Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Fang Yue’s heart skipped a beat after he finished reading the thread.
“No way. My money tree will die after a month?”
On second thought, he realized the thread was actually right.
Everyone in the forum was professional gamers who lived on games and had in-depth insights about all games on the market. They knew better than normal people.
Five out of ten normal gamers would probably quit when they encountered problems in the game.
The remaining five would stay and do some research, but if they still could not overcome the problem, four out of five of them would quit.
The remaining one would be the enthusiast. He would probably spend a week or two finding a way around the problem but might eventually quit because of his personal reasons or because of the game itself.
However, professional gamers were not normal gamers. They existed to solve problems in the game. If they were able to solve the problem, they could charge normal players for their services.
Therefore, professional gamers spent days and nights studying the game. They tried their best to grasp every detail and every possible walkthrough in the game.
No matter how much a normal player loved the game, he could never invest all his time and energy into the game just to solve a problem.
Professional gamers could do it because it was their job. It became an advantage that they had over normal gamers. The advantage could then be transformed into financial gains.
The best example would be dungeon bosses with high-level difficulty.
Normal players did not have the time and energy to study the boss and the guide, hence they were unable to clear the dungeon run.
Professional gamers could help clear the dungeon and even assist the normal player through the dungeon. As long as the normal player could pay the fee, the professional gamer would not care even if the normal player died and did nothing in the dungeon.
The dungeon run was just one of many examples. Some even needed help to clear hidden missions or difficult puzzle-solving stages. Professional gamers studied them all, so all the normal players had to do was pay up.
Of course, there were normal players who could invest time, energy, and even money into the game, eventually surpassing the professional gamers, but such players were a minority.
There was a saying: never compare one’s hobby to another’s profession.
However, no matter how much a professional gamer studied the game, it would be meaningless if the normal players were not happy with the result. If the professional gamers invested their time and energy into the game and did not get the same level of return, their efforts would be worthless.
Professional gamers usually picked the most popular games to invest in.
Blue Ocean was Tensent’s newest cross-gen game that offered an unrivaled gaming experience. It was obviously the most discussed and most anticipated game recently. All the professional gamers were looking forward to earning big bucks in the game.
ColdWater’s thread was like its name—splashing a pail of cold water on the enthusiastic professional gamers and killing many heated anticipations.
Most of the replies in the thread contained a sense of doubt and grievance. Some of the players agreed and decided to follow ColdWater to quit the game. They would rather return to their old game for a steady flow of income and wait for the next popular game.
Fang Yue did not see this coming.
If Blue Ocean started a quitting trend among the professional gamer’s circle, what would it do to the normal players?
With that in mind, Fang Yue logged out of Dragon Play and went to the Blue Ocean official forum.
Compared to Dragon Play, which was a small gathering hub for the elites, Blue Ocean’s official forum was livelier than ever.
The contents of the thread were quite diverse, but most of them were problems that players encountered in the game such as flirting with NPCs, getting killed by other players, getting killed by NPCs, and getting killed by Wickeds in the wild.
Fang Yue had to give it to the players’ imagination and audacity. He saw a thread sharing that a player tried to steal a woman’s underwear and got caught. The player was cut in half and the body was still hanging at the entrance of the village.
After scanning through the threads, Fang Yue realized he was overthinking.
At the current stage, the normal players still had a lot of passion for the game and were enjoying testing out all kinds of weird stuff.
The only problem the normal players faced was the same one as what the professional gamers faced, which was the Lifespan.
Someone even started a protesting thread to voice their disapproval of the Lifespan system. They strongly urged the developers to give players the option to buy Lifespan with money or give players more attractive packages so that the players could live for a few days.
The players were eager to spend money on the game, but unfortunately, the developers only started a forum for the players to gather.
The forum was without a moderator, thus no one was there to maintain it, let alone getting official replies from the developers.
Not only were the professional gamers trying to figure out a way to overcome the short Lifespan, but even the normal players were also concerned. Solving the problem would certainly be a huge business opportunity.
Normal players were complaining about how short the starting Lifespan was whilst the professional gamers were trying to think of a way to overcome it. It was safe to say anyone who solved the problem would earn big bucks.
This fueled Fang Yue’s confidence again.
Time flew by quickly as he surfed the forum. He had a better understanding of the normal players’ needs and wants.
Trivial information should never be underestimated because the normal players would eventually be Fang Yue’s bosses since he wanted to make money from the game.
He had a glance at the sky outside the window. It was almost evening.
Fang Yue believed it was almost time. [Night Breathing] might be his last resort to save his character.
He turned off the forum and was about to log into the game.
Thud!
The door to the room beside his was opened.
“Is Sister Yuan awake?”
A slight hesitation later, Fang Yue put on his watch and lay down on his bed.
“Yue…Yue…Yueeeeee…”
Thud!
Fang Yue’s door was opened, and Sister Yuan barged in with messy hair. Her big googly eyes scanned the room and she saw Fang Yue on the bed. He had yet to enter the game.
“Did you just get off work? Great! I want to take a bath here. Can you cook me some instant noodles?”
‘Work?’
Fang Yue was too embarrassed to tell Sister Yuan that his game character was in a mess and that he had not ‘worked’ for the whole day.
“Okay, okay…” However, he put his watch down and went out to the kitchen.
A while later, the noise of the shower came from his bathroom.
Fang Yue added an egg and a piece of sausage to the noodles, and it was then that Sister Yuan came out from the bathroom with wet hair.
“It smells so good! You’ve gotten better at cooking!”
“Sis, it’s just noodles. There’s nothing good about it.”
Fang Yue told Sister Yuan to dry her hair first, but she ignored him. She sat down and started slurping the noodles.
“This is good! Yue, if you start a noodle business, it will surely be popular!
“The sausage! It’s so chewy! It’s to die for!”
Sister Yuan gobbled up the bowl of noodles and even drained the soup. She sighed a long breath after finishing the last drop.
Then, Fang Yue took the bowl and chopsticks away and tidied up the table.
She propped her cheek on her palm and giggled. “Yue, on second glance, I think you are quite handsome.”
“No, not just ‘quite’, it’s ‘very’! I’m very handsome!”
“Hahaha! You shameless b*stard!”
After fooling around for a while, Sister Yuan suddenly put on a long face. “Frankly speaking, I envy professional gamers like you. You just have to stay at home, play games, and make money. Unlike me, I’ve got to work in a bar on a graveyard shift. My day is upside down, and I still have to deal with the blind dates my family has arranged.
“The guy from yesterday was disgusting! If he’s half as handsome as you, I would have finished my dinner before going to work.”
Sister Yuan’s topic jumped from professional gamers to blind dates in just seconds, but it was understandable because she was a girl.
Fang Yue did not answer as he continued washing the bowl.
Professional gamers should not be envied because there were a lot of them who could not even afford a meal after hustling for a few years.
In order to be successful, one must have the required talents.
With that in mind, a cute face moved closer to Fang Yue from the side.