Noob (TV series)

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
If the guy wearing blue asks you if you want to join his guild, answer "No".
"I'm pretty glad a total nobody came by and sent a request to the GMs. Because between you who are scared of GMs, Gaea making a lot of dough on my back while I'm dancing, and Sparadrap that doesn't even know the functionality exists, I could have stayed dancing for a while !"
—Omega Zell to Arthéon, after having his avatar stuck in "dancing mode" by Tenshirock for two days.

Noob is a French series where most of the action happens inside a MMORPG, Horizon 1.0. It's a series about newbs and n00bs and not to be confused with The Noob, a webcomic with a similar premise. It was created as a webseries by Fabien Fournier, who is both director and scriptwriter. In France, it gets broadcasted on the "Nolife" channel some time before being available on the official site.

After being seduced by a TV ad, MMORPG veteran "Gaea" buys the game and creates her character. She's now dumped into an unfamiliar land (A "newb" when it comes to this game) and soon discovers the game is very newb-unfriendly now that most players have reached high levels. Fortunately, there is a guild to help newbs ease into the game; unfortunately, there is a n00b in it.

Available with english subtitles here: https://web.archive.org/web/20131021071645/http://noob-tv.com/noob_09.html (Note : The latest episode subtitled episode is 9th of season 3 and a handful of names got changed.)

Noob has also been made into a comic and novels written by Fabien Fournier. While the comic is mostly short stories within an alternative continuity, the novels happen between the webserie's seasons. Each media is however meant to be independant.

This series has a character sheet.

Tropes used in Noob (TV series) include:
  • Aborted Arc: Tenshirock once had a plan consisting of making avatars have their player's real-life problems in the game, and hence erasing its reality escaping aspect, notably by having avatars speak on their own. That plan was never spoken of after the one time he had to do a demonstration to make Ash understand what he was up to.
  • The Ace: Fantöm.
  • Alliterative Name: Max Middle aka Fantöm.
  • All There in the Manual: Paying enough attention to the series is usually enough to follow the important parts of the plot. However, the books, the comic, the official forum, and sometimes the actor's Facebook pages are needed to understand Horizon's inner workings, know to which class some characters belong and be filled in on the main character's back story.
  • Almighty Janitor: Despite being among the lowest ranking players, Gaea has quite a lot of power over anyone she can blackmail. Being on Tenshirock's good side permitted her to have the most powerful person she's blackmailed be the game's creator. Actually justified since the bad reputation she gets from her behaviour keeps her ranking down.
  • An Adventurer Is You: Nuker (Gaea), Tank (Arthéon), DPS (Omega Zell), Healer (Sparadrap).
  • Appliance Defenestration: Deconstructed: Master Zen, former guild master, landed in prison for accidentally killing someone with a thrown computer. Now he only lives for revenge over the guy whose sheer stupidity led him to flip out and ruined his life.
  • As You Know: Sparadrap's goldfish memory is the most used for that and "your brother" and "my brother" have been used to mention him and a certain other player in front of people for whom their respective in-game names would have meant the same thing. It also seems to be the reason Tenshirock and Ash are mentionned as "Tenshirock the hacker" and "Ash the Chinese (gold) farmer" in conversations between people who perfectly know who they are.
  • Audience Surrogate: Gaea initially, then Sparadrap, to the extent of making all other members of the guild qualify as Mr. Exposition to some extent.
  • Auto Revive: Ressurrection stones.
  • Awesome Anachronistic Apparel: Tenshirock until Centralis then neogicians turn out to exist and are later shown. He and Ivy still qualify after that, given that the appearance of other neogicians or people wearing non-medieval clothes has so far been restricted to the books and the comic. Tabris joins the select club in Season 4.
  • Breather Episode: Right in the middle of the dire consequences of the Wham Episode, Omega Zell gets a call from a real life friend who asks him to replace him in the filming of a video game testing show. As he needs an assistant but can't ask his colleagues, he pays Gaea to come with him. The tested game happens to be Horizon 2.0 and the tester is a newb to MMORPGs.
  • Broken Aesop: An In-Universe case manifests as Feminine TV, the place of Omega Zell's day job. The channel is hinted to be quite feminist and have "women can be as good as men" documentarys... alternating with shows that are stereotypically associated with female audiences such as teen romances or dogs shows.
  • Butt Monkey: Omega Zell.
  • Caught on Tape: Gloating about being the one behind the Wham! Episode events in front of someone who regularly makes embarassing videos of one of her guild mates, especially when you framed her so everyone would think she is responsible for said events is a bad idea.
  • Celebrity Paradox: Fantöm has a Noob box set on his DVD shelf in Season 3 and a Noob poster (on which Gaea and Omega Zell are quite visible) behind his chair in Season 4. The paradox actually gets averted when it comes to him and his teammates since their real life faces are well-known in-universe.
    • Omega Zell's ring tone is his own character song.
    • According to the second book, a band named Mokotz plays in a tavern in Centralis.
    • In a strange combination of the two previous, an piece of the "Roxor" clip showing the band is seen between an ad for Horizon 2.0 on Feminine TV and an cereal ad starring Ystos when Arthéon is browsing channels in Season 3 premiere.
