Nothing ever goes according to plan. Maybe you die in a desert full of horrifying demons, and you think your loot is gone for good. Maybe you find yourself lost in space. Maybe you accidentally punch the wrong person. Regardless, you need help. When have other players come to your rescue in a video game?
For me, the original EverQuest may as well have been called, “Nathan Bungles Everything, And Well-Meaning Strangers Save Him While Politely Resisting The Urge To Call Him A Stupid Child”. The first time I ever logged in, I unintentionally, uh, assaulted another player in a city area, prompting guards to swarm on me. Recognising that I was an idiot baby, that very player found me at my spawn point, led me to my corpse and coolly gave me instructions on how to enable/disable auto-attack so I wouldn’t do that again.
There was also the time I got lost in a desert full of sand giants and other nastiness long before I was the proper level for it, and a group took time out of their rigid “killing shit as tall as the Statue Of Liberty” schedule to guide me back to a safe trade tunnel. Speaking of situations where I’d have been lost forever if not for the kindness of strangers, Star Wars Galaxies. Just, like, that entire game.
My favourite video game rescue story, though, is one Eurogamer wrote about a while back. The game was Elite Dangerous, and one player had travelled out to what was basically the brink of the universe. Then they realised, oh crap, they’d used up a crucial resource for boosting, and they were stranded. They posted about their plight online, but they didn’t have much real hope of rescue. Enter another player who, over the course of 48 real hours, flew all the way to that person’s position and helped them obtain resources to make the jump back home.
Have you been rescued by kind strangers (or friends), maybe from a rival group of players in a game like Ark: Survival Evolved or Rust? Or perhaps from your own poor life choices in EVE Online? Share your stories below!
The Fuel Rats have conducted several deep black rescues now. Very dedicated role-players. Fortunately haven’t needed their services.
I did rescue another commander two nights ago who had managed to wedge his SRV (rover) under a landed Cobra Mk 3 in such a way that he couldn’t move. The Cobra cmdr was AFK – the simplest solution would have been for them to move their ship… Not an option.
So I spent some time trying to ram the stuck SRV with my own buggy, eventually freeing him…Was very silly, espectially when a Taipan light fighter decided they could also help… They couldn’t. 🙂
I’ve been rescued by the Fuel Rats in Elite Dangerous. I didn’t know how to narrow down my jumps to scoopable stars, and every star I stopped at wasn’t scoopable. Eventually I ran out of fuel and had to call in the Fuel Rats. They were very quick to help and he even told me how to select only scoopable stars for my jumps.
They’re awesome. You still playing? Feel free to add me and say hi. Out at the ruins tonight.
I was more a fan of when I dug myself out of my own trouble during my How High Can You Get trip 😛 Now that was a miracle save.
Playing on the Island map in ARK, we were the Alpha tribe on our favorite map in Arks first year, at this point the Quetzal had just been introduced with its platform saddle and dinosaur choice was fairly limited compared to how it is now. The T Rex was the biggest, nastiest creature going for example at this point, now, he’s merely midrange.
So, my mate Jonnycage and I were playing with another tribe, some fantastic people and we hadn’t bothered paying attention to this other tribe who out of nowhere, rose up having been quiet for a while, and suddenly gained Alpha status by showing what they’d been doing. While being quiet, they’d harvested and harvested, trained tons of bullet-sponge-turtles (drop them in peoples bases, soak up bullets etc), and had turrets a plenty guarding their base. They had a terrible attitude too, we were generally friendly but these guys were pretty damn toxic, which led to confrontation. We decided to raid them, they were on the east coast where rivers met at a t-junction, they’d behemoth-gated this area in, creating a rather large base area. We raided them, they were home, it resulted in a hell of a fight. Unfortunately for me, my kickass T-Rex got stuck behind enemy lines, in a gully that wasn’t able to be seen by enemy turrets, but unable to be reached easily by us. We had no way to get him out easily, as they quickly erected metal behemoth gates at each end of the gully, trapping poor Theodore.
As the battle raged on, with Pteranadons swooping around, people dying, many animals dying, salty words being slung and many mothers being called many names no doubt as well as finding out how many had slept with who’s mums, I realised, Theodore must be rescued from this demeaning fate!
Cue Quetzal Tarantino! My recently acquired Quetalcoatus, I built a platform on his back and to the tune of ‘Paint it black’, launched a Vietnam style rescue mission, with people flying intercept on disposable pteranadons, soaking bullets from turrets. My Quetzal got in there, we got the Rex on the back after much coaxing and we managed to get out… but had one of them flying after us. Luckily, we had one of my mates standing on the back platform, complete with tranquilizer darts, two of those saw the enemy pteranadon drop from up high, the pilot drop from up higher assuredly to his death.
