So it came to be that I did face my Judgment, and I sat between that greatest of all Game-Masters o’er all the online games, and she did declare: “Lo, I have read of thy deeds in this, the Book of Games. Thou hast sinned against mine Commandments in word and deed, and in your heart you did err against conduct. You didst not bring Joy to your fellows or congratulate them on the Goodest of Games; you rolled Need when thy need was little; you didst bear false witness upon the noobs; and you didst seek Exploits and Engines of Cheats when you knew this was Prohibited.”
And so it came to be that I was remanded to the custody of He that Sits within the Spire of Bone for my punishment, and he did laugh, and he did speak to me. “I shall cast you into the most accursed dungeons within online games, and I will speak these curses unto you as you enter,” he said. “There you shall suffer, and there you will remain. You will hear the book of my curses.”
1. Blackrock Depths, World of Warcraft
You will be lost within these hateful halls for all eternity. You will journey and you will find a hallway and you will fight, and you will bleed, and you will manage to struggle your way through and only realize when you have looped back around an hour later that you have gone in a circle and the enemies have returned to haunt you once more. There is no path forward and yet somehow you have not won. In the fifth year of your life within this mountain you shall begin to know some iota of the hate that you have spread upon the land with your careless action and you will cry for a boss fight that will not come. Then there will be a bar fight.
2. The Tower at Paradigm’s Breach, Final Fantasy XIV
Witness the ruinous worthlessness of your ability to strategize as you watch scores of your allies fall, time and again, to every single attack unleashed upon you. Feel the numbness as you explain that everyone needs to perform one simple action, only for them to do nothing of the sort. Feel the crush of despair as you are knocked, effortlessly, from a board arranged with blocks into an endless, helpless abyss. Feel the frustration of your advance stymied forever, unceasing, unchanging, unallowed.
3. Stormtalon’s Lair, WildStar
Once, you believed yourself to be strong. You believed that you had nobility and righteousness and you could exercise your will upon the world. Now you will be forced to reckon with your weakness. Your inability. The sour, helpless taste that rests within your mouth as you watch your efforts slam into nothingness. You will fail, and then you will fail again, and at the end of it you will be forced to acknowledge that you deserve to fail and this is right and proper.
4. Lady Grey Task Force, City of Heroes
Did you think you were forgotten? Did you think you were forgiven? Did you think, in your hubris, that you could omit parts of team composition? You were a fool and a child of fools. Watch as your preparation is broken across the stones of an unavoidable burden. See yourself locked halfway through your execution. Know pain.
5. Molten Core, World of Warcraft
The abyss is not finished with you. The abyss will never be finished with you. In the heights of your arrogance you presumed yourself to be of the elite. You believed that you were part of an exclusive class. You thought yourself above others. This moment is here to inform you that you were not merely somewhat mistaken, you were a fool. You are above no one. You are below. You are ablative meat, and it is in that function and presence you will be remembered.
6. Ordelle’s Caves, Final Fantasy XI
What lies here, you ask? Pain. Pain is stored here. There is no safety and no great treasure, and you will not know the path. Look upon all sides and you will find yourself marooned. Left? Right? Up? Down? Directions are meaningless to you, hope is fruitless. Seek something of minor value and you will find nothing.
7. Taral V, Star Wars: The Old Republic
There is an objective. You know what you must do. It is a story. But that story will not progress. You will not accomplish anything. You will not achieve anything. You will be stuck, forever, fighting a new soldier who by all accounts appears to be identical to every other one except this one has a dog. The last one had a dog. If you wish to imagine eternity, picture an endless stream of dogs. Dog after dog, forever more dogs, and every time you manage to remove one dog another dog is ahead of you. More dogs. Forever more dogs.
8. Strayborough Dreadwalk, Final Fantasy XIV
You understand causal relationships, or at least, you thought you did. One thing happens and then another does. But that is the old order. That is what used to be happening. What is happening now? It is unpredictable. There is no longer a manifest connection between past events and present events. You will suffer through a world wherein one thing occurs and it has nothing to presage it, nothing to follow it, an endless string of things occurring as islands of action with no cause or effect.
9. The Grineer Asteroid Fortress tileset, Warframe
Once you believed that sin was without consequence. You will learn the error of your ways, and it will not forgive you. Down every hallway is pain, sparking agony, fear, a twist and a turn and no clear destination. In the corner of your vision there is a destination. Somewhere, you hear the cries of battle. Your weapon is cool and unfired. Pace out the halls of your agony and know that you can find no succor here, no objectives, just cold and darkness and fear running to your very core.
10. Gnomeregan, World of Warcraft
And here will be when your punishment meets its apex. Because here it all comes together, the lack of direction, the constant pain, the endless suffering, the complete and constant breaking of your will as you never move forward… and some part of you snaps. You give in. It is here, within these blighted and abyssal halls, that you will find yourself inexplicably craving them. Your arms will reach forth to embrace your torment, to draw it close to you, and in this fathomless abyss of suffering you will find something you know not how to describe as anything but contentment.
This will be your punishment. To be trapped within horrors and to be delighted by them. So sayeth I now, unto forever. And there shall be a noise like the screaming of doves and a dial-up modem, waiting in queue forevermore.
Everyone likes a good list, and we are no different! Perfect Ten takes an MMO topic and divvies it up into 10 delicious, entertaining, and often informative segments for your snacking pleasure. Got a good idea for a list? Email us at justin@massivelyop.com or eliot@massivelyop.com with the subject line “Perfect Ten.”