  • Clingy MacGuffin: Sparadrap's enhanced by Tenshirock staff in Season 2. It survives his avatar being banned and recreated and a location that is supposed to permanently erase a random eqipped item belonging any player that enters it. He actually never gets rid of it, it just gets Brought Down to Normal at some point.
  • The Cracker: Tenshirock.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience : Yellow cursors for the Empire, Red ones for the Coalition, blue ones for Game Masters and green ones for the Order. Loosing all reputation points will make the player's cursor gray, marking them as "neutral", actually meaning all three factions can PVP them, as well that all NPCs become hostile. On the flip side, players from any faction can be the helping hand if they wish.
    • Colour Coded Armies
    • Good Colours Evil Colours / Red and Black and Evil All Over : All player characters have a cursor above their head with their name and a different colour depending on the faction to which they belong. Players of the Coalition, the opposite faction to the Empire, have red cursors and wear a lot of black and red. Empire and later Order players seem to be much more diversified, to the extent of including characters wearing red and black (Omega Zell's second and third outfit, Gaea's fourth outfit, Heimdal until he gets his blue tunic, Fantöm). Justifications go from Real Life Limited Wardrobe to character's class (black is the right colour for an assassin, no matter which faction it's in)... or the fact that you just wouldn't want to mess with them. The recurrent Game Master also wears black.
  • Combat Medic: Bound to happen in the MMORPG setting. On the Empire's side, Ystos fits the bill best, both because he's actually the best of the game and the two other Empire healers introduced are part of the Noob guild. Only one healer has been introduced in the two other factions.
  • Comically Missing the Point: During Omega Zell's brief time in charge of the guild in Season 4, the girls started suspecting that he wanted to kick everyone else out (though it turned out he couldn't). Sparadrap was sure his position was safe because Omega Zell had given him an important job : finding a male healer and recruiting him.
  • Command Roster: The groups of four commonly called "Justice guild" and "Roxxor guild" are actually the Command Roster of much bigger guilds. The shortcut is used beacause they are the only members of said guilds to show up within the first three seasons and usually the only people widely known to be part of them.
  • Continuing Is Painful: Cemetery ressurrections involve loss of experience and reputation points and damage on equipped items. The comic is the media paying the most attention to the fact, with Gaea putting off resurrection on two occasions to avoid the associated fiancial cost and would rather bid on a healer resurrecting her. Resurrection stones can keep that from happenning, but characters rarely have them around.
  • Cool Mask: Précieux, Heimdal and Roxana. Ystos starts wearing one in battle in late Season 3 and Tabris has one over the bandages covering his body.
  • Cross Playing: Omega Zell gave it a try at some point. He also runs into the male avatar of a female player while looking for a replacement for Arthéon and suspected Golgotha of doing it a some point because her personnality is too far away from what he expects from a woman.
  • Dead Character Walking: Horizon has it as a straight game mechanism.
  • Decade Dissonance: Centralis, the Empire's capital, is a futuristic city in an otherwise Medieval European Fantasy context. Its existence justifies the presence of neogicians (an engineer/gunslinger-type class) in the game.
  • Death Dealer: The general idea of the cartomancer class.
  • Deep-Immersion Gaming: Exaggerated by being the default situation. The only exceptions to having player and avatar played by the same actor are a brief case of Cross Playing (Omega Zell ranting about the presence of girls in MMORPG to what turns out to be a female player's male avatar) and of course Sparadrap's "second personnality" that is actually a takeover by the player usually behind another avatar.
  • Double Play: Fabien Fournier seems to love the idea. It seems to be quite easy to do on Horizon, with the only constraint being having two computers if you want to play with both of your characters at the same time. The different cases in order of appearance are :
    • Omega Zell once thought that he would get help from high level players more easily with a female avatar. His trouble imitating a female voice correctly is hinted to be the reason it failed. The avatar is still the first to show up when he opens his account in Season 2 and got transferred to his sister who got interested in the game by the end of Season 3.
    • Recurring Extra T-Man first shows up during an interview to join the Justice guild, during which Saphir notices he also has a Coalition character on his resume. After she refuses his application, he only appears as his Coalition character.
    • For a short while, Ystos controlled both Sparadrap and his own character at the same time.
    • Gaea's archer has so far been a One-Shot Character. Arthéon hints she's been using it to help her summoner level up.
    • When Arthéon becomes less available because of boarding school enrollment, Sparadrap gets a warrior character meant to replace him in case the guild can't find a new Tank.
    • Nazetrimé has both a berserker in the Empire and a cartomancer in the Order.
    • Golgotha creates a mage to get a break from enemy players that were persecuting her usual character near the end of Season 3. She takes time to adjust given she's usually a warrior.
    • Ystos creates and assassin and enrolls it in the Noob guild to get a little time away from high-level pressure in Season 4.
  • Dragon with an Agenda: Ash is considered to be Tenshirock's Dragon, but only an old friendship and the fact that Ash's customers frequently never come back after getting their avatar banned by Game Masters (hence being quite useful to Tenshirock) seem to be the only things keeping them from being in direct conflict. Ash has shown hints of getting fed up with Tenshirock's attitude (notably not helping him get better merchandise under the pretext that he may end up with stuff that would make people enjoy the game even more) and he will loose lots of customers if Teshirock reaches his goal.
