The promotional trailer lasted exactly one minute.
After all, it was meant to dangle a carrot in front of prospective players, so not much screen time was given to the players themselves—only the first twenty-one seconds.
During those brief twenty-one seconds, Chu Guang considered that the gear belonging to both the players and the mutants was rather subpar, making for poor viewing. Consequently, he opted for freeze-frame shots, giving two-second slow-motion close-ups to the axes and arrows flying through the air, as well as the muzzle flash spitting from pipe rifles and bullets bursting from barrels.
He set it all to slow, melodious classical music, lending the brutal and bloody warfare a distinct touch of dark humor.
At the seventeen-second mark, the background music stopped abruptly. The footage accelerated like an arrow shot from a bowstring; the frozen axe flew toward a player ducking behind cover, bullets slammed into mutant chests, and blood sprayed across the screen!
At eighteen seconds, a mutant ripped off a car door, drew a rusted, blunt machete, and roared as he launched a charge.
The tempo accelerated fiercely!
Every single frame and every second was pure hype!
Within three seconds, the previously stalemated battle erupted like an ignited powder keg.
At twenty-one seconds, the players were in dire straits, on the verge of being overrun by the surging mutants. Right at that moment, four suits of power armor descended like godsent warriors, abruptly tearing into the battlefield from the flank of the street!
Electromagnetically accelerated metal slugs unleashed a storm of blood and gore across the road. The green-skinned brutes wailed as they collapsed, riddled with holes alongside the concrete walls and vehicle wreckage around them.
The battle instantly became a one-sided slaughter!
Mutants on the street dropped dead one after another.
The last bare-chested mutant bellowed and hurled a powder keg from his hands, embodying the final gasp of savagery.
The camera tracked the powder keg flying through midair in slow motion. A thunderous fireball erupted, followed immediately by an undamaged combat boot stepping out of the smoke and a hulking green corpse crashing heavily to the ground—hitting the beat perfectly as driving heavy metal kicked in!
As for the shot of the marine looking utterly dazed by the blast, Chu Guang naturally had no intention of leaving it in the trailer to ruin the pacing, cutting it cleanly away.
Accompanied by fast-paced music, the power armors pushed all the way from the main thoroughfare into the narrow alleys between the ruins. Fifteen minutes of brutal street fighting and siege work at the stronghold were condensed into thirty seconds of pure essence!
Not a single dull moment from start to finish!
Less than two minutes after the trailer was uploaded, the comment section exploded with over a hundred replies, and the number kept climbing.
Who Doesn't Understand Love: "Holy shit?! Is this a game trailer or a movie?!"
The Little Match That Sells Girls: "Mind blown! How the hell am I getting Hollywood blockbuster vibes from a game trailer?!"
Storm Stomping Sis: "These graphics and visual effects are out of this world!"
Lightning King Professor Yang: "Damn it, is this in-game footage? Or a pre-rendered CG? The destructible environment is insane—those flying chunks of rubble look completely real!"
Proud Grandpa What Can You Do: "Heh, look at you country bumpkins who've never seen the world. Please, go buy a ticket and watch a real movie in a theater. Which Bollywood IMAX blockbuster isn't leagues better than this? I'm not hating for no reason; you guys are just embarrassingly hyping it up. These CG effects are eighteenth-rate indie studio tier at best. I could point out two hundred glaring flaws. My uncle runs an animation company in Hangzhou, and any random intern he pulls off the street could do better than this."
Elaina: "Did I remember wrong? Why do I recall you saying your ancestors were from the steppes and could each draw a five-hundred-jin bow? (Funny face)"
Sitting before the computer monitor and lurking on the forums, Chu Guang could barely stifle his laughter. Watching the community clown act all high and mighty had practically become his daily dose of entertainment.
To be fair, the guy wasn't entirely wrong.
After all, there really weren't any special effects!
Every frame of the promotional trailer was filmed in one continuous take by Xiao Qi piloting the drone under his direction.
At most, Chu Guang had merely edited the footage, added some background music, and applied a filter to give the visual impact an extra punch.
Still, he hadn't expected goofy netizens to mistake his raw footage for CGI.
It seemed he had quite the knack for directing.
