One of the questions that sometime comes up with friends and fans about The World and the PVP battles that are described in the stories are questions in regards to the numbers of players in each guild. I’ve heard a few times that a thousand or more players seems like an awful lot of people for a guild. So, I thought it would be a good topic to bring up for discussion. In my days of playing Anarchy Online and World of Warcraft (the classic versions of both), guilds were massive. When I moved over to the open Beta of World of Warcraft, I started a small guild of nearly five hundred players.
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Yes, in terms of guild sizes, five hundred players were barely a blip on the the radar. Most decent sized guilds had something in the range of a thousand to three thousand players. Platinum sized guilds were usually in the five to eight thousand range of players. Any guilds smaller than a thousand weren’t usually taken seriously by the larger guilds on the server. These simple facts became obvious when we had a guild of less than fifty players on Anarchy Online.

Anarchy Online had land that each guild could take ownership of that offered extra bonuses of health and other stat bonuses to the entire guild. Notum Wars, the Anarchy Online add-on that introduced land ownership and PVP, put the larger guilds in complete control over the land ownership aspect of the game. The only way you could compete against such guilds were to be a large guild with an international membership. Yes, and international membership. Without having international players, there was no way for the small and regular sized guilds to protect their land around the clock from the Large and Platinum sized guilds that could launch a force against another guilds holdings at any time of the day or night.

When I moved with my friend to World of Warcraft’s open Beta, we decided to put together a guild of non-assholes. Asshats and PKers were rampant in the MMO world. This could be regulated to an extent by the use of people refusing to team up with known ninja looters or crappy playing players, but if the entire guild were a bunch of PKing fucktards, there wasn’t much you could do about their anti-social behavior. Well, you couldn’t if they were one of the Platinum sized guilds. Otherwise, players can do amazing things when they work together on a server. What my friends and I ended up doing was fighting these players when and wherever they were being assholes.

For the most part this worked, except when those assholes were a platinum sized guild. Usually this meant we were placed on a blacklist for those guilds who were doing the end game bosses and we were never invited to participate as extra damage in those raids. It also put us on the list of guilds that these guilds would purposely try to grief if we ever went after those in-game bosses.

This might sound extreme to some for simply wanting to play a game, but honestly, it was business as usual in MMOs. Hell, Anarchy Online was better than many other companies at running MMO games, because they actually had safe zones where PKers couldn’t unendingly grief newbie players. Also, while it was ugly at times, it also brought a certain realism to the world we were playing that made the MMOs even that much more addicting.

Move forward a few years to World of Warcraft and this was different but similar. Platinum sized guilds owned the end game instances. Luckily, Blizzard made these end game world dungeons instanced so that you couldn’t be griefed while trying to take on the dungeon. Now, that didn’t stop the area before the doorway to the dungeon from turning into a massive PVP brawl. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I entered into Molten Core with only half durability on my armor due to trying to get the raid through the actual door. While things like this pissed you off to no end, it also made the world so alive and exciting.

My guild, Black Rook Hold, on the Llane Server was too small to do Molten Core and the other end game instances alone with the player base we had. So, I ended up making an alliance with three other smaller guilds. Together, we had nearly fifteen hundred players as a base to build a forty person raid team. This brought us to the minimum number of players necessary to try to take on the game’s end game dungeons.

To do this and be successful took nearly an in real life year to complete. This is because while it is easy to get forty players, it is not easy to get forty good players who are willing to use tactics and strategy to take out a major boss and their guards. You’d always have some idiot trying to show how awesome they were on the DPS meter by out-damaging everyone in the raid and pulling the boss or guards off the primary and secondary tanks, which in turn would wipe the raid. It not only took forty players who were willing to work together, play smart, and farm all of the items a player needed between running the raids, it took forty people willing to die regularly for eight to twelve hours a run to learn how to take down the bosses. This usually was over a time period of three to four months once you got the hang of it.

We usually ran the end game dungeons three times a week. In-between those times, a player in the raid was expected to farm the materials needed for Greater Health, Armor, Fire/Frost resistant potions, farm the materials needed to make unique armor that had high resistances for certain types of damage, run unique dungeons to get special drops for increasing resistances in specific types of magic or poisons, and get enough money up to be able to repair your gear between each run. It was also expected of most players to have two or even three sets of armor, because, when you were learning an instance, you went through armor sets quickly due to the constant dying. Usually, after your fourth death, your armor’s durability was down to zero and you had to put on your back-up armor.

