With the upcoming shutdown of the servers for Ragnarok Games’ deep dive VRMMO, ‘Ashes of the Primordial’, the player log of those online for the final night was depressingly empty-looking. The game was revolutionary in its brutal realism. Realistic pain levels, base starting stats and abilities, reward systems that allowed players to advance leaps and bounds ahead of their peers and more were parts of what made the game stand alone as both a product idolised and reviled for its inequality between players. The company defended their actions saying that, among other reasons, not everyone was born equally, and the real-life skills and condition of their players is something they wanted to be rewarded and reflected within their game, at least at the start of character creation. That was part of the balancing between players, not everyone might be equal at the start, but luck was the great equaliser and hard work and chance encounters could elevate even the most dismal status into that of a god. Some players even found difficulty once their status got too high-levelled in trying to handle keeping up with their own abilities and speed in combat.

The reason that the game was shutting down despite arguably still being in the prime of its business is another of the quirks of the company running the game. The final world boss of the game, Sutr of Primordial Fire, had been beaten, and they had maintained from the start that that was the be all and end all of their world. Six months after the boss was finally felled, so that the fellers could have the chance to revel in their sweet loots, the servers would be shut down and the company would begin work on something else.

Those six months had finally passed, and the night of closure was upon the players. The vast, vast majority had already called it quits months ago, seeing no real point in six months of effort that would only be a waste of time. Some few tried to spend six months spending every copper bit they made in their play time on half a year of legendary celebrations. Fewer still were those who tried to maximise their grinding to reach the highest level they possibly could, just for the challenge of it. That summed up the actions of the entire remaining player base save one individual. In fact, that individual was something of a legend and a mystery almost as much as those lore-infused tales provided by the game itself.

He was the one who had effectively single-handedly ended the game by soloing the final boss. A feat believed to be impossible had been handily achieved by Ammanas, Guild master and sole member of the Ashen Verdict. Curious already to outsiders in that he was part of a guild with no other members, he was legendary for his silence and mystique. No player had ever heard his voice, had a conversation or partied up with him. He ran the entire game solo, save for the minions he summoned as an extension of his class. And with only 5 minutes until server shutdown, he finally stepped out of a portal within the boss room of Sutr after a gruelling six months of non-stop battle. The funny thing was, that was actually the reward for defeating Sutr. An opportunity to gain unheard of power, an apparent kick in the guts for those who would gain it for they would have no chance of using it. It was a sort of arena gauntlet featuring waves of ever more powerful and difficult opponents and the chance for betting on the outcome. Realistically, the developers would only expect the raid team that bested Sutr to last maximum 100 waves.

In the interest of not hampering the rewards and potential of the encounter by assigning their own preconceived ideas of how good a team could possibly be, they assigned an AI as overseer for the battle and rewards, giving it free reign to design increasingly difficult waves and therefore increasingly greater rewards. 100 waves, depending on the number of breaks utilised, longer breaks being allowed every 10 waves with only a half-minute between individual waves, would take a maximum of a day for a raid team capable of defeating Sutr. Strange then that Ammanas would only complete the encounter six months to the day of finishing the World Boss fight. He almost drove the AI mad in its task to find increasing jumps in difficulty, with the fights towards the end practically being a war between Gods.

Ammanas was the product of a perfect combination of base stats, hard work and chance encounters. There was no one on the planet more gifted than him when it came to reaction time, intelligence, tactical planning, speed and so on. With a work ethos that even an 80hr a week worker would admire, and unbelievable luck in finding hidden areas and quests, chance encounters with NPCs combined with the benefit of not having to share rewards with party or guild members, he snowballed his way into the top position on most conceivable leader boards the game cared to come up with.

He actually started the 8-year career of playing the game as a beta tester for Ragnarok Games, helping them test the most hardcore aspects of the game in development. As reward and thanks for testing so extensively for them he was given certain advantages that lasted him until the end. Bottomless storage, an evolving mount from the start and all tiers of riding skills as well as a custom skill of his own design within reason. He chose to bargain the skill for the ability to train any and all companions of his with combat AI’s that were adaptable and could evolve and level with him. This gave his summons and pets and even his mounts the abilities to improve through combat or training he gave them, albeit they started at level 1 once they contracted with him. This also gave his companions unique personalities that grew along with him too, something quite useful for spicing up the life of someone who plays solo. Another boon he received that worked in the favour of everyone is that he asked the developers not to put a limit on the number of crafting trades a single character could develop at any one time, as long as they were willing to spend the time and effort, and often stacks of gold, required to max any and all professions, they were welcome to it.

He spent an entire year of his AotP career in maxing every trade and learning every recipe. Many of the players didn’t realise that some of the best gear in the game came from dismantling corpses of bosses and then making the armour yourself, with a suitable level of profession of course. His entire gear set was self-made using template recipes and substituting boss materials in the place of standard ones. He still had the materials from Sutr sitting in his storage on top of the item drops from killing the boss. He was lacking the spare time for making anything with them, spending all his online time of the last 6 months in gruelling combat, much more challenging than even the boss fight with Sutr once it got to the higher-level waves. He lost track of the wave counter and the AI overseer found it funny to withhold the information from him, even until the end, but his estimates placed it close to ten thousand. It was worth it.

Titles are rewards for achieving feats of strength, acquiring lucky fortunes and being the first individual to complete a given task. They also came with tangible benefits, awarding bonus stats, unique abilities or even legendary items associated with the story that provided the title. Killing Sutr gave him two different titles. One was called ‘Slayer of Primordia’ and allowed him to absorb power from defeated enemies much the same way a Primordial did, born as they were from chaos and beings of pure energy given form. That power was different from foe to foe, sometimes stat points, sometimes unique skills, sometimes health and mana to add to his total pool. The other title was called ‘Unbounded’ and removed his level cap. A strange reward some would think considering after Sutr there weren’t too many challenging enemies to give suitable experience. However, taking into consideration an arena gauntlet with ever more powerful and higher levelled enemies it was actually quite the opportunity.

An opportunity embraced with open arms by Ammanas. The level cap for Ashes of the Primordial was 250 for players and NPCs and 255 for raid bosses. A homage to the octet integer value utilised by most games of the 20th and 21stCentury with character levels. His current level, however, was 1001. Most stats came from the equipped gear of a player and titles, however just from the base stat increase from being such a high level, his stats were nearly 25 times the standard of high-level players total stats including equipped gear prior to Ammanas actually equipping any gear or stat boosting titles. He actually asked the AI overseer to enable him to limit his stats with a toggled ability, to which it complied on the basis that such a valiant effort was deserving of an extra reward especially when the desired request was actually reducing his power, albeit on a toggle.

With the ability to rest for the next few minutes, Ammanas once again began to work his way through the rewards, both items and the less tangible kind, as well as his status and latest attributes to distribute. In this manner, the countdown passed leisurely along until the final 30 seconds. Server announcements came blaring across thanking players for the patronage of the game, and for their loyalty in staying until the very end. With well wishes and the promise of an even grander adventure waiting in Ragnarok’s next game, the announcement heralded the last moments of virtual light the realm of Ashes of the Primordial was going to see. All the remaining players across the various realms, planets, continents, cities and within their own player and guild housing, looked up to the sky as the countdown hit 10 seconds. And as one their voices rang out to accompany those final flashing digits as they hit 0 and it all faded to black, the players being forcefully ejected from the servers and returned to the start-up hub of their dive pods.

However, the waiting white light of the hub never greeted Ammanas’ eyes. Instead his consciousness too faded to black along with the server, only to awaken to unfamiliar sights when his all-too-realistic, tired eyelids cracked open.