It had been a week since the incident at the Market. It was now the 30th of April. When the clock struck midnight, the preliminaries for the Tournament for the Best officially started. After one week, the level of all four members of Underworld Frontline had increased. Currently, the highest-level member was Feng Bujue. He was on Level thirty-four and halfway to the next level. Passing Rain, Laughing Soul, and Xiao Tan were all at Level 33.
Actually, if Brother Jue really wanted to focus on leveling, based on the natural advantage of forty percent extra EXP that he could get from each scenario, it would be easy for him to get to the top spot on the level ranking. But that was not part of his plan.
First, he did not wish to have a big level gap with the rest of his guild members because that would greatly increase the difficulty of team scenarios. Also, it wouldn’t help his mastery growth. Secondly, after most gaming guilds had passed the threshold of Level 30, the level ranking had remained pretty much the same. If a person suddenly shot up to the top without warning, they would be easily exposed. It would defeat the purpose of having one’s name hidden because once you joined a queue, you would run into other players and they could see your level. In Thriller Paradise, one could count with one’s fingers the number of players whose levels were over thirty. Those near Level thirty-five were mostly professional celebrity players. So, if Brother Jue kept it up, he would quickly rise to fame.
Of course, there was another reason Brother Jue gave up the EXP reward every time—he wanted to draw excellent quality equipment. The Magical Disintegrator was a blackhole. Other than the three equipment it had sucked on the morning of the 24th, in the past seven days, it had been given another ten excellent quality equipment. Of those ten, eight were from the extra reward and two were cheap items that Brother Jue got from the Auction House. When Brother Jue operated it the second time, he added in three more equipment, and the result was a failure. The success rate then had accumulated to 6.01 percent.
During the third operation, naïve as he was, he told himself that third time’s the charm, so he tossed in all four equipment at once. Well… failure was the result.
By then, the success rate had risen to 10.01 percent. When it came to the fourth time, Brother Jue was already like a gambler stuck to a slot machine. Nothing mattered anymore. So he drew three more equipment and suffered another failure. The success rate rose up to 13.01 percent, but Feng Bujue’s patience had dropped down to 0. It was a good thing he didn’t go crazy.
Coincidentally, compared to before, in the past seven days, Brother Jue’s probability of drawing excellent quality equipment had increased. Even though sometimes he drew stuff like stone and baseball bats, he often drew something of above-average quality. It was probably because of his level. After all, he was over Level 30, and the reward of ‘drawing a random equipment corresponding to your level’ wouldn’t give him a pile of sh*t. It was surprising.
Unfortunately, while the quality of drawn equipment had increased, there was none that was of value. Most of them were useless and would not sell at the Auction House. Even if they did not go into the disintegrator, they would be sold at the shop. Brother Jue did not feel so bad sending them into the machine. Therefore, Feng Bujue wasn’t really a gambler. At least he was one that had not lost his mind or else he would have removed the equipment he had on and tossed them into the machine as well.
Compared to Brother Jue, in the past ten days, the performance of the other players was truly amazing. As the date of the tournament was approaching, many chain effects occurred.
The first happened in the forum.
During this period, the number of thread counts reached a second high point after the game’s the open beta. Threads like “How to Get to Level 30 in XX Days” (XX could mean 10, 8, or 7. Some even dared to put 5) were everywhere, and every one of them gathered tons of views. The replies were quite interesting too. For example, there was this fella who would reply to every single post. He would reply, “If you are reading this, you are already wasting your time, which you could have used to train in-game.”
Other than that, threads like “My Opinion on the Tournament” and “How to Not Run into Professional Players During Which Queueing Time in the Month of May” had high view counts as well. Honestly, reading these threads were a real waste of time. If research could help one win a tournament, then the football league would have been filled with nerds on the computer, not actual athletes.
There were other threads that were simply guides. Some were titled “Weapon Choice and Skill Combination for Sharpshooter” or “Overpowered Nature of Summoning Mastery.” The standard of these threads was all over the place. They were related to the OP’s gaming standard and their writing skill. Some were good players, but they might not have written good guides. Some were good writers, but they could not have been good at the game itself. The key issue was that Thriller Paradise was a game where a person’s individuality was of extreme significance. Following another person’s guide might end up backfiring.