The number of hours a hardcore player put into most MMOs ran around eight to twelve hours each day during the week and eighteen plus during the weekends. Being a hardcore player means that you weren’t making money playing, but you were completing the same end game content that professional groups did. Starting out World of Warcraft was extreme for the first two month it took to reach maximum level. You had to have a max level character to be able to park in the contested PVP zones while leveling up your backup characters to be able to deal with PKing spawn campers. Most hardcore players had ten level sixty players to be able to cover the various crafting and classes necessary to do the end game content. Honestly, for my friends and I, the hardcore playing didn’t slow down until after the first two years of playing. Hell, it might even have been the first four years.  

This is my personal gaming experience. This is also the gaming experience from my online group of friends that I am bringing into The World series. Many of the PKing fights I discuss are actual situations that we ran into inside the games ourselves. Yes, some have been taken to the next level to make an interesting story and dramatized the events, but, nonetheless, they are mostly based on our game play experiences to one level or another. So, when I’m talking about the number of players in a guild, alliance, or the hours put into gaming, this is from personal experience. In truth, I can’t imagine how much more addicting this would've been if the games were using FIVR technology.

The next part I’d like to bring up is book 6’s story that goes over a twenty-four hour time period. When I was writing the story, it just happened that the day ended up encompassing a twenty-four hour time period that went out to six hundred and ninety-four pages of straight story. From the feedback I’ve been getting, the fans of the series are loving the story even if there happened to be a slight cliffhanger at the end. The funniest part of the responses I’ve been receiving so far is from the other authors within the genre. They’re shocked and confused at how a book can be published that only covers a twenty-four hour time period, which just makes me laugh. Have they completely forgotten about the TV Series 24? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24_(TV_series)) Anyway, once I remembered how awesome the 24 series was, I didn’t hesitate releasing book 6’s story.

The TV series 24 was truly inspiring. It's a show that you simply couldn’t stop watching once you start on episode one. I literally watched the series straight through until I was forced to go to work the morning with burning eyes and feeling like a living zombie. Maybe the series has motivated me to write in a similar style, because I’ve been told plenty of times that once people start reading The World series they simply can’t put the books down due to the constant action within the story. If I can even come a little bit close to the genius of that series, I’ll be super happy as a writer.

I don’t plan to do twenty-four hours as the norm for my books and would rather the stories to cover a minimum of two days if not an entire week. At the same time, if the story is there due to the intense interpersonal relationships, action, and the depth of the on-going adventures, I will not hesitate to do a twenty-four hour story. That’s one of the great things about being able to self-publish my own books. I can do the story how I like and cover the details I think need to properly told without someone looking over my shoulder and telling me no. Well, as long as the fans are enjoying the story. That’s the only measure I’m using to judge my work.

Anyway, thank you for reading my ramblings and for allowing me the flexibility to tell the story the way I want … even if it’s crazy like book four was ;)

 Book 6 of The World Series was just released on Amazon. It is still currently being moved under my author's name and all of that fun, but it is available for downloading. The paperback book, for those that are interested, is also available, but not showing up under the ebook link until Amazon gets everything connected together. That's always takes a few days. 

Eric and Steven did a great job on getting the story cleaned up and helped me with several of the consistency checks to keep the story clean. Steven's character is Zeven, while Eric's is the mysterious warrior-knight helping the people of The World in Darom. Domenic shows up in this book and actually assisted in our back and forth for the story. There's some powerful emotions flying towards the end of the book and I think you'll enjoy the intensity that he brought to his character in the story. 

Also, check out the Post Credit scene. Like book five, it is in the very back of the book. For audible readers, it is after the book credits ... just like in a Marvel movie ;) Why did I do it that way? I don't know, it sounded fun and gives me an additional point of view, usually from the Chaos Storm Alliance PKers, to give another angle to the story. They're short, but carry a lot of information. 

On an exciting side-note, Book 6 has already been sent to Jason Hill to start his work on the audible version. I hope that means he'll get something out in the next few months, so everyone doesn't have to wait so long this time. 