  • Dream Sequence: Gaea and Sparadrap both got one, while Omega Zell got a couple.
  • Escort Mission: The Noob guild joins Golgotha on one in Season 2. The personnality of the charges is inverted compared to the standard, having them be so smart they get arrogant about it and criticize their guard's slow progression. Golgotha's solution to that was cutting off her earphones and not reading the discussion board, as she had gotten so pissed off that she killed the charges herself sevral times.
  • Fictional Video Game: Duh. Defictionalization is however the dream of both fans and creator.
  • Five-Man Band
  • Flanderization: For everyone. Gaea 's Greed was mentioned only in episode 15 for the first time (and foreshadowed in episodes 8 and 10), and it has been taken Up to Eleven sevral times since then. Sparadrap became dumber and dumber, and Omega Zell's pride and misogyny also increased.
  • Freaky Friday Flip: The Mortegarde dungeon can cause avatar switching between two players. Given the context, it's actually strange to have voices not change. However, Spardrap's Super-Powered Alter Ego moments would loose their charm if that happened (not to mention his brother wasn't casted yet the first time, during which he spoke).
  • Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Sparadrap and his younger brother.
  • Gender Blender Name: Morgan Lavande aka Omega Zell. The feminine version is actually spelled "Morgane", but is still a perfect homophone. And yes, his last name is French for "Lavander".
  • Geodesic Cast: A direct consequence of An Adventurer Is You, that means quite a few four-person teams running around, four of which have been introduced so far (the Noob guild, team Fantöm, team Amaras and Relic Tracker's guild).
  • Go-Karting with Bowser: Tenshirock likes forcing Omega Zell to dance, Gaea likes making embarrassing videos of Omega Zell, common enjoyment ensues. In Season 3, Gaea and Teshirock are even seen playing rock-paper-scissors. Borders with Friendly Enemies when Tenshirock briefly joins the Noob guild at the tavern a couple of times and helps Gaea get her banned avatar back by means he could have used to hit Horizon quite hard.
  • Griefer: Basically Relic Tracker's guild reason to be. Not only that, but the Noob guild is the only one they're after
  • Guys Smash, Girls Shoot : Feminine characters are either the nuker of the healer of their groups. The three notable exceptions are Golgotha, Omega Zellette and Nazetrimé who is a double subversion because her berserker isn't her real character. Saphir and Nazetrimé should be DPSers in the standard group composition given the apparent specialisations of their guildmates, but both opt for an alternative role that makes them avoid hand to hand combat. Roxana, Couette and Ivy have been seen getting into hand to hand combat on a single occasion.
    • Quite a few masculine characters are shooters also : Sparadrap, Ystos and Battos as healers, Master Zen, Précieux and Heimdal as mages, and Amaras and Fantöm have distance attacks in their arsenal as Twilight Warriors. That makes both aspects of the trope are downplayed, with the "girls shoot" part closest to being played straight.
  • Hidden in Plain Sight: Once the viewer knows what happens in episode 7 of Season 3, the TV ad from episode 1 of Season 1 will be seen in a new light.
  • I Broke a Nail: Happens to Couette once... from too intense typing.
  • Inferred Survival: Fact that an avatar can come back as long as the player behind it is still alive set aside, Season 3 finale made a tear jerker out of the death of Spardrap's pets, and the third book even has a conversation between him and his brother state that the bag Roxana destroyed contained every single pet that he had collected. However, the first book makes it clear that banned avatars still exist, the player can just not log on with them. The avatar Sparadrap had from Season 1 to early Season 2 is in that situation, along with the pets he had collected at the time. For those who have read the books, that includes the crab he got in the first one.
  • The Inner Reveal: The audience knew that a certain player was Sparadrap's younger brother a few episodes before any of the members of the Noob guild knew about it.
  • Instant Humiliation - Just Add YouTube: Poor, poor Omega Zell. The incident mentionned in the top of page quote is hinted to have been the first of a long series. The videos of him in Tenshirock-induced dances are stated to be posted on Gaea's blog and be one of her convoluted sources of revenue thanks to the ads. In addition, Season 3's Wham! Episode relies on that trope being exploited and played for drama.
  • "I Want" Song: Roxor is the theme tune for Omega Zell, sung by the band Mokotz who sang the opening . That group's main singer is Master Zen.
  • Jack of All Trades: Elementalists when they start out. They can stay like that forever if they never specialise according to the third book.
  • Late Arrival Spoiler:
    • Part of recent official art shows characters that are first introduced as Empire players with Order cursors. The identity of both spoils Season 3 events.
    • Listening to or reading recent interviews with the crew may make you find out about a certain Justice guild member that will end up joining the Noob guild after an account resetting and of a well-known character leaving Horizon in Season 4 a little too early.
    • Any recent depictions of Sparadrap will tell anyone who hasn't gone beyond Season 2 that the Tenshirock-enhanced staff is here to stay.
    • A piece of official art managed to pull a double one. First, it showed four characters wearing announced new outfits and was released before an episode in which an enemy wearing an outfit identical to the one that would be Omega Zell's new one showed up. Second, it also happens to be the first photo montage showing Gaea with a red cursor.
  • Level-Locked Loot: Some clothes have been shown and stated to not be wearable before the character reaches level 100. It's shown by having them being stuck in the middle of putting the item of clothing on.
