Tirisfal Glades, Undercity.
Undercity was built beneath the former capital of the Kingdom of Lordaeron. Aboveground stood the Ruins of Lordaeron, while the real Undercity lay deep beneath it. With its three-level layout, it was the capital city in World of Warcraft where players were most likely to get lost—and also the one where they were most likely to die.
"Hahaha, there's nobody here. We took Undercity!"
Freedom's massive raid had marched from the Hinterlands through Western Plaguelands, corpse-running all the way into Tirisfal Glades for a surprise attack on Undercity. Once they entered the gates and saw the deserted Ruins of Lordaeron, Freedom's players were thrilled.
They assumed all the Undercity players had rushed to Hillsbrad Foothills, leaving the city temporarily empty.
"Quick, take screenshots! I'm posting this everywhere later to announce that we took Undercity."
Some newbies were already itching to show off.
"Wait. Why aren't there any NPCs?" A few sharper players noticed something was off.
"You idiots, Undercity is underground. Of course there aren't any NPCs here."
A player who had participated in the closed beta felt embarrassed to be mixed in with such a bunch of clueless newbies and couldn't hold back from cursing them out. Still, he did not want to get kicked out of the guild, so he shut up immediately after that one line.
"Underground?"
The other newbies were baffled. "How do we get down there?"
As the guild leader, Merciless naturally knew Undercity was underground. After finishing his screenshot, he typed in guild chat, "Anyone who wants to see the real Undercity can go down and take a look. Once you're done, hearth back."
He had no intention of joining the front line. Now that the screenshot was taken, he could already hearth back to town.
NoobSlayer said, "Anyone going down into Undercity, follow me."
He loved showing off more than anything.
Bruiser said, "The bus to underground Undercity is leaving. Passengers boarding, hurry up and follow."
GrimBeater said, "Let's kidnap Sylvanas and bring her back as the bandit chief's wife."
The three of them had similar personalities and got along perfectly. They all loved showing off, and inside the guild they constantly bragged about their closed beta experience whenever they had the chance. Privately, they had gathered quite a few followers.
Merciless did not stop them. After all, there definitely would not be many players inside Undercity, and even if there were a few stragglers, their levels would not be that high. If they got killed by NPC guards, they could simply take rez sickness at the graveyard and hearth back.
The battle on the front line was intense. Thanks to the advantage of rezzing near The Sepulcher, the Horde had finally managed to hold against the Alliance and stabilize the situation.
The Alliance was fearless. Even though they had to corpse-run all the way from the Southshore graveyard to rez, they still showed no intention of giving up the assault.
The battle had reached a stalemate.
"Leader, Freedom has reached Undercity," DesertWanderer reported. His information was as reliable as ever.
Igor was extremely annoyed. "Their dirty little scheme actually worked."
David said disdainfully, "Trash. If they've got the guts, they should face the Horde head-on and fight their way to Undercity. What kind of skill does it take to corpse-run around the long way?"
Smooch said, "Freedom: disgrace of the Alliance."
Seeing everyone getting worked up, DesertWanderer continued, "Freedom corpse-ran the whole way. Half of them got separated on the road, so only half made it to Tirisfal Glades."
That was exactly what Gabryell had expected. For a first long-distance corpse run, anyone with weak mental endurance would die until they broke.
DesertWanderer continued, "After reaching Tirisfal Glades, some of them wanted to attack Brill, but the guards killed half of them again. In the end, only one raid group reached Undercity."
"A bunch of idiots," Susie said, voicing what everyone was thinking.
DesertWanderer said, "The remaining group took screenshots in the upper ruins of Undercity, then NoobSlayer led them down into the actual Undercity."
After Gabryell's earlier explanation, everyone understood that the real Undercity was built deep beneath the Ruins of Lordaeron.
"They seriously want to raid Undercity? Are they out of their minds?" Carlos was shocked. The guards in Tarren Mill were already level 55. As a capital city, Undercity's guards would definitely be even stronger.
DesertWanderer went quiet for a moment, then couldn't help typing /laugh. His character burst into laughter.
