Rockstar Games has rolled out a new festive holiday event dubbed ‘A Merry Call to Arms’ in Red Dead Online, featuring a fresh skirmish at Fort Wallace and nine returning maps. The whole event will double the players’ RDO$, XP, and Gold rewards. The event has already started and is a seasonal grind for the dedicated gamers of Red Dead Online.
If you see it this way, scrolling through the comments under Rockstar’s announcement tweet presents a whole different view. It looks like the company had the audacity to serve sarsaparilla beside whiskey at the saloon and everybody was just shouting for whiskey. The very piece of news that was the holiday event with double rewards in Red Dead Online, is almost getting lost under an avalanche of… something totally different.
What is the event about? The event is named ‘A Merry Call to Arms.’ The players must face off in a fight against enemies, the so-called ‘humbugs’. I think it is an adorable holiday spin, naming the enemies ‘humbugs’ adds a holiday twist to the whole thing. The new shootout is going to be staged at Fort Wallace, and nine other maps will also be brought back for this mode. The big draw is the 2X rewards on everything including RDO$, XP, and Gold. So it is a great incentive for the cowpokes who are still out there on the trails of Red Dead Online to log in and do some grinding. It is a classic holiday bonus event and this is the kind of thing that live-service games always do.
Pixel Throne who posted on Twitter portrayed the positive people’s reaction very well, calling it a ‘perfect holiday event’ and claiming that it is going to be epic. And probably, it is so for the Red Dead community! But then, if you keep scrolling, the tone changes faster than a gunslinger’s draw.
The instant and huge reaction from numerous replies was not about Fort Wallace or double gold at all, but they were all about Grand Theft Auto VI. The tweet from ‘CoquitoPapi’ about it says it all: ‘LMFAOOOOO MY DUMBASS THOUGHT THIS WAS GONNA BE TRAILER 3… 🙃’. That feeling is all over. ‘FUCK, I NEED GTA 6’ writes another user. ‘I was waiting for gta4 remaster,’ says one more. There is even a reply in Arabic that, when translated, is just begging for ‘Grand Theft Auto 6’.
It is a big disconnect. While Rockstar is trying to market their current live game, a large portion of the audience is simply not interested. They are so focused on the next big thing that the present offering goes unnoticed. One user, ‘Edster’, even joked that Rockstar moved a GTA Online DLC to Wednesday just to announce this Red Dead news, which sounds like a hit at the priorities.
Then it gets weirder. The replies become these intense personal dramas that have nothing to do with the tweet. There is a lengthy argument going back and forth between users ‘Killer_Clown4191’ and ‘The Dark Knight’ regarding cyberbullying, their personal losses, and vowing revenge on other players in GTA Online. It is heavy, emotional stuff that is just sitting there under a post about a Christmas cowboy shootout. ‘Every single player is going to get taken out,’ one of them threatens. It is a stark reminder that the community spaces around these giant games are packed with real people who have their own issues.
Another user, ‘samoahmedd’, inquires whether the promotional image is the same one as last year’s Christmas and if it looks the same. Which, you know, just adds to the feeling of some players that Red Dead Online might be getting recycled content while they wait for the next big Rockstar project.
So, what can we conclude from all this? Rockstar’s ‘A Merry Call to Arms’ is a super event for the Red Dead Online players. If you are still connected to that world, then it is clear that you should go to the game and earn double rewards from the nine returning maps and a new Fort Wallace standoff. It is just playing the game to get free stuff.
However, the online reaction reveals a much broader story. It uncovers the huge, almost overpowering shadow that Grand Theft Auto VI is casting over everything Rockstar is doing at the moment. For many gamers, any form of communication from the company that is not about GTA 6 is simply noise. This can be seen as a confirmation of the ridiculous hype surrounding that game, but it also highlights the difficulty of retaining an existing live service when your community is collectively holding its breath for the next one.
Moreover, the comments make it clear how messy and human these gaming forums can be. There is pure excitement about the event, bitter disappointment related to the PlayStation and Xbox communities, and intense personal dramas all mixed together.