  • Man Child: Sparadrap.
  • Manipulative Bastard: Gaea uses her good looks and Puppy Dog Eyes to get away with a lot of things.
  • Meaningful Name: "Kevin" is an insult meant for younger gamers that sometimes takes the same meaning as "n00b" when the (at least mental) age part of the term no longer applies in one's mind. Before that, it was and still is a very frequent masculine name. With such a fact existing in France, it would have been hard to name Sparadrap something else.
    • His last name is French for "the pope". That makes his full name a not-so-remote synonym of "the n00b priest".
  • A Million Is a Statistic: One of the many consequences of the Wham! Episode was a massive Face Heel Turn of Empire players in favor of the Coalition or the Order. When it came to main characters, the six core Noob members, Golgotha and the Justice Guild top four weren't part of it and the two other Empire players that had been introduced at the time were probably part of the Order by the time Season 3 started. The fact hence only seemed to contribute to the plot by being the reason Fantöm couldn't form a temporary party for dungeons and had to join the Noob guild. However, during the Empire-Coalition war that was the setting for the Season 3 finale, Gaea recognizes a member of the Coalition guild that wants to protect her as former Empire player (who was chatting with the Noob guild members right before Season 2's battlefield sequence).
  • The Millstone: Sparadrap.
  • Mistaken for Badass: Dark Avenger's sole presence seems to make Sparadrap's luck literally spike. The main consequence is that Dark Avenger is convinced that Sparadrap is displaying Obfuscating Stupidity while everyone else just sees him as the n00b he is. Gets even worse given that Sparadrap "beats" Dark Avenger mainly when the two are alone. If there are witnesses, they either arrive too late or are Sparadrap's very surprised guildmates, who have no good reason to go tell Dark Avenger's Guild Master and colleagues that he really did get defeated by accident.
  • Mood Whiplash: Season 3 finale has sevral ones in a row : The tearjerking death of Sparadrap's pets is followed by Gaea calling team Amaras monsters and swearing to make them pay what they did... because she was planning to steal them and sell them off at the auction house for what would have been quite a fortune. Omega Zell is barely done expressing his bewilderment to her reaction when Sparadrap starts going bersek beceause of what just happened. Just as team Amaras strikes back, team Fantöm pulls Big Damn Heroes. The next scene happens in the Lepape household where Ystos is borrowing a microphone from a still shaken Sparadrap whom he needs to reassure, leading to another tear jerker, followed by a more optimist scene.
  • Most Gamers Are Male: Frequently invoked by Omega Zell, played straight in the main cast from the sex ratio bias towards male characters. Gamer Chick is avoided via the significant number of female characters and their presence both at the top (Saphir and Roxana) and the bottom (Gaea, Couette, Ivy and Golgotha).
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: In the Season 3 finale, the Noob guild runs into team Amaras (minus Amaras himself). Decklan steals the bag containing Sparadrap's pets and Roxana destroys it Just For The Evulz. Cue to it being Sparadrap's Bersek Button and making him use a powerful attack that that quickly gets countered, but was probably the beacon that enabled team Fantöm to find the group. That enabled Saphir and Heimdal to make sure team Amaras didn't resuscitate while Ystos guided the Noob guild through finishing the day-saving task they had started.
  • The Nicknamer: Golgotha.
  • Ninja Looting: Gaea has been seen doing it a couple of times onscreen and has probably done it many more times offscreen or too discretely for it to be noticed. Relic Tracker's guild also once plans to do it by kill stealing from the Noob guild and succeeds. In Season 2 finale, Gaea also comes up with "Ninja Healing" that consists of getting out of her hiding place to intercept healing spells Ystos meant for other players (that ware actually doing something useful), than taking cover again.
  • Non-Identical Twins: Gaea's avatars got treated like that both in the book and the comic at some point. While the face is the same, one is a brunette in an nice red dress and the other is a blond wearing what may very well be the Starter Equipment for female archers.
  • Non-Player Character: A few, usually shopkeepers and quest givers.
  • No, You Hang Up First: Arthéon and Kary manage to have the MMORPG variant with "log off" replacing "hang up.".
  • Oblivious Younger Sibling: Sparadrap was convinced that his younger brother didn't know how to play Horizon and wass reluctant to taught by him for all of Season 1 and the first part of Season 2. Some of this went on after his first encounter with his brother's level 100 druid character during which he recognized his voice, but dismissed it as a "good imitation".
    • Exaggerated given that a whole year passed between the ban of Level100!Arthéon, who knew the caracter played by Sparadrap's brother, and the creation of the current Arthéon according to the books and comic. In Season 1, Omega Zell indicates that Sparadrap has been only playing for a few months.
  • Oblivious to Hints: The message was neither meant for him nor to be cryptic, but Omega Zell got a quite bad case during the first in-game conversation between Sparadrap and his brother, that happenened in his presence. After getting a demonstration of the younger brother's talent at the game (via control of Sparadrap's avatar) a few episodes earlier, he manages to not do the math when its best healer calls Sparadrap by his real name, gets suprised by him not recognizing his voice, gets told by Sparadrap he imitates his brother quite well and corrects misremembered facts only said brother would know about. He only finds out after being told by Sparadrap, who had to later be directly told the information himself. The incident of course made Sparadrap fit into the trope also.
