Sam opens up a shipping box and takes out an open faced helmet.  His newly purchased game and hardware all in one easy to use device. It cost him last month’s pay check but should be worth it he thinks as he walks over to the couch to try it out.

A newly released VRMMORPG. The first of its kind virtual reality massive role playing game world.  Not just some 3d projection or laggy brain interface but a true full dive experience giving players what they always dreamed of, an adventure in another world that seemed as real as the one they came from.

For the first few months this new technological wonder went mostly unnoticed. Made by a no name game studio with a well-trodden and boringly predictable generic fantasy setting.  Combined with wild claims of revolutionary gaming experience, no release of information and a price tag only the rich, or at least truly addicted gamer, could afford no one bought it.

But tentatively a few tried it and were amazed at the experience. Slowly secret whispers in online forums started to appear. Soon gaming journals began to send in their writers to review. After three months mainstream media was interviewing anyone they could about how great this new miracle game was.

Being the jaded gamer he was Sam waited on purchasing the game. He’d been burned before by over hyped garbage only to waste money on a game he’d play for an hour before throwing away. A combination of being easily bored and exacting in desired gaming experience meant Sam played few games for more than a day or two.  So to buy such an expensive game was a real gamble. At least this time if he finds the game boring he should be able to resell it.

The hardware for the game is deceptively simple, little more than a loose fitting helmet with a cord for power.  Setting it up was just as simple. It found the nearest wi-fi and connected without issue. The final step was to put it on and hit the single button on the side.

Compared to current generation VR this was a real change. Most had to go through complicated brain reading synchronization, hundreds of settings to adjust the video and audio feedback and so on. Even after the setup they were still laggy, bug prone and had frequent shutdowns requiring hardware resets.

All was going well until Sam logged in. Now he was left with a problem.  Most would call this a great security feature and be very happy, but not Sam. For Sam playing the game was only part of the enjoyable experience. Finding exploits and better yet using them to annoy others was where Sam found his true enjoyment.

However cheating, finding exploits and trolling the players are only possible when one is anonymous. Which right now with his name, real body and real face was not possible to do. Upon logging in he found the game does not give the player any choice on gender, looks, or name.  It uses the person’s name and real life looks to make the VR body. Should any miscreant start abusing the game it would be trivial for the game company or police or just other players to force him to face the consequences of his actions.

Sam is left wondering how to hack a system with no interface.  He’s still in the character creation area, staring at a perfect duplicate of himself with a screen next to his VR self for setting up initial stats and skills.

Fiddling with some of the screen options Sam notices his body duplicate does change slightly. Choosing a different race, elf, makes his ears a bit pointy.  Dwarf makes him shorter and stockier by a bit. Adding strength gives him a bit more muscle. But all in all it’s obviously still himself.

He can also change some small features by poking and prodding.  There goes his 50 lb beer gut, a more chiseled chin, perhaps add a bit more hair to hide his balding spot. A nice perfectly idealized body of himself is born and all of it is useless to him.  

An hour of fiddling with the settings doesn’t really get a body that is much different. Maybe trying to log on and log off repeatedly might provide a way to hack this system. Using the in game menu he logs off. Then pushing the button on the helmet to log on. Log off. Log on. Log off. Log on. Static. Log off. Stumble to the bathroom to vomit. Then to take several aspirin to calm down his migraine headache.

Perhaps that was not the best idea of his life. However it did allow him to understand some of the inner workings of this new VR game.  First the log on process took much longer in reality than what he experienced. To Sam the logon was watching a circling wait symbol for 30 seconds, a few seconds of blackness then another couple seconds of game loading.  Maybe a minute all told.  However around 10 minutes had actually passed from pushing the log on button to game entry.  

Another clue was his headache. The most important clue was the sound he heard on the last log on. A sound of roaring static. The same sound Sam often heard when he goes into a lucid dream. Maybe the VR works by inducing a controlled lucid dream he thinks.

It would make sense as REM sleep paralyzes the body, provides a suspension of believe and generally tends to gloss over or fill in any missing parts. No reason to reinvent something that is already in place.  The VR would just need to induce REM sleep and provide guiding stimulation to make a very realistic gaming experience.

Better yet it gives him an idea on how to abuse this function. Sam gets an old turn dial timer, some duct tape and tooth picks then attaches it to the logon button. He takes a couple sleeping pills and goes to sleep.

One loud roaring static sound later and he’s now in his own lucid dream. Step one accomplished.  Now that he has a dream interface he should be able to setup his lucid dream in such a way to exploit the VR’s lucid dream.

First to change his VR body. He highly doubts each helmet has full body imaging or even knows what he looks like. Far too much work. Especially since everyone’s brain has its own body representation he bets that the helmet just picks up on that. He spends the next few minutes imaging himself as the current most popular male actor.

His day old scruff, his hair… color… what was his hair color, brown? His body… which is… something ladies like? Well crap. What did the actor look like? Sam has seen him in several recent movies. He can kind of picture how the actor looks. Sam is sure he would recognize the actor on sight but apparently he never paid enough attention to the actor to really know what he looks like.

