Last week, we reported on an impending roleplaying event in Elite Dangerous that was set to influence the outcome of Premonition, a game-based novel by author Drew Wagar. What players did during the event to hunt down or defend accused assassin Salomé was expected to be incorporated into the book, including NPCs being killed off permanently.
I’m sad to report that while many players did rush to Salomé’s (as played by Wagar himself) defense, the event was predictably run off the rails by players. First, a multi-guild faction calling itself Premonition Allied Coalition (PAC), which was sanctioned by Wagar and ostensibly there to protect the NPC, allegedly began threatening and attacking non-PAC players who arrived in the event locations, causing extreme uproar across the Elite subreddit.
And that, according to Ars Technica, is when the chaos really began, as amid the pandemonium, Salomé’s ship was actually destroyed by a PAC member who was in fact a mole named Harry Potter (sigh) from gleeful and notorious Elite griefer group Smiling Dog Crew, who had convinced PAC it could be trusted this time, and MMO players for some reason believed them.
“The wolf wasn’t just given the keys to the henhouse – the wolf was escorted inside, seated at a table, and asked to personally select the chicken he wanted to eat,” AT put it.
Of course, some players believe it was planned that way all along, in spite of Wagar’s denial, while others are trying to learn from the experience.
“Some will accuse me of having scripted this event,” Wagar wrote on his blog. “Some will accuse me of seeding factions and sowing discord on the ..er.. discord. I would love to accept such a compliment, but I’m not that good. I can write a plot, but I cannot manipulate an entire playerbase to my whim.” Wagar does admit that “there was a lot that went wrong” and promises to “review it and learn from it.”
But most folks are just upset that the worst examples of gamers always manage to break the rules to win and get away with it. As one Redditor colorfully put it,
“What I ****ING HATE about this event is not that Salome died, not that the defenders screwed up, but that of all things, a god damn griefer, a menace (not in the cool way, more of the ‘someone else’s dog shitting in your yard’ kind of menace), an ***hole and a coward, with his SDC group of side-****s will get immortalized. Instead of all getting temp-banned for breaking the rules, combat logging and acting like mad psychopaths, they get a VIP spot in a ****ing book.”
We hear you dude.
Confirmed. Salomé is dead. #elitedangerous
— Drew Wagar (@drewwagar) April 29, 2017
