[Requiem]
It was a game that swept the MMORPG market off its feet 8 years ago, me included. I was fresh out of college after graduating a year early and lacking motivation.
That's when I discovered [Requiem]. It was unlike any other game I played. Heck, I wasn't even into games until I played it on a whim. The unique and versatile characters, the smooth running attacks, top tier aesthetics and world building, it was truly the best of its time.
That was until one day, it randomly went on a 'maintenance break' and never returned.
I waited and waited, days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, until it hit the one year mark. I was rotting at home like a couch potato while mourning this cursed game.
I was so frustrated I did everything I could to get into the development team of M&A even though my major had nothing to do with software engineering.
Conveniently, my resume was rather colourful from the various jobs I've had throughout college, and by a stroke of luck, I was accepted as an intern, not in the development team, but quality assurance. And so began my journey into hell itself.
At the beginning, work wasn't half bad. I was just an intern with no real responsibilities. On top of that, I've been told that I'm rather perceptive when it comes to reading people. Teamwork was no trouble for me so it didn't take long for me to fit in. Work was peaceful. Home was even more peaceful, however I was still being kept awake at night.
Every night I was haunted with nightmares of [Requiem] being permanently discarded. The accumulation of dreams led me to bear an unconscious animosity towards my boss who had given the greenlight for the removal of my favourite game.
Perhaps it was karma for taking out my frustrations on an innocent man but from then on, my workload quadrupled. As the name implies, my job was to test out pre-released games and report any bugs to my mentor who would report to the development team who came up with solutions.
Rather easy, wouldn't you say? I thought so too. Haha…Hahahahaha… No matter how much you love a game, playing it over and over, just to repeat it once again - well you get the point. It's just modern day torture. The game I was in charge of testing just so happened to be my beloved [Requiem].
Apparently there was an underlying issue with the coding of the default character the player chooses, causing the company to place the game under maintenance. The problem was, after months of coding, no one could figure out the error, hence the year long maintenance break.
Even after I had joined the company, there was no progress despite the daily attempts to identify the cause of such an error. And since it was a bug on the main character, I had to repeat the game until I reached max level. I had to start over after every single attempt at fixing the bug.
Every single daily attempt made by every member of the development department. If I do the math, that's 25 developers, across 230 days a year (not including forced overtime), for a grand total of 7 and a half years…
Yes. I have completed every possible quest for [Requiem], acquired every possible item, including hidden ones a grand total of 43,125 times.
It was only 6 months ago when I was on my 43,126th walkthrough that I discovered a simple solution to the issue that has kept both the quality assurance team and development team in a loop.
It was a fluke, I had only noticed it due to the endless walkthroughs I had completed throughout the years. It was so simple that everyone had overlooked it.
The issue was soon fixed by my seniors in development and I was finally free from this hell. Or so I thought.
My lucky discovery was puni- I mean rewarded with an unwanted promotion, putting me in charge of the [Requiem] section of M&A as the game was re-entered into the market after a long 8 years.
Of course, to say it was ahead of its time was an understatement. The fact that the company never gave up on it after so long was proof. Despite its almost decade-long maintenance break, [Requiem] blew up on the gaming charts just 48 hours upon its return, and that brings us to today.
It had been exactly a month since [Requiem] was up and running again, yet I was still stuck to this old task. I glanced at the towering documents, then at my computer.
My cursor lingered above [Requiem]. It was like a curse that would never leave me. My love and obsession for this game had fully transformed into pure and unfiltered hatred.
After my 212th time completing the game I had wondered why I continued to work, yet under my mentor's persistence I kept going until my 1034th round. I contemplated my life to a point where I was having very serious thoughts. After the 5,078th round I had already mentally checked out.
I was running on autopilot for the majority of the gameplay. When I hit the 10,000 mark I was able to get to max level in a mere 4 hours, and by that point I was too far gone to just quit. Now, after my 43,126th walkthrough, even seeing the app icon is enough to send shivers down my spine.