Once again, thank you for all of the support for the series and leaving the reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, and Audible. It all helps with the on going fight aginst the IAK guild and their constant trolling of bad reviews on literally every version of the books that are out. They're more or less synonymous with the Chaos Storm Alliance, but a group of PKers that try to take down new Indie Writers to the GameLit/LitRPG genre. Without your support, they would have driven me out of the genre. So thank you for your constant support. Without it, The World wouldn't be proceeding as a series. Also, please make sure you leave reviews for all the authors you like. I am not the only Indie Writer that gets attacked. Basically, every new Indie Writer to the genre has to go through the same bashing to get new books into your hands. 

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the story. Also, sorry for the cliffhanger. It just happened to work out that way. Once I realized book 6 was already nearly 700 pages, I cut it off at the end of the day. Nonetheless, I think you're going to love it.

The link for Amazon.com is here: 
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084DRTDM3/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=that+wasn%27t+the+plan&qid=1580588182&s=digital-text&sr=1-1

Synopsis:

​Hunted at every turn while the Chaos Storm Guild Leader's plans near fruition, Startum Ironwolf and his friends must fight their way through the vanguard of the northern hordes and mass of PKers to reach their friend. On their way, they meet up with new friends and old enemies as the noose slowly closes around them.

Unfortunately, things don’t always go the way you plan.

I'm not exactly big on the holidays. It's due to coming from a very abusive family, which I try to brush upon in my stories. Most of the personal thoughts, friends, and family stuff that I write are all meaningful to me. Even Julie, who was my in real life abusive ex-girlfriend (albeit her name has been changed). She doesn't just make a great villain, but it shows a different side to the group and Star. 

My wife tries to make the holidays special for me and I take it to heart as a time to give and be with family. Presents are not a thing for me. Just sharing times with those you love is what the holidays mean to me. Before I met my wife, I hosted holidays for my LAN and guildmates who didn't have family, since I didn't have much of any family I wanted to be around besides my aunt who was busy. It was a good way to give to my friends and be around the people who truly were special to me. 

I wish everyone a healthy and safe holiday with those you love. Also, I'm doing my best to get the next book out. The detailed storyline is taking a lot more work than I'd ever imagined, but the story is getting there. Eric was right to give me a hard time about getting book 6 out by December. I wasn't even close and forgot how much the holidays takes away your time to write.

The good news is the storyline is coming along nicely. Mike and Domenic are met up with, along with a bunch of other players like the Aussie's Dangas guild leader and the Russian guild leader Dmitry. It's a complex story with the comradery of friends, which I think has been the hardest part of the writing. Bringing the different characters to life in the story has been hard as hell. I've put more time in those discussion than I have in many fights to get the feeling right. I think the wait will be worth it for everyone :)

There was also my fight with High Blood Pressure, a bunch of doctor visits to make sure I didn't have anything else going on, and of course getting sick with some nasty flue from the Xmas Markets and the freezing weather. Between that and the normal holiday craziness, it has been difficult to do my normal 5k writing a day. I think it's been more like 2.5k to 3k. Partly that is due to the complexity of the story and the personalities, so there is that. I just remind myself that the speed of writing isn't important, it's the quality of the writing that is what is most important.

On a side note, book 5's audiobook is taking even longer than expected to get out. I was informed by audible below:

There was some strangeness I had when I was trying to upload Book 5's cover. Things that had always worked were being denied and I finally came up with an image that worked, but it was blurry. This time around, my normal re-sized image was accepted without issue. I also made sure the title was correct, there was some confusion with that. Jason Hill is also changing the encoding. What is odd is the encoding was never an issue before. Anyway, once he has this corrected, I'll re-apply book 5 for audible's review. Sorry about the wait. 

I just wanted to let you know that your support makes The World series possible. The positive reviews you leave on all the books stops the IAK guild from pushing me out of the genre. You'd think that by now these limp-dicks would have focused on their own writing and given up on griefing the competition, but they don't ever get up. Even now, I still get the same nasty games being played as they try to slip in nasty reviews of hate. Even so, they can't contend with the reviews being left by real fans. For that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart and I promise to keep the books coming.

Lastly, for those of you who are interested, I've added some of my family's holiday pictures. My wife likes to do a traditional Polish dinner on Christmas eve and day. The day after that, I have been asked to do a traditional American dinner with my special turkey recipe, sweet potato casserole, stuffing, and mashed potatoes. It'll be a day of cooking for friends and family.  Anyway, I hope you enjoy the pics. 

