Chapter 71-2: Forum Battle (2) |
One hour later.
Reality, Humanity Rising forum.
The number of replies on Dong Wei’s post kept climbing as large numbers of players who had bought Dark Land joined the fray.
They immediately began bombarding players like Li Zheng with replies.
The replies were filled with phrases like: ‘stupid dog,’ ‘Lunar Eclipse colonist,’ ‘twisting black and white,’ and ‘loyal dog defending its master.’
These replies infuriated Li Zheng and the others even further.
Grind Kings Chat Group.
Game Gold-Farmer: Good grief, were we being too polite? We called him out for spreading rumors and he won’t even admit it. Still playing dumb, and now he’s hired a bunch of paid trolls to gang up on us. I’m furious.
Dirt Poor: Online rumor-spreading these days is insane. A completely fabricated post actually got so much support from netizens. People are even piling on to insult us over a post that’s obviously fake. If everything he said was true, I’d just shut up and take the blame, but the problem is, we’re the ones telling the truth. Why are all these idiot netizens siding against us?
Family-Sharing Stepdad: Exactly. We’re the ones who’ve actually experienced the game firsthand. We know how good it is. The main issue is that the Lunar Eclipse race released too few purchase slots, so now there are tons of cloud players online. Whatever someone casually says, they believe it like gospel. Completely brainless.
Fun Without Spending: Let’s go to the in-game forum to rally people. I’m so mad I’ve been tagged in over 200 replies, and the insults are getting nasty. I can’t swallow this.
Game Gold-Farmer: Let’s go. In-game forum rally. The in-game forum is full of real players like us who love Dark Land. I’m sure many will back us up.
Ten minutes later, a new post appeared on the Monster World in-game forum.
The poster was none other than Li Zheng. As one of the first players, he had posted many newbie guides on the forum and had gathered quite a bit of attention.
His post quickly received a flood of replies.
[Let me tell everyone something infuriating: I’ve been cyberbullied…]
Poster: Game Gold-Farmer
Content: The reason is that while browsing the Humanity Rising Forum – Dark Land section, I saw a post where someone was viciously spreading rumors and slandering Dark Land’s gameplay experience, mentioning things like system feedback, modeling details, scene bugs, and so on.
All the brothers here have actually played the game and know that these statements are completely made up, fabricated purely to slander the game, not a single claim is true. Outraged, I led a few brothers to confront the poster directly. But unexpectedly, the other side paid for an army of trolls, and a bunch of people who didn’t even buy the game jumped in to pile on…
—
Endless Night: Just reading this makes me mad. Logging off now to go support Brother Gold-Farmer.
Dark Land Is Fun: After reading the post, my fists are clenched. This guy dared say Dark Land isn’t a groundbreaking game? What utter scum. Logging off now to join the crusade!
Explorer: This game has given me plenty of frustrating experiences too, but its freedom is absolutely top-tier. Turning that into a point of slander is nonsense. I’m signing up for battle.
Vosnidia: Bro, sell me some more Sacrificial Power, haven’t seen you selling for days now. You’re supposed to be a gold-farmer but switched to power-player mode? But on this matter, I’ve got your back. Calling in my guild brothers for battle.
Li Zheng’s post rapidly gained popularity, with more and more players joining the fight and logging off to join the Humanity Rising forum battle.
Dong Wei’s post soon became a full-blown battleground of verbal warfare between both sides.
The post’s popularity skyrocketed, quickly getting pinned to the forum homepage’s trending discussions.
This also attracted more spectators to join in.
Many players who hadn’t bought the game were left completely confused after reading both sides’ arguments.
Fishing Alone for Eternity: I’m totally baffled by your arguments. You’re all players of the same game, yet your views are completely different? Sure, players may have different experiences, but your opinions are night and day. One side says there’s lag, the other says there’s none at all. These are very straightforward experiences. How can there be such wildly different perceptions? I suspect one of you sides is full of cloud players.
Artificial Idiot: Tsk tsk, reading through this whole thing, both sides flaming each other is quite the spectacle. Feels like ancient times, watching the art of language evolve in this thread. Love it. Keep fighting, must have a winner! (cheering.jpg)
Sunflower: This is hilarious. If you were arguing over game mechanics, that would be understandable. After all, what some people find fun, others might not. But you’re arguing over optimization issues? That should be crystal clear. Why is there even a debate?
Vosnidia replied to Sunflower: Exactly. If they were criticizing the gameplay, I wouldn’t even bother arguing. Everyone has different tastes, no matter how good a dish is, some people won’t like it. Differing opinions are understandable. But they’re attacking things that are objectively true or false. Spreading fabricated rumors and slander is simply infuriating.
Dark Hunter replied to Vosnidia: I only saw this because it was pinned on the homepage. I’m not friends with either side. As someone who got into the second batch of game slots, I stand with the truth. I think you guys really have a problem, and I even suspect you’re cloud players. If you’d really played the game, you wouldn’t say this. The game’s great, but optimization issues do exist. Yet you keep denying it. Disgusting.
Is This a Beaver? replied to Dark Hunter: Who’s disgusting? Don’t pretend you stand with truth. You’re just a paid troll for the other side. Second batch, my ass. If you really played, you wouldn’t say such trash.
Brighter Than The Sun replied to Is This a Beaver?: Stop messing around, cloud player. How much are you earning doing this? Working so hard to whitewash.
Divine Wings replied to Brighter Than The Sun: (bank account balance.jpg) Here, verify whether it’s real or not. I want to ask you: how much are you earning? Working so hard to spread slanderous lies for money, aren’t your hands burning?
—
As time went on, the intensity of the flame war in the comment section kept escalating, drawing even more players into the battle.
What began as mutual accusations of slander escalated to personal insults. Eventually, players on both sides even started posting their bank balances and property deeds to prove their financial strength, accusing the other side of being nothing but disruptive paid trolls.
The fierce flame war eventually caught the attention of the forum admins.
The battle between pirated-game players and legitimate-game players finally came to an end at 1 a.m.
The post, which had reached 100,000 replies, was deleted by Humanity Rising forum officials, and everyone who had commented received a 24-hour ban.
However, neither side admitted defeat. Both sides remained convinced that the other was nothing but paid trolls and not real players.
After all, these were issues that should have been crystal clear, yet the other side kept twisting the truth. What else could it be but paid trolls?
The only mystery that left both sides puzzled was: where did the other side find so many paid trolls, and why did they all seem so financially well-off?
This became evident from the flood of bank account balances, property deeds, and other documents posted.
After being analyzed by AI, the images were verified to have no signs of Image editing manipulation and were confirmed authentic.
After returning to Dark Land and Monster World, both sides resumed discussing the incident on their respective in-game forums.
But in their own territories, their views were echoed by other players of the same game, with no opposing voices appearing.
Thus, the first dramatic clash between both sides came to an end.
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