"To get into Undercity, you have to take an elevator down. When they saw the elevator doors open, Freedom's people swarmed in, and then…"
Gabryell could already guess what had happened. Undercity's reputation as the deadliest capital city came from the elevator connecting the Ruins of Lordaeron to the underground city. It was every Horde newbie's nightmare, and every Alliance player's nightmare the first time they tried to raid Undercity.
DesertWanderer stopped dragging it out. "Just as they rushed into the elevator, the doors closed. The thirty or so people who charged in all fell to their deaths!"
Pfft.
Several people who were drinking water sprayed it all over the floor.
"The Undercity death elevator. I'll take you guys to experience it sometime."
The first time Gabryell had followed his guild to raid Undercity, he had also been tricked by that elevator and died miserably at the bottom of the shaft.
"We're going to raid Undercity?" David asked, delighted.
Gabryell shook his head. "Raiding Undercity now would be brain-dead. We won't have the strength for it until level 60. Once we hit 60, I'll take you all to raid Undercity and Orgrimmar. We'll kidnap Sylvanas and kill Thrall."
"Good. Once we hit 60, I'm wiping out Undercity and Orgrimmar," David said excitedly.
"It's so laggy. Why did it suddenly get this bad?" Hugo said.
His computer was top-tier, yet even he was lagging worse and worse. Everyone else's computers were probably turning into slideshows.
"Yeah, I'm basically freezing every ten steps now."
"You can still move? I'm so lagged I'm just standing here staring into space."
"I fucking disconnected from the lag."
"Damn it, I was stuck for ten minutes without moving. When I finally moved again, I was already a ghost back at the Southshore graveyard."
"Trash Blizzard, trash servers."
Hugo's words stirred up everyone's anger toward Blizzard's garbage servers. Lag this bad was seriously ruining the game experience.
Gabryell controlled his Mage to cast Blizzard and found that the server really was laggier than before. A single Blizzard had more than ten seconds of delay.
"Let's hope Blizzard's server room didn't melt."
The more you feared something, the more likely it was to happen. Just a few minutes after Gabryell said that, he was kicked out of the game.
He had disconnected.
Gabryell hurriedly tried to log back in, but he couldn't get in. It stayed stuck on Connecting.
"Fuck, I disconnected," Carlos shouted.
"Me too," Igor said.
"Same here," Hugo said.
He even glanced at the time. It was only 10:50 p.m., not yet the dorm's power cutoff time.
Gabryell checked the network. No problem. Voice chat was still running.
"We disconnected. Did you guys drop too?"
Dreamshade's voice came through. "We disconnected too. Everyone dropped. Now nobody can get in. We're all stuck at the login screen. There must have been too many players, and the server crashed."
"Trash server. Fucking Blizzard," Gorak cursed.
SilkHair said, "Can't get into the other realms either. Looks like Blizzard's servers crashed."
Gabryell couldn't help laughing. He never would have expected the first thousand-player Alliance-Horde battle to end early like this.
A thousand words could only be condensed into one sentence:
Blizzard was incredible.
"We've been fighting all night. Everyone get some rest. Tomorrow, we'll go to Scarlet Monastery together."
After the excitement came emptiness. Blizzard's server crash had forcibly cooled everyone down. Since everyone had disconnected, they might as well take the opportunity to end the war and continue leveling tomorrow after the servers were fixed.
Gabryell exited the game, opened his browser, and went to the Azeroth National Geographic Forum.
Sure enough, the forum's atmosphere had shifted from Alliance and Horde players flaming each other to both sides uniting against Blizzard.
The thing that united Alliance and Horde players did not always have to be the Scourge or the Burning Legion. Sometimes, it was Blizzard's crappy servers.
The thousand-player Alliance-Horde battle on Tichondrius had crashed the game server. In a way, that was history in the making—and as one of the people who made it happen, Gabryell was thoroughly satisfied.
"Carlos, Igor, Hugo, get some rest. Tomorrow, we'll go to Scarlet Monastery together."
Gabryell took off his headset. After commanding all night, he really was exhausted.
He stood up and stretched. Tomorrow, he would wake up and keep grinding. Not only did he need to clear Scarlet Monastery Graveyard, he also had to reach level 40.