Earlier this year, I received a message from a fan asking when book 4 would be out on audible. His name was Krishna and he’d made a comment that the worst thing about being blind was having to listen to the crappy computer voice for his audible books when he didn’t feel like waiting for a new audible book to be released. I’m paraphrasing this a bit, since I can’t find his comment in my email. When I read this, I was just in awe about how he could joke about this vision impairment.

Now, me being who I am, couldn’t just let that sit. I have a huge respect for anyone who’s gone through a horrible time and come through the other side stronger. Whether it’s with being bullied, abusive childhood/marriage, a horrible disability, PTSD or whatever. I’ve been through a number of rough times in my life and I try to bring them out in my writing. So, I ended up contacting Krishna and we talked about his trials of being vision impaired.
Yes, when our conversation started out, I used the term blind. It was a common term when I was growing up and I didn’t know that the use of the word had changed. Krishna kindly made fun of me and asked what rock I’d been living under, before explaining that the correct term was visually impaired. Now don’t get me wrong, he wasn’t nasty about it, but joked back with me like any of my friends naturally would. We spent a few hours or almost five talking about the book series, talking about how it was to grow up blind (cough … cough … visually impaired), and different things about the visually impaired community.

It was quite the eye opener. During our talk though, I could help but forming a guild of visually impaired players and imagining how that would be like for them in a game with good and asshat players alike. What would their Nightmare start entail? How would players act towards them? What would PKers do to them? How would that react to being ganked? Those thoughts all came together to form the story in book 5 & 6. Well, at least the introduction to the Uten Syn Guild. I plan to have them be a continuing part of the story, albeit not like my friends Sarka and Yun.

There were be a bunch of interesting aspects of the Uten Syn Guild and players’ reactions to the visually impaired players inside and outside the game. While Krishna gave me some great insight into the culture, he unfortunately was in-between jobs and didn’t have time to spend going over a few of the points I didn’t immediately catch. One was what the visually impaired community calls individuals who discriminate against other people due to how they’re told by their non-visually impaired friends how they look. You know, the whole issue where a visually impaired person is told by their friend that their date is homely and not hot, so the visually impaired person breaks up with them because they’re not visually attractive to other people. Yes, this is truly a thing in the community.

Unfortunately, I didn’t catch the term when he told me and he didn’t get back to me when I asked. So, I was at a loss for what the slang term for these people were. I did a bunch of google searches trying to catch the slang term, but to no avail. The only thing I could do was make up a term that fit the type of person which, in book 5, was “seers.” Yep, I made that term up. If someone wants to offer the term their group of friends use for these types of people, I would be grateful, but until then, I’ll be sticking with “seers” as the series slang for these individuals.

I also wanted to thank the visually impaired fans who have so far left reviews about the Uten Syn Guild. I hope to do your community proud and look forward to any tips you’re willing to offer to make the in-game players more real. So far, it seems like I’m mostly doing a good job.

In my school, there was a lot of support for the physically handicapped students. You didn’t mess with those students, or the whole student class would have risen up to beat their ass if you messed with any of them. Well, mostly. There was a young guy named John who was not so nice to people and he sometimes ran into issues, but other then that, everyone was real supportive.
 
I bring that up because of a review that was left by a visually impaired Australian fan who didn’t have the same support from students when he was in school. He actually had to fight a bunch of asshats who thought it would be funny to pick on the blink kid. The ass whoopings he learned to give the loud mouths were very educational. I might have to add someone like that into the current list of visually impaired players inside the game.

Anyway, I plan to bring other handicapped players into The World as well. The feedback I’ve been getting from the various fans have been super motivating and fits with idea I’ve been using for Star’s group of friends. You know, the whole “island of misfit toys” theme. That theme does actually fit my life and those people I call friends. Well, all of us except for Mike. Mike was always the cool kid who could jump between various types of groups of friends in school and be accepted by everyone.
​
On a final note, I wanted to thank everyone for the support for The World series and hope you enjoyed finding out how the Uten Syn guild came to be.

Here is the back cover description of the story:​

Landing in Darom, Startum Ironwolf is confronted by the devastation being wrought by the Chaos Storm alliance and is forced into a guild war of epic proportions. With the beginnings of a massive invasion from the northern tribes looming on the horizon, Star fights his way across the Kingdom of Kader to reach his friend. Along the way, the face of the true enemy is revealed with the deception of a close friend. Somehow, Star and his allies must survive the betrayal and the overwhelming odds stacked against them.