Sam needs another body he knows like his own.  The first image he can think of is the current hottest female model. Every curve, every tiny bump, the gorgeous hair, the sexy voice, he can picture it all clearly. He thinks maybe he should cut down on the porn browsing but might as well use the image. If this works as a proof of concept he can always try again after he’s studied some male actors.

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But why try out one hack when he can do two. Sam also imagines his new glamor model body is great at everything. Perfect stats, perfect abilities, goddess like power, a true genius in every sense of the word.

As he continues to try to hold this image in his mind waiting for the VR helmet to activate he starts to get a bit bored. Looking down he starts to enjoy having a woman’s point of view and drools at his new busty chest. This is a very interesting view he thinks as he gazes at his own perfect body.

A tone sounds. Looking up Sam sees many geometric objects appearing and merging together. A blue translucent wall appears and crosses through Sam and the surroundings. He thinks this must be a detailed brain scan and game setup. The various odd sounds and images continue for a bit before everything fades to black.

A few moments later Sam finds himself again in the character creation screen. Things are a bit different than last time however. He is looking at his new female avatar. Success! Even better, looking at the stat screen it has far more points and options to choose from.

[This seems far too easy, did the developers assume no one could hack this system?] Sam thinks to himself. If so they were wonderfully naive. [Well I should fully log in to make sure this works and there is no server side checks].  

Although the current VR body is sexy Sam alters it a bit. A tall 6 foot height. More noticeable feminine curves. Nicely shaped D cups. A commanding contralto voice.  Deep icy blue eyes. Finally Sam makes the VR body have luxurious silky golden hair in a loose braid down to her butt.

With the physical looks adjusted to his tastes Sam looks at the stat screen. All stats start out at 10 and a normal player gets another 30 points to distribute. They can spend it on stats, skills and traits. SAM however has 99 extra stat points. Like most games the number of perks one gets is tied to how much money one spends.

The demo of this game only gave out 10 extra points. Players quickly found out typical NPC’s in game start with this amount. Normal is 30 and players that bought the game were known as Adventurers. Buying the Noble package, which costs the same as a new car, would gain the player 50 points.

The gaming company’s website also listed even higher ranks one could buy. Monarch for 70. Divinity for 99. The price for monarch meant only the wealthy had bought this level. And it’s thought that no one had bought Divinity level yet because of its almost small country GDP price tag.

There were additional perks too for each level. First the max base stat was 10 + 5 * purchased rank so an Adventurer had 15 max stat, a Noble 20, Monarch 25, Divinity 30. Next was how far one could advance. NPC’s couldn’t and were stuck with the same job and title. Adventures could become minor nobility such as knights, city mayors and the like. Nobles could become anything up to duke but not princesses or kings. This included other similar level of titles such as merchant lord, sky ship captain or dragon knight.  Monarchs were as the name suggested, also mobile fortress generals, war chiefs, bandit kings, or beast lords.

Finally Divinity, the developers would create a new custom built player race for the owner of this extravagance. Only 7 divine race founders were available for purchase and each would be aligned with one of the seven virtues. The founder would also get a unique divine skill for free. Others of the race could purchase it at the cost of 10-50 points depending on its power. And newly created players would start with an additional 10 points if they choose this race.

Giddy with excitement Sam looks at the race selection. Human, Dwarf, Elf, Half-Elf, Orc, Half-Orc, Halfling, Gnome, and Nephilim. Nothing new. [Oh well too much to hope for that devs had created a custom hidden race]. Might as well go human for this toss away character.

Looking at the stats he sees his change a bit. 12 Grace, 13 Appearance, 11 Will, 11 Intelligence. [That’s odd, thought they were supposed to all start at 10.] That’s right, race and gender change them he remembers. Each race/gender combo gets +3, +2, +1 to one of the nine base states, which also increases the max base stat level. With an additional +1 race specific modifier. Human male gets +3 Leadership, +2 Strength, +1 Perception, and +1 Intelligence for example.

This sexual dimorphism and racial variation caused the social justice warriors to howl with anger. However the company stood its ground and said the slight changes between races and genders added realism to the game and players can spend their bonus points as they wished.

An interesting aspect of this game was that base stats were both important and not that important at the same time. In game one could increase stats with hard work, or gain traits and skills as well. However the rate of gain was dependent on the base stat or skill. Traits one either had or not but were the hardest to get and required difficult quests to be completed.

So a player with 20 base strength would gain strength with half the effort as a player with 10 base strength. The 10 base strength player could get to 30 total strength with a lot of hard work and the 20 base strength player would stay at 20 if they did nothing. So to min max effectively stats were important but if one wanted to change their focus it was possible, if more time consuming, to do so.

Sam of course maxed appearance to 33. [Can’t stop staring, too beautiful to comprehend.] Slowly Sam is able to decrease appearance to the noble human female max of 23. Apparently the helmet directly influences emotional parts of the brain as well. [I’ll have to watch out for that and make sure to kill every handsome man before THAT happens.]  Normally Sam would love to have such a cheat level of stat but a cheat appearance is far too easy for game moderators to spot and ban once they stop drooling.

As this is a toss away character he just evenly puts points into all the stats. Well mostly, the perfectionist in him forces him to min max a bit at least. Once satisfied with his character he hits accept.