At the end of the day, we rescued Theodore, got Quetzal Tarantino his war-wings, had a great time and restored ourselves to alpha status. 😀
One major one I remember from Final Fantasy XI was getting a healer to raise me deep in one of the beastman strongholds after I died attempting one of the storyline missions. To be fair, the major local beastman leader was up, so it wasn’t hard for the person helping me to get assistance.
All of EVE Online. Every log in. I was shite.
WoW First year classic on my Resto Druid, raiding and dungeons were a breeze healing and saving tanks and huntards who stood in fire… then I got invited to PvP Grand Marshall team and got to do something insane. Flag Running as Cheetah form.
Ninja the flag and every horde on the map has the sole mission to find you and kill you… and watching all the freak attempts to save you and escort you to the flag room. I was a Resto Druid I wasnt meant for fast paced action and receiving support… I was the support, tanking an undead rogue in bear form while getting priest spam heals. Watching nnnages suicide to deliver a frost niva behind you.
The most recent memorable event was in Destiny.
I was 3 weeks behind starting due to a holiday, ended up doing a lot of solo and co-op with a mate who started a new character.
I eventually hit max solo light and wasn’t keen on looking for randoms to raid with.
A friend from another group messages me one night and asks if I want till fill a slot in their party for the raid, 4th had a family dinner.
I jumped at the chance and got chatting with the team, they helped explain the workings of the level and we had a good time.
Crazy thing is, it was early days and everyone was desperate to get the Mythoclast, hence why they got me along anyway.
The chat went dead silent as I got the Mythoclast, I sat in stunned silence myself.
It was subdued from there as we parted ways, I was sure they wouldn’t ask me back.
They messaged me the day of the reset to invite me along again.
Shortly after alerting two people to my hidden wood shack in the mountains on Rust due to me leaving my fire on inside (I was new…), those two people bashed my door in, killed me, and erased half a days progress. Neverless, I was shit scared of everyone afterwards, until a kind stranger convinced me he wasn’t out to kill me like 98% of the players and made a secure room in his fortress for me, and provided me with lots of gear to get me up and running. Two days later I built my own heavily fortified shack, accomplished what I wanted to in Rust and never played it again.
Seriously, fuck that game.
Nothing specific really comes to mind but I remember one time in L4D2 playing on the hardest difficulty and getting downed about 50 metres from a safe room door.
They could have let me die and then it would have loaded the next level since everyone else was in there, but they wanted to save me anyway.
Ran out guns blazing and hauled my sorry arse up and into the room while the hordes chased us.
Keep in mind on that difficulty one hit from a common infected takes off 20hp and you’ve only got 100 max. They really should have let me die, but we ended up surviving anyway.
Semi off topic but there is one story I’ll never forget in Aliens Vs Predator where we didn’t actuallu survive.
It’s legitimately the most terrifying experience I’ve had in a video game and it was online versus other players.
We were playing the gametype that is basically the same as Infect from Halo, so a team of Human Marines going up against 1 or 2 Aliens. When the Aliens kill a Marine, the Marine switches teams and has to kill his former teammates until there’s nobody left.
Anyway, we were up on the highest point on the map that a human can get to and we’re overlooking this fairly open room with a ramp in the centre going down to the rest of the map.
Above us were some rafters I guess you’d call them.
We started getting a ping on our motion sensor that something was in front of us, which usually meant one of the Aliens was climbing on the rafters, but we couldn’t see anything.
Suddenly I heard a scream to my left and I looked and one of my teammates suddenly went down. Didn’t see what killed him, but he was already dead.
I look around trying to spot the thing but I couldn’t see anything.
I went to look right and saw my otherteammate dead on the ground.
I was just about to start sprinting away when the light behind him was smashed out by a Xenomorph tail. I jumped off the ledge and was grabbed from behind before it ate my face.
It honestly felt like watching a horror movie and it was entirely unscripted with real players. I didn’t know what was going on. Never had an experience like that again with that game.
Super Metroid: when the Metroid saved me from mother brain. I’ll never forget that…
Rust.
Every day, anyone who walks past without killing you is a hero.
However my friend is an anti-hero.
I log on, and am called into his house, where he shows me something incredible.
Another player, obviously younger than ourselves, locked up in a cage on a higher floor of his house.
Such an amazing achievement called for some celebrations and showing of more friends. Our whole Rust community was invited around to see and then participate in some games. We locked ourselves in with said victim (ibot) and then had the home owner and alleged abductor shoot at us with guns as his eyes were closed.
Then, reversing the situation, ibot was given the gun while everyone else was locked in the hallway, in full sight of the prisoner.
Finally, the prisoner was killed with and arrow or a spear (my memory fails me), where it seems that we would never see him again.
Until the victim spawned back in the bed that was placed in the jail.
A full video is featured on my Youtube channel, Gingerbin Games.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXhUQOPn4mA
You tell me who’s the hero.
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