For those of you who are fans of the series, I ask for your help with positive reviews on Amazon. Well, at least if you like the story ;) This is my first public release of book five and I can use all of your help to fight the IAK guild. From their all out attack on the audible version of book 4, I'll definitely need your help to fight them with book five.

I did a silent release for those fans on Goodreads, Facebook, Patreon, and email that I could reach directly on July thirty-first, when the book first came out. So far the results have been incredible. First place in Fantasy Adventure and Dark Fantasy Horror. That wouldn't have been possible without your support. 

I'm sure the ratings will change dramatically once the IAK guild get's wind of the book being out. Luckily, with your help, it won't too much of a concern as with the rest of the series.

The good news is that book 6 is already in the pipe. I'd planned to have this be just one massive book, but once I hit 700 pages, I decided I had to split the week up into two books. Also, with how the audible books work out with splitting profits, having a book that's too large isn't worth the extra work as far as the voice actors are concerned. If I wanted to be able to get Jason Hill down with doing the new audible book then I had to make sure the book wasn't too big.  

I hope you enjoy the story. The action really ramps up once Star hits Darom and starts making his way towards Dominic's fortress. There was a lot of PVP action at the beginning of this book, but, due to the nature of the situation with the PKers, it was inevitable. Luckily, there is a good PVE story to go with all of the action and a surprised betrayer and villain at the end. Also, make sure you check out the Post Credit Scene at the back of the book. In the future, this will be a cool way for me to sneak in extra cool elements for the series. 

If you're interested in seeing some of the unique parts of the story that was either pulled and reworded, or the beginning chapter of book 6, you can find that on my Patreon page here: 

​This is just a quick heads up for fans who were interested in knowing when the next audiobook of the series was being released. Book four of The World series is currently out and available on audible.com here https://www.audible.com/pd/Helping-a-Friend-Audiobook/B07VB62BL9?pf_rd_p=d4bd4ee1-b56e-4ffb-8f73-3fbb8d604669&pf_rd_r=31MGNSEA1M8N1ADGYM3Q&ref=a_author_Ja_c19_lProduct_1_5 The release date for the book was on July 18, 2019. You can find the audio sample for the book here:

Yes I know I’m a little late on broadcasting the official release date of the book by nearly a month on my blog and Facebook page, but that’s due to the constant attacks I still receive from the IAK guild, aka The Indie Author Killer guild. By now, you’d think that they’d have given up trying to bash my series and block sales, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. It doesn’t matter if it’s The World series book 1, 2, 3, or 4. The IAK guild watches my blog continuously, they hit me on Goodreads, they smash me on Amazon, they bash me on Audible, they watch my Facebook account, they try to bash me on Facebook groups, and even try to hack my accounts. The IAK guild truly spends and incredible amount of time, effort, and money (especially on the audible book side) to block my series.

The only good thing, I guess, is that it takes away from their ability to write and create good stories. While I’m writing new books, they are bashing me and other Indie Authors as almost a full-time job. Who knows, maybe that’s how they make their money. I’ve gotten so accustomed to it that it’s just par for the course.

The IAK guild has been successful to a point. If not for their constant attacks, my series would be sitting at a solid 4.9 to 5.0 stars rating. If my books are left alone for a week or two, they immediately start rising up through the rating ranks. Still, even with all of the IAK guild love, my books are still “sitting good” in their overall ratings. Yes, they are rift with reviews saying some of the nastiest things about me and the series, but as with most controversy, that just seem to motivate new readers to check out the books even more. So, in some ways, I guess I owe the IAK a big thank you for making The World series stand out that much more in the sea of LitRPG and Gamelit titles.

In the end though, it’s you, the fans of the series, which have stopped these PKers from blocking my books. You have successfully nullified the worst of their attacks and kept the series alive. The initial reviews on the silent release of book four’s audible book built up to the point that the IAK guilds’ attacks fell flat once they realized the new book was out. After that, it was everyone’s reviews that keep the ratings up high enough to encourage new readers to continue seeking out the series. Without your staunch support, The World series would have faded away to obscurity long ago due to the activities of the IAK guild.