    • The situation got inverted when Sparadrap ran into Master Zen a few episodes earlier, where he didn't recognize him until the words "computer" and "jail" got pronounced by Master Zen.
  • Once More, with Clarity: The interview arc (that concludes with the Wham Episode) started with the camera focusing separately on sevral characters (Sparadrap, Nazetrimé, Précieux, Tenshirock), a close-up on the faces each member of team Fantöm and the Empire's flag falling down, with a general mood that hints to something important happening. The scene comes back in the Wham episode where it turned out that Nazetrimé, Sparadrap, Précieux and Tenshirock were all listening to Judge Dead making the public announcement blaming something the game creators were actually responsible for on Fantöm whose avatar was being earased from the feet up by the time the speech was done. And the falling flag was dropped by Heimdäl both out of shock of what had just happened and from acknowldgement of what Fantöm's "death" meant for the Empire.
  • One Dialogue, Two Conversations: In a short post-credit scene, Sparadrap and Ivy are at a Respawn Point. Sparadrap ended up there after running into Roxana and Ivy after Gaea forced her avatar to use its kamikaze function in addition to forgetting to share a quest with her while she really needed the reward credits. Sparadrap mentions a few very nasty things he wants to see happen to Roxana (go to tear jerker entry to know why), only calling her by female pronouns. Ivy replies it's the minimum she deserves, actually thinking of Gaea.
  • The One Guy: Omega Zell in the only male employee of Feminine TV.
  • Online Alias
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: The vast majority of the characters.
  • Only Sane Man: Arthéon.
    • And Ivy is the Only Sane Woman. She may even be saner than Arthéon given that she foresaw exactly what would happen with Gaea in charge of guild while she was claming that she would be better than Omega Zell for the position. For comparision, the events of the Wham Episode were necessary for Arthéon to become immune to Gaea's Puppy Dog Eyes.
  • The Password Is Always Swordfish: Sparadrap's is "Flan", the French word for his favorite desert ; the very episode revealing it has him ask his brother to remind him what it is (that's the guy who was complaining about his brother "messing up his character settings" in Season 1). In the comic, Omega Zell's turns out to be "Fantöm".
  • Perpetual Poverty: Both Gaea in real life and the Noob guild. Gaea has a few money making/saving schemes, but all benefits go into Horizon subscription and all the manga-related stuff in her room. The Noob guild is broke in part because of Gaea constantly weaseling her way out of contributing (and the only one noticing also being the one who always has a bad word towards her anyway) and the few game credits they have is split between Sparadrap buying useless things and Golgotha deciding she wants to be paid right when the fact that she frequently tags along on her own may actually be useful.
    • The books and the comic make matters even worse : Spaaradrap's guild contribution is hinted to be better known as his "feed the pets" fund, Omega Zell's is revealed to be so sporadic that him promising Arthéon to pay without fault each week for a whole year was more than enough to convince the latter to not make any moves toward inviting Couette into the guild during said year.
  • Player Character: The series revolves around them.
  • Player Killing: What Dark Avenger is best known for. At the beginning of the show, at least. A dedicated guild turns out to exist in the Coalition later on.
  • Plot Tailored to the Party: While completing the second floor of Galamadriabuyak tower meant for level 20 players, the Noob guild has to face a task in which the party's tank has to take control of a level 100 avatar to fight zombies, which loose hit points if they are hit with a healing spell. Gee, too bad Arthéon never played a level 100 character before and Sparadrap never casts healing spells on enemies.
  • Politically Incorrect Hero / Straw Misogynist : Omega Zell thinks that women have nothing to do in MMORPGs and puts them on the same level as n00bs. It however backfires a lot with the person in charge of his dream guild's admissions being female and the Noob guild getting new feminine members some time after Gaea joins.
  • Poor Communication Kills: Or at least gets you stangled by Heimdäl. A Seson 2 scene entirely relies on that trope. Some time after it turns out that Gaea somehow got Fantöm to help her level up, the rest of the latter's team interupts the Noob guild in the middle of a quest, claiming to be looking for one of its members. Omega Zell immidiately decides they must be looking for him under the assumption he somehow made a good impression on Saphir and tell them he's the person he's looking for. It's only after he gets Heimdäl quite mad at him that it turns out they are actually looking for someone who was threatening Fantöm to get his account earased by Tenshirock if his didn't help that someone level up. Either Fantöm giving the right name or Heimdäl being more clear about what he was looking for could have avoided the whole incident.
  • Psycho for Hire: Golgotha is a concrete example of zig-zagging the trope. Her attitude towards the Noob guild each time she joins is a sliding scale between "You'll have to pay me if you want my help and even Gaea won't be able to change my mind" (money first side) and "I like playing with you guys. It'll be free as long as I get to kill something." (basically the exaggerated version of the trope). She's so close to the latter during most of Season 2 that she appears next to the regular guild members in both opening and ending clips, while she's cut out of Season 3's ending and treated like other secondary characters in its opening.
  • Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The Noob guild. Arthéon landed in the guild after getting his account reset, both Gaea and Omega Zell view it as crutch until they have a high enough level to go elsewhere and Sparadrap is the scapegoat for the guild's slow progress, despite Teeth-Clenched Teamwork being an important factor as well.