Looking at the hundreds of comments singing high praises, a smile spread across Chu Guang's face.
He definitely needed to shoot more videos in the future!
Edge Slacker: "Holy shit! Th-this is actual gameplay footage?! I was literally right there on site!"
Master Cai the Hitbox Outliner: "Gameplay footage?! Bro, which one were you?"
Elven King Fugui: "The one squatting on the ground!"
Kakarot from the Future: "Hahaha! Coward!"
Edge Slacker: "Piss off! I was swapping gear! (Angry)"
Battlefield Hype Crew: "Go check the twenty-one-second mark! That corpse on the ground is mine! Haha, I made it into the trailer!"
Scavenger Lv99: "I just want to ask, can a lizardman wear that thing? QAQ"
Meat Mountain Steamed Bun: "Can a bear wear it? QAQ"
Scavenger Lv99: "What's the damn point of giving it to you! You wouldn't even fight! Dammit!"
Elaina: "I feel like it's useless on you anyway. Better give it to me. (Funny face)"
Scavenger Lv99: "Fuck!"
The entire forum was abuzz with discussions about the one-minute trailer and the high-tech equipment featured inside it. It completely overshadowed the hype for the Alpha 0.7 version update!
Thinking about it, that made sense.
There were ten to twenty thousand active IP addresses on the forum, but only two hundred and fifty had actually obtained closed beta access and entered the game. The newly added one hundred and fifty players were still on their way.
Even though both were just dangling carrots...
A full-color carrot smelled far tastier than a black-and-white one!
Chu Guang skimmed through the comment section beneath the video. Aside from those raving about the graphics and special effects, along with closed beta players passionately promoting the game, the vast majority of armchair lurkers cared about only two questions.
First, wasn't a ground covered in corpses a bit too gory?
And second, the question with the loudest clamor—
When the hell is Wasteland OL entering open beta?!
Half an hour had passed since the trailer went live. Chu Guang took a look at the reservation count.
Good grief.
It had jumped straight from 2,333 to 5,777!
And that was after raising the registration bar to a hundred questions!
"It feels like this is about to blow up," Chu Guang muttered, grinning ear to ear.
Aside from a few players who were still stubbornly talking smack, many who had previously been dead certain that the game couldn't possibly exist began to waver.
How should one put it?
Believing it didn't hurt, right?
At the very least, seeing that the trailer didn't start with 'you begin with just a dog' or rip off Drakengard, clicking reservation to show support didn't cost anything.
What if it was real?
Wouldn't that be a massive win?
As for the clamor for an open beta, Chu Guang had no idea how to answer. It depended not only on whether the system would give him face, but also on whether he currently needed that many people.
Let them shout; he was used to hearing it anyway.
As everyone knew, good games took time. If a game didn't get delayed by two or three years, did it even have the right to call itself a triple-A masterpiece?
Take a certain cyberpunk game, for instance. If pre-order players hadn't rushed the developers so aggressively, would they have served up a steaming pile of crap? If they had waited until 2077 to release it, there definitely wouldn't have been so many bugs!
Chu Guang vowed that the open beta would definitely launch before Grand Theft Auto 6.
Of course, if sales of Grand Theft Auto 5 suddenly plummeted...
Then pretend he never said anything.
What stunned the players wasn't just the promotional trailer, but also the concept art of the Pioneer land fortress.
The massive, heavy steel chassis and the intimidating heavy tracks perfectly satisfied the industrial enthusiasts' aesthetic for megastructures. Meanwhile, the boxy modular structures built atop the tracks and chassis, combined with a minimalist aesthetic, hit all the sweet spots for sci-fi fans.
Many netizens were asking around on the forum to find out which legendary concept artist had created the artwork.
...
Ox and Horse Club group chat.
Lately, the group had practically turned into a Wasteland OL dedicated channel, with the most active chatters discussing game-related topics every single day.
The moment the Alpha 0.7 version dropped, the group chat instantly came alive.
Ye Shi: "Damn, the official site has been overrun by armchair gamers! Alpha 0.7 has been out for half an hour, and there are barely any posts about the new version on the front page! Unbelievable!"
Gale Force 8: "Chill, that's completely normal. I just checked the reservation count and it's almost at 6,000. You have to understand the folks still waiting in line on the forum."
