlefield’s influence.
Looking across Europe and the Middle East, there was no shortage of countries with deep-rooted hatred for one another!
Russia and Germany fought, Poland and Russia fought, France and Germany fought, Poland and Ukraine fought, Portugal and Spain fought…
From randomly encountering each other in National Warfare mode, to quickly escalating into real skirmishes, and eventually developing into intense verbal battles over the internet.
For a time, the entire European internet was ablaze with the fires of war.
Commuting workers who knew nothing about Battlefield, opened their social networks to check the trending topics, almost believing that another world war had broken out.