    • You can even find part of the basic composition if you dig a little : Arthéon as the Old Guy, Big Guy and Smart Guy (as guild master, Tank and member with the most experience), Omega Zell as the Sidekick that sometimes shares the Smart Guy role, and Sparadrap as a bundle for the Younger Guy and Funny Guy (considering all four qualify to some extent). That leaves Gaea with most aspects of The Smart Guy not related to knowing about Horizon's specific universe, as she's played MMORPGs before.
  • Reality Warper: Tenshirock's hacking makes him one to a certain extent.
  • Real Money Trade: The business of the site farmerchinois.com.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: Gaea (blue) and Golgotha (red) fit the trope quite well.
  • Remember the New Guy?: Couette and Ivy joined the Noob guild during the time that passed between two episodes. While Couette had appeared three times previously, Ivy seems to have materialized out of thin air. Despite that, at least Arthéon seems to know her well enough to mention she doesn't show up often ; Ivy ironically ends up being logged on more frequently than Couette.
    • Athéon actually recruited them into the guild in the second book, that introduced Ivy. They just didn't show up for the three first episodes of Season 3, that takes place some time after it.
  • Revive Kills Zombie
  • Right in Front of Me: A couple of occurrences.
    • The first is Omega Zell while meeting Saphir for the first time. Arthéon tells him that she's one of Justice guild's founders and his sexist mind can only manage to wrap around it when he decides she must be sleeping with whoever is in charge of admissions in the guild. The next line uttered by Saphir is along the lines of "gotta go, I have to interview applicants".
    • The second time, Sparadrap is facing his younger brother's character for the first time. He recognizes his voice, but is quick to start a "but you can't be him" speech including his conviction that his brother does'nt know how to play.
  • The Roleplayer: Arthéon (only mentionned a few times before it beacame plot-relevant in Season 4, but has great importance in the books), who's hinted to have picked it up during his time in the Justice guild. Heimdal is one according to Word of God (and starts displaying a little of it in Season 4) and Ystos claims that's the reason he changes the way he acts when he plays his (brand new) assassin.
  • Serious Business: Played with in several ways:
    • Straight : Everyone takes the game seriously sometimes to the extent of having Skewed Priorities. Perpatually broke Gaea payed extra to get Horizon 2.0 in advance and Arthéon frequently fakes being sick just so he can play all day. Omega Zell makes reaching his mouse a priority when he gets a possible hospital-level injury in real life while doing a dungeon. Also, despite real life scenes being more and more present, not a single person not playing Horizon has been shown on screen (that gets a little relaxed in the books and comic).
    • Deconstructed and Reconstructed : The game's top guild, Justice, only takes people who have no jobs and no ongoing relationships. However, the Justice guild's top four get revenue from their position : all four show up at conventions, play in advertisements and do publicity press shots, while Fantöm is basically paid to play the game and Saphir takes care of commercializing their number one image.
      • The whole guild is a professional acording to Word of God, which may explain Saphir's drastic criteria.
    • Desconstructed only : Arthéon is sent to boarding school in Season 3. In Season 4, he's out but still spends much less time in front of the computer (at least not enough to manage both the guild and his in-game girlfriend).
    • Zig Zagged : Gaea, Sparadrap and Fantöm's libraries are shown to be filled with manga, DVDs and other games. Ystos is seen playing with a Game Boy and reading a comic.
    • Defied : Sparadrap just sees MMORPG as a way to have fun and has trouble seeing why everyone else is taking Horizon so seriously.
  • Ship Tease: Both heteroseuxal and homosexual.
    • Omega Zell and Fantöm : Supported in-universe by Gaea's Yaoi Fangirl side and the alternate interpretation of the fact that Omega Zell slips into Cannot Spit It Out in Fantöm's presence. Word of God stated that Omega Zell is "not homosexual" and Fantöm didn't seem to like the idea of a guy having a crush on him the two times Gaea suggested it. The events of Season 3 altered the situation towards Fantöm getting along with the Noob guild (and even explicitly considering them true friends in the third book), Omega Zell included. And in Season 4 Fantöm not only pressures Saphir to let Omega Zell into Justice guild, but signs him up into its main roster behind her back, under the pretext it gives him the opportunity to pay the Noob guild back for its help.
    • Gaea and Golgotha : They're already established as old friends that have known each other since childhood according to the books and comic. A few facts hint to it being more than friendship at least on Golgotha's side between her general overprotectiveness towards Gaea in-game, the fact that she dropped everything and crossed half of France to come live with her whan it looked like she may stop playing Horizon and her hugging Gaea's arm when they show up at the guild's real-life meeting. She even seems to easily forgive Gaea killing her in-game and even gets enthuastic at the idea of eventually fighting against her when she joins the Coalition. Also, penny-pinching Gaea is letting someone who seems to not know her own strength live in her appartement.
    • Golgotha and Sparadrap : While she started out apprently as annoyed by his attitude as Gaea and Omega Zell, she clearly has a soft spot for him by Season 2 and claims to miss both him and Gaea when they get kicked out of the game (but has no word for Arthéon that she was somewhat replacing at the time). She also energically cheers Sparadrap on a few select occasaions. Add the fact that he's played by her husband in the mix.
