Year 2067, USA, California
"Come on man! You have to play Freuth! It's literally the most popular game on Earth!"
Ian sat across his screaming friend, Tyson. Around a year ago, Freuth dropped. It was an open world VRMMO, but it was much more than that. To netizens and gamers it was a second life, a different world where they lived their fantasies.
"You can literally be anything Ian. It's fucking sick! You gotta try it at least once. Just create a character and log in once. I promise it's worth the hype"
Ever since Tyson bought the game and console 3 months ago he's been pestering Ian to join him. The game's hefty price tag kept Ian away but he received some money for his birthday just last week. Now that he had no reason not to buy the game Tyson has been extra annoying about the game.
"Alright, alright stop your yelling dude. I already bought it."
"Finally! This is gonna be great man. Let me know when your tutorial period is over. We can group up and adventure Freuth together!"
The tutorial period was what players called the first steps you take in the world of Freuth. After character creation, you choose your class and based on that class the game places you in a scenario.
For example a knight class player gets placed into training in a knights order. Taking on the role of a trainee/squire there until they reach level 10. At that point you are free to go off wherever becoming a wandering knight or staying in the order to continue training and move up the ranks.
The game gave amazing freedom to players. NPCs were as real as they could be and their AIs grew and changed as time went on. They were basically people and it was easy to treat them as such. The game heavily incentivized role-play, making certain quests and story lines be locked behind their favorability system.
NPCs gave quests to those they liked and were familiar with. Having relationships with them was a crucial part of gameplay and there were even guides on how to get close to them. The main point of all of them was to treat them like real people and not being weird around them.
Fully immersing yourself into your new life was the best way to enjoy the game. That was the appeal, getting to live a vastly different life from reality. Not only that but it also had time acceleration technology. 1 hour IRL was 5 in game. This let people really invest time into the game without actually taking much time out of their day.
"Yeah man! This is gonne be fucking sick! From tomorrow on I'll be able to log in and finally see what you've been yelling about for months" Ian laughed.
Suddenly the bell went off. Now it was officially summer. Now Ian could literally forget about everything and dive headfirst into a different world. It was time to go home and tomorrow the horizon would open.
Ian got up excitedly and walked out of school with Tyson. It was their last day of sophomore year, and this summer Ian was gonna game all day every day.
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The next day.
"It's here!"
Ian jumped put of his bed, hurrying out of his room and down the stairs. Running past the kitched he headed for the front door.
"Finally! I get to play the game!"
He opended the door with a huge, dumb grin on his face. As he laid his eyes on the box waiting for him that grin got bigged and dumber.
Gently picking it up he held it up like and item worthy of worship.
"It's time... It's time to play the game"
In the middle of his weird ritual his siter came down the stairs.
"What are you doing weirdo?"
She shot him a weird look.
"It's here Emma! My game is here! Don't look at me like that. It's ruining my fun"
Ian shot back and rushed up the stairs into his room.
"What a strange dude"
Emma said to herself watching her younger brother run upstairs.
In his room Ian was carefully opening the box. In the package was a cool looking headset that wrapped around his eyes. They sat like glasses but were more like a metal blindfold.
Ian put it on and laid in bed. He wasn't at all sure how the fuck it worked but this blindfold would allow him to full dive into the game.
"Start game"
Ian commanded while prepping himself for whatever this would feel like. Lights flashed in his eyes and he felt a sucking sensation. Though that was probably placebo from the weird visuals he saw. Suddenly he appeared in a void. In front of him were statues, many statues lined up in columns and stretching forever.
Each one of these statues was a possible character build. Some were strong warriors wearing armor and weilding all sorts of weapons. Others were draped in robes and weilded staffs of different elements.
As he looked around Ian noticed that all these statues had his face. Looking around he thought about what kind of character he wanted to make. Tyson was a knight, he was a tanky warrior type and if they were gonna team up then party composition was important.
'Maybe a healer, priest type of character.'
He noted as he walked past a statue of him holding some sort of holy symbol in priest robes.
'Nah, that's not that fun'
He walked away from that statue and continued thinking.
'I can't do a martial class like knight or barbarian, but I still want to do damage. I guess ranger it is'
Stopping in front of a cloacked archer Ian reached out to touch it. As he made contact the world went white and he was taken to another space.
This time instead of statues he saw himself. A perfect copy of him in the ranger outfit the statue had on.
'This must be character customization'
He realized as he looked ag the varius menus in front if him. There were height and weight sliders, he could change his facial structure, eye and hair color and even race. He could be an elf, an orc, a dwarf, or just a regular human.
Tweking with it he went through each race option seeing the changes it would bring. Orc could be cool for like a martial artist type of build but if we're talking archery, elf is the way to go.
In the end he made himself a handsome half elven man. He was a bit taller and more built and had black hair and bright green eyes.
Admiring his creation Ian finally moved on after a long character creation process. He set hus name as Ian Nightgale.
Finally he went into the game. This time for real.
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Let me know what y'all think of this. I got a little bored of my other work here a while ago but I got some motivation to write something so I thought why not go with something classic like a fantasy and this is where that idea came to. Any feedback is appreciated and I hope it's good and that you enjoy reading