Tanya had no idea why, despite her most meticulous planning and efforts to get closer to Dieter, she had ended up failing instead.
But there was nothing she could do about that. NPC personalities in games were inherently difficult to judge. Not only were they unpredictable, they were all highly individualistic.
Sometimes, one wrong step meant there would never be another chance, and there was no way to make up for it.
And they were all time-limited quests... Even if she met them outside the time limit, any effort would be useless.
Take Hill in the Mage Tower, for example. He only befriended the earliest batch of players to enter the game... No matter how sincere they appeared, that Mage, who had always been friendly toward the Undead, paid them no attention at all.
Back in Central City, he had clearly watched these newcomers with considerable interest!
Who knew whether there was some version restriction that prevented Hill from even giving them a chance to unlock friendship quests?
If this trailblazer did not always seek out the families with the highest friendship first whenever he released quests, how could they have gained nothing in Toril?
Tanya completely ignored how the Doomsday Family, whose friendship with Hill was in the negatives, had carved out a place for themselves in Toril. She only blamed the game for being unfair to latecomers like them.
Yet she had no intention of turning around and leaving.
After all, she could still earn a certain amount of money from this game... real-world money.
That was not a benefit games from the past, with their sparse populations and plotlines full of exploitable loopholes, could offer.
But the things she had recently posted on the forums were becoming less popular... Their click-through rates had dropped considerably.
She had