Please accept my heartfelt thank you and know that every new book in the series is only possible because of your continued support. This is also why I always encourage everyone to leave reviews for me and all of the authors that you like. Only in this way will you ensure that those authors will continue to write the stories that you love to read and stop the IAK guild from blocking everyone but their members. Otherwise, the genre we love will be full of carbon copy titles that read the same and only vary by different MC names and themes.

Lastly, I want to thank everyone for allowing me, as an author, to experiment with new storylines and ideas. I really went all out in Book four. The good thing is that the novel is nothing like I’ve ever read before. The bad, is that some of the topics can be somewhat uncomfortable at times. It is the nature of my writing to do my best to make the series as realistic, deep and well-written as I possible. My world is not a pretty, cutesy place. It is dark and gritty where the digital AIs that make up The World do their best to live and survive.  

Star finds himself in a lot of unique situations. He is not a hero, nor would I say that he’s an anti-hero. He’s just a guy doing his best to play a game and have fun, while trying to help his friends hit the Pro Gamer status. At the same time, he does his best to treat people right, whether they’re digital people or a fellow players like him. As with anyone, he has baggage from his past. Whether it’s in the form of his abusive childhood or relationships with abusive women, it weighs down his soul and makes him who he is. He’s also a young, horny guy in his early twenties who definitely appreciates the physical beauty of women in the game world. That doesn’t mean he’s an overt lecher, but, as with everyone, he has his own internal dialog and thoughts. It has always been my belief that actions speak louder than words. If you’re going to judge Star, judge him for what he does and how he treats people.
​
While books 1 through 3 were more about Star exploring the world and the people in it, book 4 shows the beginning of his growth on the inside. The level of horror and suffering in The World really hits Star deeply and he begins to change by the end of the story. This change will grow in the proceeding books and I hope does a good job in representing how experiencing trauma and horror can alter a person in real life. I hope you enjoy the journey.
 
Jason Cheek, author of The World series.   
PS: I will be starting a Patreon page soon! 

For anyone who's interested in the pictures of the in real life friends that are the basis for the characters in the story and concept pictures I used to develop characters like Helgath, Hollysharp, and others, you can check out my Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100007596607095 

I try to throw up little tidbits as I can on the Facebook page and will continue to do so. There's also pictures of our LAN parties like what was in the beginning of book four. People like Hefe, AJ, Jill, Mike, JellyDonutMan and LittleAsianGirl are all there, including myself. Yeah, my heavy gaming days and my extreme sports pictures after the break-up I had with Julie. Julie isn't my ex-gaming girlfriend's actual name. I split her up into her good side named Krystal and her bad side named Julie, leaving the real name out. I also mixed her strategy in with a few of the other 'bad guy' and 'gal' friends I played in the past, so she's a little bit of a conglomeration of all of these people combined. 

Anyway, I thought I'd do a quick post for those of you who are interested. In so many ways I miss those LAN party days. We used to do a party like that every other weekend. If a new game had just come out, it would be every week for a few months straight, with easily 20 to 30 people at the party. This wasn't laptops and flat screen monitors, but the older CRT monstrosities and full gaming desktops. 

Hope you enjoy the pictures and visuals of how I picture some of the characters.

​The good news is that book five is well on the way. I missed about three weeks dealing with a bunch of corrections for book one through four. By the time I got that settled, I came down with a nasty case of bronchitis that completely took me down for a good three weeks. I was able to get a little bit of writing in, but spent most of the time collapsed in bed. It seemed like I couldn’t stay awake for more than three hours straight. Finally though, I’ve started to feel better and the story is flowing out of me.
 
The good news is that I’m over 40k words into the story, but already I can see this is going to be another immense novel. It will cover the whole ‘rescuing Domenic’ from the PVP Alliance of Chaos Storm. While there is a lot of PVP action in the story, there is also a huge PVE (Player vs Environment) story going on within the world itself. I’m excited because of what that will bring into the series adventure wise, since the world is changing due to the decisions players are making in the training area.
 
Oh yeah, the training area which is called the Norden Region for being a part of Earth’s Nordic region and the entire current map is only the game’s training area. My current plan is for the base leveling range to be up to fifty for this area and basically players shouldn’t even leave the area until they’ve reached near that level. Outside of the training areas will be monsterville. Some monsters will be just that, individual monsters. Others will be tribes. There will even be entire empires of monsters that are living and doing their own thing within the world.
 
