Players thought the development team's appearance to impede their progress was a sign of weakness.
There must be something critical in the city, or maybe the defenses were simply not ready, with loopholes such as rules that were designed to be lenient towards animals but aggressive against humans, which could have let them barge in and cause a leak of crucial content from the next chapter of "Chang'an". This would have forced the developers to urgently go online to assist NPCs in stopping the players' invasion.
This line of thought was logically sound.
But if they had experienced what Stanley had through the nights in Chang'an, being relentlessly pursued and targeted by swarms of robots, armored vehicles, and drones, and repeatedly dying to electromagnetic, sonic, and laser weapons, they wouldn't think so lightly of it.
——The closer one got to the heart of Cyber Chang'an, the stronger the defense forces became.