Contrary to what one might think, the waiting wasn’t tedious. Overnight, the company’s website had updated with a host of new information in preparation for the game’s official launch. Tablet in hand, I curled up in bed with my favorite plush cat on the pillow by my head. The well-worn and slightly rotund black cat had been a gift from my twin sister for our tenth birthday, oh so many years ago. The stuffed animal had a little white strike on her forehead, and I had named her Luna after a much more famous black cat.

Since then, Luna had gone just about everywhere with me: family trips in the car, camping, church (when we were young enough to still be required to go), and even off to college. She’d been restuffed twice, and I had even learned the basics of sewing so I could make minor repairs. As a child and young adult, I probably took better care of that cat than most people take care of their living pets.

I even read to her. It started out innocently enough, as a young child reading ‘bedtime stories’ to a stuffed animal, but it grew from there. Luna sat patiently through stories of the Three Investigators, of Nancy Drew, and of the Hardy Boys. She graduated, with me, to stories of Narnia, Middle-Earth, Pern, and Valdemar. She even suffered along with me through assorted works of Shakespeare, Chaucer, Whitman, and others which I had only read for homework assignments.

So, it was only natural that as she “watched” over my shoulder, I read from the website to her. “Well, Luna, here it says that players in ECHO ‘...will be defined more by their skills and their attributes than by their classes. Primary skills are those that the character is known for, the skills that level faster and have an effect on the character’s nine attributes. Secondary skills level slower and don’t affect the attributes. It’s the difference between a bow-wielding alchemist or a bow specialist who also makes potions.’ Hmm,” I paused and glanced at Luna. “But what about someone who took both as primary skills? That has to be a bit of a difficult way to play: both arrows and potions are usually consumables, so they’d have to be careful not to run out, and that means making them or buying them.

“Anyway, ‘Players may freely choose from over five hundred different skills to make their play experience unique. Players will start with the ability to set four primary skills and four secondary skills, but the amount will increase as the character rises in level or meets other requirements.’” I looked at Luna and nodded, “Yeah, I agree. Sounds great in theory, but I bet that in a month or so, most of the new players are going to be going online to fansites and forums telling them which build to make and which build to avoid. Probably that bow-wielding alchemist is going to be recommended against. It almost makes me want to prove them wrong. Archery is always fun in games, but if we base it on real life, I’m more of a cook than a chemist. But let’s see what it says about classes, shall we?

“Here we go, ‘All players will start as the default Traveller class which provides the initial class abilities of Increased Movement Speed and Increased Regeneration Rate, but players will be able to undergo quests to learn classes like Knight, Paladin, Troubadour, Merchant, Archer, Elementalist, Weaponsmith, or Shaman. Classes let players further differentiate their playstyle with class abilities such as a Knight’s proficiency in mounted combat, a Paladin’s ability to heal and inspire allies, or a Shaman’s specialization in debilitating foes. Players will be able to choose from hundreds of unique classes, including many hidden classes, and be able to freely switch active classes when not in instanced content, using a class’s skill, or otherwise prevented from making modifications.’”

I paused in reading and mused a little. It would be hard to choose which class to build for without knowing all the classes and how to get them, but it also seemed that a player wouldn’t be bound to only one class. Other than maybe the tradeskills, like the aforementioned Weaponsmithing, classes seemed like they would give extra abilities or boosts to skills rather than skills themselves. But those differences should be enough that a Knight and a Paladin, both typically heavily armed and armored units, should play fairly differently...even if their primary and secondary skills were the same. And with different skillsets, even two Knights should play very differently. After all, heavy cavalry and skirmishers are both mounted combat units, but they play vastly different roles on the field of combat. Not to mention the possibility of flying mounts. While I am not likely to become a Pegasus Knight, charging out of the sky with lance or bow—or any other type of Knight for that matter—there’s a certain ‘romance,’ or maybe ‘mystique’ would be better, to flying in a fantasy world. Sure, helicopters and hang gliders and commercial air travel allow flight in the real world, but it’s just not quite the same.

But there was still more information to read. Besides skills and classes, attributes seemed rather important, and were in fact the next things covered on the page I was on. Learning a bit of it now, in an info-dump at the start, seemed preferable to getting bits here and there in tutorials and help menus. Besides, even though I would have some chores that would need to get done later, I didn’t have much else to do right this minute, so I continued reading to Luna.

“‘Players have nine primary attributes, divided into three groups of three: the physical attributes, Strength, Endurance, and Agility; the mental attributes, Brilliance, Willpower, and Reflexes; and the utility attributes, Defense, Luck, and Charisma.’ Wait, Defense is a base stat? How does that work…? Shouldn’t it be determined based on armor? Or be calculated based on Endurance?” Luna, of course, didn’t answer, so I scrolled down the page to read up on Defense first.

“‘Defense: reduces incoming damage from most sources and influences armor effectiveness.’” Here, I had to pause to think. Luna, being ever-patient, waited while my thoughts percolated. “I guess … if a player with a low Defense attribute tries to wear heavy armor, they won’t get as much of a benefit from it as a player with high natural Defense. Still, doesn’t that sound like it would make more sense as a skill?” Taking Luna’s silence for assent, I continued. “Well, I guess we’ll just have to see how it works in practice, then. Let’s see what it says about the rest of the stats—I mean...attributes.”