    • Golgotha and Omega Zell : While Omega Zell was quite mad at Arthéon for recruiting Couette and Ivy, he never complains when Golgotha joins the group and even offers her to join him on a quest when Sparadrap and Gaea get kicked out of the game. She's also the only person aside of him that acknowledges Gaea's excessive greed. When he has to interview a female gamer for his job and Gaea happens to be the closest, the first thing he asks after making sure he's at the right place if Golgotha is present. In the comic, he even states that he considers her to be a man stuck in a woman's body as justification of her not being included in his sexism.
    • Omega Zell and Gaea : While the interview arc makes them meet in real life, the biggest tease they get is in the Season 4 episode during which they have a fight that makes Gaea sound jealous of Fantöm and Omega Zell leave the guild, which seems to upset her quite a lot. She also once suggested Omega Zell that he may like her to tease him.
    • Omega Zell and Sparadrap : On the blantant end, they once (twice including a crossover with Flanders Company) ended up in a dancing duet thanks to Tenshirock and thanks to "gay" commonly keeping its "joyful" meaning in French, Sparadrap claimed to qualify for the latter while Gaea was actually asking Omega Zell if he was the former. On the more subtle end, when Sparadrap had to make a second avatar in Season 2, Omega Zell started a little exposition speech about how it was impossible to make it join the Noob guild in Arthéon's absence before seeming to come back to his senses and refusing to help him. In Season 3, Gaea's reaction to Roxana killing Sparadrap's pets, that she was planning to steal and sell off shocked him, hinting that he acknolowdged how important they were to their owner. In Season 4, Sparadrap considered Omega Zell leaving the guild a bad enough matter to go tell Arthéon in real life while it looks like he only found out about Gaea after Kary having exams happened to enable him to join Sparadrap for a dungeon.
    • Ystos and Fantöm : In Season 3, he bursts into tears along with Omega Zell when Fantöm's name is prounounced in a quite empty Centralis. Later, he's basically the one who gets Fantöm to start playing again, believes the Noob guild's info that he could be innocent while admitting Saphir and Heimdäl may need solid evidence and welcomes him back into Horizon. The new character he creates in Season 4 is a assassin, the class Fantöm was playing before the first time he became a Twilight warrior. That one becoming official would however make it Incestuous Casting and it would make sense for Ystos to just view Fantöm as an older brother given who his actual one is.
  • Sickeningly Sweethearts: Arthéon and Kary. Good thing the plot line is present in part to justify Arthéon's reduced screentime.
  • Sixth Ranger: Golgotha, and she seems set on never joining the guild permanently. This is best shown in Season 3 when Arthéon needs to be replaced. Stepping in doesn't cross her mind despite both perfectly knowing of the situation (she's becomes Gaea's Real Life flatmate in Season 2) and enjoying the guild's presence because she doesn't want to quit being a mercenary. However, when Arthéon wants to test a team configuration with Sparadrap as a warrior and Ystos as the healer, she insists on participating in the DPS contest Omega Zell sets up at the last minute to impress Ystos. The exact words she uses can even be read as "You guys are doing that without me? That's unthinkable !".
    • Couette is part of the Noob guild by the time she becomes a regular character, but doesn't log on very often.
    • Ystos can only help from time to time because he's acutally part of another guild. He also now has a second character that has been officially enrolled in the Noob guild.
  • Skewed Priorities:

Arthéon: "Because of [Tenshirock] some players committed suicide, or, worse, some quitted playing Horizon ."

  • Sleepyhead: Ivy. Season 4 even makes her one of the few examples with actual narcolepsy.
  • Soundtrack Dissonance: Omega Zell leaving the guild in Season 4, that Sparadrap considers to be the worse thing that happened since Arthéon stopped caring for the guild at the time, is shown happening while Couette is playing joyful music and dancing to celebrate becoming the first member of the guild to reach level 100.
  • Spiritual Successor: To Lost Levels a previous series made by Fabien Fournier, in which the game was a virutual reality rather than a classic MMORPG. Among the characters where a top player named Phantom, a Man in White named Omega Zell, a magic used named Gaea, a hacker named Tenshirock and a player killer named Dark Avenger. Their Noob expys go from in name (and actor) only to someone closer to the Lost Levels version.
  • Super-Powered Alter Ego: Sparadrap gets "borrowed" by his usual player's younger brother about Once a Season. The difference can be seen by him suddenly being much smarter and actually knowing what he is capable of. Usually lasts just long enough for him to resolve the immediate problem the Noob guild (or Sparadrap) is facing before having to leave.
  • Suspiciously Specific Denial: Parodied in real life scene in which Arthéon recognizes Sparadrap under a Paper-Thin Disguise and calls him by his in-game name, only to be aswered "No sir. You're confusing me with another priest in another MMORPG.".
  • Talking with Signs: Précieux has no microphone in working order, so he uses the text chat function instead: This is materialized by him writing on a small whiteboard.
  • Thinking Out Loud
  • Time Skip: The transition between Season 1 and Season 2 is actually the only one averting it. Word of God has a full year pass between Season 2 and 3 (transition from Horizon 1.1 to Horizon 2.0, the group's level goes from early twenties to early fifties). A smaller one happened between Season 3 and 4 (ongoing in may 2012), with a switch to Horizon 2.2 and Noob guild members being in the late nineties in terms of level (one of them even hits 100 in episode 4).