Fang Chang: "+1. I don't really mind either way. More people make it livelier. How else are we supposed to show off if nobody's around? (Grinning face)"
Ye Shi: "Dammit! Then why do you lecture me whenever I show off!"
Fleeting White Horse: "What you do isn't showing off; it's taunting the developer by dancing repeatedly under his nose. Alright, quit bullshitting. Did you guys read the patch notes? The new content looks pretty wild!"
Fang Chang: "It's a new expansion, of course it's wild! I'm already prepared. The second the quartermaster NPC spawns, I'm diving straight into the grind! (Grinning face)"
Ye Shi: "Wait, what about the devil moth dungeon?"
Fang Chang: "Don't panic. Everything has priorities. If you want to stay in Tier 0, you have to follow the version meta. Let's figure out what's going on with the expansion first! As for the greenhouse ruins, we've got seven days. Even if we go past the deadline, it doesn't matter. At worst, we'll spend some money to bid on it when the time comes. We'd only lose about fifty percent at most, no big deal."
Gale Force 8: "True. This Land Voyager expansion seems to feature exclusive event points. I read it clearly: once the expansion ends, there's not only a limited-edition title, but also a raffle."
Fleeting White Horse: "I care more about the mystery grand prize for the top ten scorers. Wonder what they'll reward us with. If we could snag a set of power armor, that'd be insane. Killing a few moths would be a breeze. (Grinning face)"
Scrambled Eggs with Tomatoes: "Sigh, I wonder if a chef will be of any use. T.T"
Spare the Life Under the Blade: "Relax. As a civil engineering scrub, being able to get up close and admire the land fortress from the CG is already enough for me. Everything else is secondary!"
WC Really Has Mosquitoes: "Speaking of which, aren't we going to help repair that land fortress? I glanced at the CG. How are we supposed to fix something like that? Have any of you seen one in real life?"
Fang Chang: "Nope. But with a sci-fi prop like that, the game devs definitely aren't expecting players to figure it out on their own. My guess is they'll open a new map, set up a few NPCs, and issue scavenging or exploration quests to collect materials for the repair equipment. As for the actual repair work, the NPCs will handle it."
Gale Force 8: "Makes sense. But by that logic, doesn't this new expansion just mean scavenging trash in a different location?"
Fang Chang: "Uh, beats me. With a powerhouse suddenly showing up, there should be side quests, right? Why don't you try tagging Ah Guang? He definitely knows, though I doubt he'll tell you. (Side-eye)"
Quitting Smoking: "@Guang!!! Dev dad is awesome! Brother Guang, I love you! Hahahahaha, I finally drew a spot! QAQ"
Ye Shi: "?"
Gale Force 8: "??"
Fleeting White Horse: "???"
Scavenger Lv99: "Holy shit?"
...
The survey questionnaire for prospective players consisted of a hundred questions in total.
It included thirty general knowledge questions, twenty optional bonus questions involving specialized fields, forty subjective questions testing personality, logical reasoning, and behavioral profiles, and ten entrapment questions designed to weed out undesirable candidates.
These hundred questions determined the weighted score of each applicant, as well as their user persona tags. Both served as criteria for distributing closed beta access, completely hidden from any user-facing pages and never sold to third-party marketplaces, fully respecting user privacy.
Players scoring between sixty and one hundred points who aligned with the current version's needs entered the raffle pool for closed beta invitations.
Every ten points formed a tier, with different quotas allocated to each tier.
In principle, the higher the score, the higher the probability of winning access. Lower scores still had a shot, just with comparatively slimmer odds.
Additionally, the entrapment questions didn't grant or deduct points outright, but if an applicant stepped on an option landmine, their hidden weighted score was instantly wiped to zero.
For example, selecting 'Marauder' under 'What is your dream profession?' or choosing 'Massacring towns' under 'What gameplay brings you joy in Skyrim or the Fallout series?'
A lot of these guidelines were written in the user manual; the bait was practically dangling in front of their faces. If someone answered without reading carefully or filled it out haphazardly without taking it seriously, they could wait for the open beta.