There are other training areas in the world. Basically any location that is a peninsula or an area that is off on its own. A good example of this would be Florida. These will be the other game start areas as the game opens up to the entire world to play. There is not set area for Europe, Asia or the Americas. Everyone will join where they happen to join that hasn’t filled up yet. The game’s world is a reflection of the Earth. I haven’t decided yet but I might make it an earth with the same continent structure that is basically 50x as large as our world. That part I haven’t decided yet, but it explains the Norden region and why it’s being used.
 
Story wise I have a good twenty novels if not more waiting to be written without any second thought. Many of the empires and cultures have already been formulated with more that are coming. I already have many of the cultures for Germany, Russia, Italy and Africa. That part of the adventure and exploration will continue while our intrepid heroes deal with old and new enemies. I’m really excited about some of these areas. I’ve been working on creating some awesome civilizations and slowly building the storylines to go with them. Some added fun will be mounts around level 40 or 50. Flying mounts around level 80 to 100 which will lead to a whole new development of flying races and civilizations. So yeah, there is really no end in sight as long as you’ll like the stories. (This isn’t for the trolls that like to keep a close watch on my sight, you can hate and not understand my storyline as much as you like. Thankfully, I have more than enough fans who love the storyline and adventures that I write.)
 
Some people have wondered why the leveling is so slow, but the truth of the matter is that the story is in the adventure and the exploration. Rushing to an imaginary end level to actually start playing the game seems to be all the rage nowadays. Old Dungeons and Dragons, Anarchy Online, EverQuest and World of Warcraft was about exploring the world. You leveled extremely slow which gave you time to go out and have an adventure and see the world. That in itself was the goal of these games. The idea that you’re living in these world. Not just hurrying up to the end content before you run to the next game.
 
You can think of Startum Ironwolf a little bit as the old Captain Kirk of Star Trek or Han Solo of Star Wars. He likes the ladies and he really isn’t put off by fur, green skin, pointy ears, tentacle hair, scales or extra arms and legs if they’re pretty and interested in him and vice versa. There had been some confusion about this to some readers, but I think for most Dungeons and Dragons or MMORPG players, this is nothing new. These games have always been about other races and species. It didn’t matter what male or female people were, everyone loved their orc, troll, tauren, minotaur, goblin, elf, dwarf, gnome and etc etc. There have always been Wolfkin, Foxkin, Batkin, and more that people have relationships with in a fantasy storyline or virtual kind of way. Maybe my choice of a centaur for a love interest was somewhat shocking to non-gamers, but it will definitely be part of the storyline in my world in one way or another.
 
There has been some comments about how could someone fall in love so quickly. I just chuckle whenever I hear the story. Many of the times this is being asked by people in their 40s and 50s. Obviously, they forgot how it was when they were in their early 20s. Everyone I know has fallen for someone in a matter of days. Felt that desire to marry this new person in their lives because they believe them to be their soulmate, only to find out a week later that there were personality differences that didn’t mesh as well as they thought they did. For better or worse, it happens to everyone at one time or another and is why Las Vegas has so many White Wedding Chapels. Luckily, most of us don’t fall into this type of trap, albeit a large number of people do every year.   
 
Anyway, now that I’m getting healthy the storyline is flowing and I’ll do my best to get book 5 out as quickly as possible. Figure a few months J

The previous post is below and the newest information about the trolling group we are calling the IAK or Indy Author Killer Guild and their activity is listed in many of the comments below. Several fans have been reporting in the worst of the abuses of new Indy Authors releasing their books only to be slammed with nasty reviews. While many of the names are the same, others are not. After being called out or having their nasty reviews pulled, many of the group now seems to be using secondary accounts.

Honestly, I never knew about this until I started writing. I enjoyed going to the facebook LitRPG & GameLIT groups to look for new and interesting titles to check out and read. I didn't realize that there was a group that was trying to get you to only read their stuff and to block everyone else. Now though, I realize that this, unfortunately, is a thing.

Looking at the profile of the people bashing these new writers usually show you either a history of trolling one or two stars review with only a handful of good reviews for their friends or their secondary accounts with only one to three reviews. Due to my calling out these trolls on my own books and pointing them to this blog posting, many of them have started making their profiles private so no one can see their previous trolling activities. 