  • Took a Level in Badass: Everyone, literally, when they take a level.
  • Ultimate Gamer 386: Fantöm may first look like the trope being played straight. However...
    • Deconstructed : Fantöm is the third player to hold that position since Horizon got released. The second book indicates that the first was Spectre, followed by his student Amaras after he left, then Fantöm after he beat the ultimate boss of the time on his own. Since Amaras is still around and now number two, he frequently gets challenged by him and go close to losing to him at least once. Also, fear and respect are not the only reactions that the position generates: annoying fans and blackmailers exist too.
    • Downplayed : The fame aspect is shared with the other members of his party. The "someone one of the main characters already knows in real life" bonus is actually held by one of them rather than by Fantöm himself. Amaras is pretty much Fantöm's Coalition equivalent, and he has a party also.
    • Justified : Both Amaras and Fantöm unlocked a very powerful prestige classes, to the point th their teams are hinted to be one-man parties. And, for those who know how the story goes, that fact that the game's creators have been enhancing Fantöm's stats behind his back each time he got in enough trouble to put his number one rank at risk.
  • Understatement: When Gaea asks Sparadrap why Master Zen stopped playing, Sparadrap responds that he did "something silly". Omega Zell is quick to reveal that the "something silly" was managing to annoy Master Zen enough for him to throw his computer out the window.
  • Video Game Caring Potential: Apprently the only use of the pets that Sparadrap is collecting. Mounts, that have a more obvious use, apprently also fall into that also. And the PK guild seems to have enough awarness of that trope to exploit it. Being a Guild Master can be part of it also.
    • Sparadrap takes it Up To Eleven by caring about NPCs and monsters that are acutally meant to be beaten up.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: Golgotha would rather wait for a enemy that she has just beaten to repop than go get the reward for killing it and the PK guild's activities are of course all about that trope.
  • Villain Decay: Even knowing Sparadrap always beats him by sheer luck, it eventually gets hard to believe that Dark Avenger was supposed to be one of the most dangerous players around at some point. The encounters between the two actually loose their Running Gag status in Season 4 when they lead to Dark Avenger no longer being scary to anyone, getting kicked out of the player killer guild, and quitting the game.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: Golgotha with everyone, to the extent that there is quite a lot of overlap in the way she talks to the people she likes and people she hates.
  • The Voice: Ystos and Sparadrap's grandmother.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: Tenshirock wants to "free" people from MMORPGs and considers Master Zen's fate as having attained this freedom.
  • We Used to Be Friends: Arthéon and the Justice guild, ever since the Real Money Trade incident. Saphir seemed to present herself as that one former friend that still speaks to him in an early episode, but Ystos is the one who permanently took on that role. That aspect of his personnality becomes quite useful later on.
  • Wham! Episode: Episode 7 (out of 18) from Season 3. The damage eventually gets mostly repaired, but it takes the rest of the season.
  • What Did You Expect When You Named It?: Just look at Master Zen's backstory. He names his guild "Noob", ends up having an actual n00b in it, said n00b end up pissing him off to the point that the infamous Appliance Defenestration happens ; this is especially strange given that Master Zen later comes up with a much better name for his new guild. Gaea even lampshades the lousy name choice the first time she hears it. To top it off, thanks to You Are in Command Now happening three times in about as many episodes during Season 4, Sparadrap is in charge of the guild by the end of episode 5.
  • The Worf Effect: Want to show how difficult the new bosses in Horizon 1.1 are ? Have one of them beat Fantöm's team.
  • Yaoi Fangirl : Gaea's imagination tends to run wild when it comes to Omega Zell's hero worship of Fantöm.
  • Yet Another Christmas Carol: In the Season 1 Christmas special, Dark Avenger accepts a quest that consists of going through his equivalent of the "three ghosts" part of the story. After that, he decides to let Sparadrap sing him a piece of "We wish you a merry Christmas" without trying to kill him, but starts Player Killing again at 00:01 on december 26th.
  • You All Look Familiar / Why Do You Keep Changing Jobs?: More like the love child of these two tropes. The same male NPC seems to run all businesses in Olydri (or at least the region to which the Noob guild sticks). When asked about it, he confirms that he's the same guy holding all the jobs at the same time.
    • In the comic, he advertises for his other businesses to customers who visit any one of them.
  • You ALL Share My Story: The context started out with a One Degree of Separation pocket that included the Noob guild and team Fantöm, making it quite easy for the two groups to run into each other and by extension their respective acquaintances. The first meeting between team Amaras and the Noob guild occurs from them discreetely following team Fantöm during one of their quests, while other Coalition players become recurrent opponents of the Noob guild. Also, two out of the six known Order players are people some of the characters knew before the faction even appeared in the game.
  • You Will Be Spared: In Season 3, Tenshirock mentions that he dosen't intend to erase the accounts of six players : Ash (famerchinois.com administrator and his Dragon with an Agenda), Arthéon, Gaea (that he is actively helping not getting kicked out of Horizon at the time), Omega Zell, Sparadrap and Golgotha. The reason given is that they indirectly serve his cause with all the disasters they cause.
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