Then, we shall talk about the game itself.
Players at all levels were busy training. Those who hadn’t reached Level thirty tried to reach that goal, and those over Level thirty busied themselves with training and gathering strength. In all gaming modes, the queue time for Killing Game increased substantially. Most players like Xiao Tan who didn’t like to PK would be pulled by the tide to join the zeitgeist of ‘training with other players’ so that they would get used to battling real players.
The situation at the Auction House was explosive. For the past twenty-six days, the popularity, social influence and player number for Thriller Paradise was steadily climbing. On the night before the Tournament began, there was a burst of activity. The increase in player number, concurrent online player, and online time meant that more scenarios were being generated and more items were being brought out from the scenarios, thus increasing the items sold at the Auction House.
As the first big event of Thriller Paradise, many players were excited about Tournament for the Best. After they became ‘old players’, they could tell the newbies, “Tsk… once upon a time, during the first tournament, I…”
This was about pride and honor. In contrast, when this happened and you were inside Thriller Paradise, but you hadn’t reached Level thirty, or if you entered the preliminary but was disqualified before finishing the fifty games, then there would be nothing to talk about. There would be a feeling of ‘I am in the martial world, but my legend is not heard of in said martial world. If you really want to know, all I have for you are some sob stories.’
Of course, players like Passing Rain and Laughing Soul were exceptions. They were true casual players, and they were rich whales. They didn’t care about ranking and didn’t want to become famous. They wouldn’t join tournaments they weren’t interested in.
Lastly, since we’re done with the players, we shall talk about the gaming company.
With the tournament approaching, Dream Inc. maintained their usual style—non-activity to counter activity. They were like the lynchpin that had everything under their control. Their loyal fans were very devoted to them.
Theoretically speaking, during this period, a normal company would strike while the iron’s hot and released many different ‘booster packs’ to grab money.
For instance, things like a pack of some special items could be prepared. It could be called “Tournament of the Best Preparation Pack,” and it could be sold for 998 RMB to lure the whales and earn some easy money. Or they could give discounts for the Double EXP booster, or they could offer ‘Buy two Get one Free’ promos.
They could also push out some new items like Five-time EXP boosters or cards to lower scenarios’ difficulty. It might destroy the game’s balance, but for the sake of ‘sales number’ and with a ‘limited time offer’ label tagged onto them, they could openly suck the player base dry. They could even have a bundle sale where they could offer gaming hubs with free virtual items.
Such tricks had been done by other cunning companies in the past, and such tricks never failed. With Thriller Paradise’s current popularity, Dream Inc. could have easily done the same to rake in the cash. But Dream Inc. was that unique. At such a crucial moment, they did not do anything of the sort.
Even the exchange rate for Game Coins and RMB was made steady. It only moved from 1:2000 to 1:1900. Its fluctuation was not very unstable. Obviously, Dream Inc. didn’t want to ruin the in-game economy of the Tournament. This proved to the player base their integrity, and the players gained more confidence in the game. This vote of confidence meant well to the players who never spent in-game voluntarily, and as a consequence, they opened their wallets to support such a clean and honest company.
But there was another thing about Dream Inc. Once they decide to do something, you could bet it would be jaw-dropping.
As expected, on the 30th of April, they announced a shattering news on the official website.
At 5 pm, the actual rules of the preliminary, semi-finals, and finals were revealed, and they were respectively called the Battle of the Bug, Battle of the Cocoon, and Battle of the Butterfly. The three battles would decide the Top 3,000, Top 100, and the Top 50.
After these three battles, the remaining fifty players would be automatically qualified to join the real Tournament for the Best.
Another piece of news was announced alongside this. “At midnight on the 1st of May, at the end of the registration period, the system will have already selected ten VIP players among the registered players. These ten are automatically qualified to join the Battle of the Butterfly.”