At the beginning, Full-Dive gaming was considered something only for truly hard-core players or rich kids who wanted to show off.

Connection suits were clunky, uncomfortable, hard to set up and, over anything else, very expensive. Some said that buying a decent suit together with a medium grade computer capable of running Dive games could amount to buy a used car. Add to that fees every time the suit needed to be cleaned and the sensors reviewed for recalibration.

But all of that was almost a decade ago. Six years later, at the start of the third century of the Calendar of the First Migration, second generation Dive Gear made things simpler, cheaper and faster. Now you didn't need to stuff yourself in a suit that compressed your joints uncomfortably, leaving you pained and full of marks after a long gaming session. The new gear had a subroutine that negated brain impulses directed to the muscles, making older security systems useless.

One of the games that made the most out of this advancement was Afterdark Online, given their starting pack that sold the game together with a customized set of Dive Gear for a very reasonable price, but this wasn't their selling point, it was just a plus.

For starters, unlike every other role playing game, massive or not, Afterdark didn't have a class system. Instead it had the Allocated Skill Tree system, or A.S.T.

Basically, each character had five slots: legs, right arm, left arm, torso and head, and the players could choose one of a series of skill trees for each slot. The legs slot was for the stance, that gave mostly passive abilities and decided the character's role (aggressive stance for dps, defensive stance for tanks, etc), torso slot for armor, right arm for the main weapon, left arm for secondary weapon or support equipment, and finally the head for knowledge-based skills.

Even though there really wasn't a definite class system, players insisted on naming the classes they created by mixing skill trees. For example, someone with defensive stance, full-plate armor, a hammer in the right hand, a shield in the left hand and sacred magic in his knowledge called himself a Paladin, while other with stealth stance, leather armor, short sword, throwing edges and trapper called himself a Ninja.

In total, it made for six stance skills, six armor skills, fourteen main weapons, thirteen kinds of support equipment and the knowledge-based skills: nine of them magical and five non-magical. Additionally, later expansions added the possibility of getting a second skill tree in your armor slot at level 180 and a second skill tree in your knowledge slot at level 200, though there were certain rules regulating which kinds of armor could be combined.

Next in the list of differences with other, more common games of the same style was the races. In the lore of the game, the Church had divided the world between white and black races. The white races were your typical humans, elves, dwarves and the like, while the black races included creatures such as the Betrayed, or fallen angels, High Undead (better known as Vight) or Trasgos, among others. In Afterdark Online, players choose a member of the Black races and the white ones are the enemy.

Another difference is the “no-party” party system. In other games, players who form a party basically get the same experience points from a kill and they have an automatic system that splits the loot; well, Afterdark doesn't have any of that.

In Afterdark experience points are divided according to damage dealt, damage taken, health points restored, damage dealt thanks to buffs casted and other factors, and there is no system to split the loot, at all. This supposedly makes more “realistic” in a sense, given that you have to form party with people you really trust so you don't get cheated.

After several problems and a ton of begging from the players, during the fourth expansion developers implemented the Mercenary Guild, a place where you could hire npc's to form a party with you with guarantees that your party mates wouldn't stab you in the back (some times literally) and run off with the loot.

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It was unfortunate that the feature that was made with the best of the developers abilities, and love, was the least explored by the players. Like any other role playing game, Afterdark had its wide variety of npc's ready to give quests, act as merchants or provide other services, but in this game there were especial npc's, with a certain weight in the main plot of the game story who had been programmed with advanced conversational skills and had a dedicated memory bank at their disposal. In other words, they couldn't just interact with players more deeply, but they could also remember said interactions and act in consequence.

Sadly, players didn't really invested their time into building deep relationship with npc's, just making the necessary quests to get discounts in shops and things like that. It became a custom between players to bully those who seemed to be too deeply involved with a certain npc, so with time even the new players joined this tendency. Even with that, the developers didn't remove or alter this feature, though it was hardly

The main character of this story joined the game during its fourth year, shortly after the fifth expansion added the possibility of getting a second knowledge skill tree when you got to level 200 and set the level cap at 230. By then, people who spoke of the relationship system where still bullied and made fun off, but people didn't look actively for those who actually tried to explore in that sense, and that's what led our hero to a situation where he wanted to run away from everything... and you bet that he ended up running far away.

 List of Skill Trees 

 Author's note: Here is a list of the skill trees with a small explanation in some of them. Play with it to see what kind of things you can come up with and post it in the comments, I will include the most interesting ones in the story.

Stances

Armor

- Aggressive (more P. atk. More Attack speed)

- Defensive (more defense, reduces critical chance)

- Evasive (more evasion, more critical chance)

- Stealth (improved movement, increased damage from sides/behind)

- Aggressive Magic (more M. atk. And accuracy)

- Support Magic (improved casting speed and mana cost)

- Full-plate (rigid)

- Half-Plate (rigid)

- Mail (flexible)

- Leather (flexible)

- Armored Tunic (rigid)

- Tunic (flexible)

When combining armors you can't pile rigid on top of another rigid-type armor, and you can't put one that is upper in the list under one that is lower. (for example you can't wear mail under a tunic) Any kind of flexible armor can be used under a rigid armor.

Main Weapons

Knowledge

- Straight Sword (1 or 2 hands)

- Curved Sword (1 or 2 hands)

- Short Sword (1 handed)

- Rapier (1 handed)

- Axe (1 or 2 hands)

- Mace (1 or 2 hands)

- Hammer (1 or 2 hands)

- Spear (1 or 2 hands)

- Pole Weapons (2 handed)

- Bow (2 handed)

- Crossbow (2 handed)

- Staff (2 handed)

- Wand (1 handed)

- Fist Weapons (2 handed)

- Elemental: Fire

- Elemental: Ice

- Elemental: Lightning/Thunder

- Elemental: Earth

- Elemental: Wind

- Sacred (Light element, Healing, Positive Buffs)

- Witchcraft (Darkness Element, Negative buffs)

- Illusion

- Summoning (Demons, Undead)

- War Cries (Non-Magic based party Buffs)

- Code of Honor (Non-Magic based self-buffs and enemy Negative Buffs)

- Taming (Defeating beasts and turning them into servants)

- Trapper (Non-Magic based Negative Buffs and Area of Effect attacks)

- Mechanic (Create temporary servants or accessories from stored materials)

Left arm weapons/support equipment

- Shield

- Armguard (Smaller than shield, less protection but can be used with 2-handed Weapons)

- Throwing Edge (Shuriken, Kunai, Throwing Daggers, Throwing Axes, etc.)

- Spell book (Improves M. Atk.)

- Catalyst (a scroll, a piece of crystal, an ornamented jewel, etc. Improves casting speed)

- Runes (A piece of stone with an engraved, glowing symbol.5 kinds, one for each type of Elemental Magic. Improve the performance of the magic in different ways, depending of the rune itself)

- Bell (Improves Sacred Magic in different ways, depending on the model)

- Glory Hand (gauntlet with claws, small P. Atk. And improves witchcraft in several ways, depending on the model)

- Orb (a sphere of several materials that improves Illusion Magic in several ways, depending on the model)

- A one-handed weapon can be learned in this slot for the sake of dual-wielding. Additionally, those who took bow or crossbow as main weapon can learn a one-handed weapon too, for close combat)