Aside from a handful of players with specialized talents who received default qualification through back-end tags, the vast majority of closed beta invites were distributed this way.
As for the date of reservation, it had no effect on probability.
If someone failed to get selected across several consecutive versions...
It was either because they had landed on the blacklist, or their luck was truly terrible.
Chu Guang didn't notice Quitting Smoking tagging him. In fact, he hadn't even logged into his messaging client. After browsing the official website for a bit, he turned his attention back to his system.
The quest to wipe out the mutant tribe had awarded two hundred reward points, an influx that could only be described as getting rich overnight.
Having just drawn two advanced blind boxes, Chu Guang could now enjoy another round of lucky draws.
"Two hundred and eleven reward points... Let's open two advanced blind boxes and eleven primary blind boxes first."
A mid-tier blind box was rather pointless.
Chu Guang wasn't short on medicine, and his players didn't seem to need pharmaceuticals much anyway. After several battles, the general routine was abandoning treatment for major injuries and hopping into an incubation pod for minor ones.
By now, Chu Guang had stockpiled several bandages and even had a healing syringe. Getting another one wouldn't make much difference.
Unless he pulled a stat-boosting syringe, it was better to hoard them or gamble on primary blind boxes instead. Pulling a stat-boosting lollipop wasn't a loss, and pulling seasonings was a massive profit.
The alloy door on the wall shuddered.
Looking at what the conveyor belt delivered before him, Chu Guang held his breath in excitement, unable to hold back a curse.
"Holy shit! Is this—"
A mechanical exoskeleton?!
He had actually received an exoskeleton from the conveyor belt!
The streamlined frame, the alloy struts brimming with a sense of raw power, and the layered armor plates attached to the frame!
Chu Guang couldn't describe his exhilaration.
His exoskeleton was finally no longer just a 'skeleton'!
[Type 5 "Light Cavalry" Light Police Exoskeleton]
[Description: Compared to the Type 6 Heavy Police Exoskeleton, the Type 5 Light Police Exoskeleton provides defense against small arms while offering greater mobility and longer battery endurance, suitable for diverse scenarios. Note: Although the composite armor plates, primarily made of polymer materials, can withstand standard firearm projectiles, the material itself has limited durability. Do not mistake yourself for a power armor suit and recklessly abandon cover. Call for backup when encountering heavily armed hostiles. If conditions permit, pair with a ballistic vest whenever possible.]
Chu Guang skimmed through the detailed parameters of this police exoskeleton. Both in terms of battery life and load-bearing capacity, its attributes far surpassed his KV-1!
That was only natural, of course.
The KV-1 exoskeleton was merely a general-purpose model manufactured in Boulder City. Aside from a battery that could pass as black technology, nothing else about it involved particularly advanced engineering.
This "Light Cavalry" suit was entirely different.
Not only was it pre-war tech, but it was also police-grade gear! In MMORPG terms, its item prefix sat a full tier above [Civilian Equipment]!
Coupled with the carbon-nanotube protective suit he wore beneath his clothes, Chu Guang now possessed two layers of body armor.
His sense of security had never felt so overwhelming!
"It's decided. I'll sell the decommissioned gear to the players!"
"The KV-1 exoskeleton bought from Liszt cost eight hundred chips. Let's see... yeah, I'll sell it for eight hundred silver coins!"
After all, it was armor once worn by the Administrator himself. Marking it up slightly wasn't unreasonable, right?
To make the players feel they were getting their money's worth, Chu Guang decided he would give the exoskeleton a grand name later and fabricate a thrilling backstory for it.
Slipping into the exoskeleton, Chu Guang stood before the mirror and admired his reflection for a moment. No matter how he looked at it, he was striking.
"Not bad, looking the part!"
"Practically the embodiment of justice!"
This equipment felt tailor-made for him!
Once his excitement finally cooled down, Chu Guang turned his gaze to the second item resting on the conveyor belt.
Just from its design alone, one could tell it was anything but ordinary.
A triangular stock, a pitch-black receiver, and two elongated magnetic rails extending forward with an open slot between them, resembling an absurdly long tuning fork from a distance.
A pale blue label hovered beside it, answering all of Chu Guang's questions—
[Type 20 "Needle" Gauss Rifle]
Chapter 138