On my own novels, the accusations of plagiarize that they initially used to attack me has now been replaced by accusations of the misogyny treatment of women, rape, harem relationships, uninteresting story lines, unrealistic characters/relationships and a douche MC that reflects a douche author. It doesn't matter if the posts are accurate to the story or not, what's important is the reduction of the book's rating and their hope to find something that will stop new readers from enjoying the stories. Yeah, that's the funny thing about trolling. Nothing you say has to be true in any way. 

I'm probably making myself more of a target since I encourage fans to point out the trolling group and their activities whenever they can. I also encourage people to talk about it to their friends in the LitRPG community. I also do my best to inform the authors being slammed that these are not fans, but a group of authors, editors and friends who purposely target Indy Authors. Not to mention, I call out the GameLit and LitRPG facebook groups that defend trolling activities. While Aleron Kong had the cajones to remove the questionable negative videos from his LitRPG channel https://www.reddit.com/r/GameLit/comments/a1zpoo/author_and_reviewer_ramon_mejia_banned_from/ many of the other LitRPG and GameLIT groups have not and openly support the negative activities on their channels.

Also, don't be a fan that supports one of the authors they bash. If you say anything, your jumped on by a group of jackals and your post removed. The funny thing, in these channels you are told that activities such as that are not allowed, but they are if your friends with the right moderators and admins. I tend to tell my own fans to not say anything in the social media groups and just voice their preference by leaving reviews on Amazon for the authors they love. 

When you take the groups activities in total, I honest don't understand how anyone could spend their days trolling to the extent that they do. Maybe it's because I'm not a huge social media person. Except for my minor blog and facebook postings, I don't do much in the way of social media for the most part. It something that I have to actually push myself to do since it takes time away from doing creative things like writing and time from my family.

If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would think that these guys are being sponsored to do this as a job for some hidden group. Maybe, there isn't some shadowy organization behind them and they just do this, because trolling others makes them feel powerful. Still, I'd argue in favor of a hidden group being behind this. Otherwise, the amount of time it takes to do what they do on a daily basis doesn't make any sense to me on any other level. 

The only way to fight these people are to make sure you leave reviews for your favorite authors. You taking the time to voice your opinion on Amazon reviews combats their trolling activities and keeps the stories you like coming out in new books. I also hope that at some time the community in general will stop these people's nefarious trolling activities and they'll be called out whenever they start. Maybe that is like wishing on a shooting star, but one can hope people will stand up to this kind of crappy behavior.

Too bad Amazon didn't go after these trolls as they do with any friends or family member of an author that wants to leave an Indy Author a good review. Amazon blocks anything like that nearly 100% but the trolling groups are not even looked at even though such activities are supposed to be against Amazon Communities terms of service.

__________________________the previous post____________________
(These previous reviews were either successfully blocked or were pulled and then were put back reworded with the same stars)
____________________________________________________________

Hey, looks like that small group of LitRPG writers and friends are still going after me with the hate. Check these guys out:
Plagiarized on book 1:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1U5GH5Q98U740/ref=cm_cr_othr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B07NBX4ZBS

Plagiarized, same guy on book 4:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R336L0NXTS18NR/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B07H35XRLZ

​Plagiarized on book 1:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RK7E863LX9HEB/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B07H35XRLZ

Rape, same guy on book 4 but at least he mixed it up somewhat:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1BKR3OQ01ZG92/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B07NBX4ZBS

If you want to make an official complaint to Amazon, you can do that here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/contact-us/features-and-services.html​  They take readers' reports better than authors' reports.

Oh, or this one https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RJMRKQQ7N4SRR/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B07NBX4ZBS where Startum is now an emasculate soyboy. What's funny, if you read the rest of the review it contradicts itself.

Who would have thought that they'd pull this against book 1 and book 4? There are a few others doing the hate. Book 1 got a few taps of troll luv too. 

I guess an Indy Writer can't be successful without getting trolling attacks by other authors. It would be helpful to report these people in as the haters they are with that click of a button if you have a moment. The 'Report Abuse' is right under the review ;)

Some, like this one for book one 'Doesn't understand mmorpg's' https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R17XN80MZ1QUDE/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B07H35XRLZ are almost funny. At least it would be if it wasn't being used to bash me. 

Anyway, this was their most recent attack has knocked book 1 back down to 4.2 from 4.3 and book 4 from 4.7 to 4.4 I guess people are liking both books just a little too much and they had to try to find a way to stop people from enjoying my series. This is why I'm always asking people to leave a good review whenever you can.