Habits die hard, and I bet I’ll continue making that mistake in terminology.

Navigating back up to the top of the list, I started reading about the physical attributes. “‘Strength: contributes to most physical damage and affects carrying, lifting, and hauling capacity.’ Huh, yeah, I agree. I hope that ‘carrying capacity’ doesn’t mean we need to run around with a dozen backpacks and bags hanging off of us, but I guess it may make a good way to naturally limit the inventory system.

“Ah, next is ‘Endurance: determines stamina; provides a limiting factor on physical actions like running, climbing, and swimming; contributes to a player’s health pool; and influences resistance to poison, disease, and environmental conditions.’ That sounds like a very vital sta— attribute … stattribute … for anyone exploring a new game world, doesn’t it?

“And ‘Agility: governs physical speed, dodge chance, and critical damage. This attribute also affects activation speed for many skills.’ So why not just call it Speed, then? Oh, ‘critical damage’; I guess being fast isn’t always a guarantee for hitting hard.”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

I rolled over on my belly and tucked Luna under one arm as I moved on to the next set of attributes, the mental attributes. I was interested in these because a lot of games use intelligence and wisdom, but in a virtual world, the common definitions of those words would make them seem part of the player and not the character. Besides, unlike the virtual body being able to be stronger or weaker than the physical body in real life, it would seem difficult to make someone smarter or dumber. And that’s not to mention all the folk that seem to be perpetually lacking in common sense. I would think that knowledge and strategy and tactics and planning would seem to be something that the player, rather than the game, brings to the character. However, there had to be something in the game that provided knowledge, since not too many people have any real life experience with archery, swordfighting, or throwing fireballs around.

“So...let’s see. ‘Brilliance: contributes to most magical damage, mildly increases experience gain, and provides bonus secondary skill slots at certain thresholds.’ Well, Luna, that’s one way to do it. Instead of being smarter per se, a brilliant person learns more and can do more things. That almost sounds more important than Endurance, doesn’t it?

“Then there’s ‘Willpower: increases the mana pool, affects pain tolerance, and influences resistance to mental attacks like charm, fear, confusion, and others.’ Pain tolerance … charm … fear…. Suddenly, ECHO is starting to sound a bit scary, Luna.”

I contemplated that for a long moment. Unlike any other game I’ve played, a virtual reality means that I would be experiencing the monster attacks—claws, bites, stabs, strikes, fiery dragon breath—that the game character normally suffers silently through. That’s going to drastically change the way people play, even if pain is turned way down. Well, maybe not all people … but I think I would have to start doing more than relying on armor or healing potions. I mean, well, damage is damage, but pain is pain.

“Sounds like I might need to be sure to put points into Willpower, no matter what. But let’s see what else there is, shall we?

“‘Reflexes: governs mental speed, such as activation and casting time. Minorly influences critical hit chance, dodge rate, and critical hit mitigation.’” Calling it “mental speed” sounded strange, but it looked like the developers had an idea that physical and mental attributes should be parallel with one to govern damage, one to govern defense, and one to govern speed. And if a spellcaster has to make complicated gestures as part of casting a spell, maybe reflexes makes sense. But unless the spell chants are tongue twisters, how does “reflexes” assist there…?

The final three attributes didn’t have the same overarching unity between them the way the physical ones did or the mental ones tried to. I had already read about defense, but ahead of it was “‘Luck: contributes to critical successes (such as a Weaponsmith forging a higher-quality sword) and provides minor other benefits.’ You’d think they could explain a little what those ‘other benefits are, right?”

And at the very bottom of the list was “‘Charisma: helps determine initial reaction from encounters and affects reputation loss and gain.’” I rolled over to my side and stretched out to think about it. Charisma can’t exactly be physical attractiveness like many games have it, since our avatars in the virtual reality world will be customized by us, and who is going to create an ugly person to play as? Likewise, it couldn’t really be charm and mannerisms, since like intelligence, that’s a feature of the player and not the character.

“Welll, maybe…” I looked to Luna and nodded. “Maybe it’s something like machine translation? I mean, we’re going to have people from all over the world play, but I don’t understand more than a couple words of Japanese or German or Italian, and I haven’t used any of the Spanish I studied in high school in a while. And I’m sure not all of the Japanese and Germans and Italians speak and understand English, either. If we’re going to play together, then maybe there’s a function in the game that translates, so the speaker can speak in their language and the listener can hear in their language. If it can do that, then maybe Charisma affects how the translation sounds”

Shrugging, I continued, “Well, I guess we’ll find out later when we’re in the game. There might be something on the site, though, if I dig enough. But let’s just keep reading about the attributes and character creation, okay?”

I continued reading and learned that skills gained experience as they were used and that character level went up as a function of skill level. Character level contributed to health and mana pools as well as to resistances, it provided a cap to class level, and it was used to affect calculations when skills were used in conflict—a level 5 player trying to intimidate a level 20 monster would be far less likely than the reverse—but mostly character level was used to gain Ability Points (shortened as AP). AP were used to further customize a player’s attributes, but with only five AP per level and nine attributes, players would have to specialize.

Even there, though, character level was relatively minor. The main way of raising attributes was not through leveling the character but rather from leveling skills, which also leveled the character, so….

Each primary skill was based on—and affected—one or two of the attributes. As the “Dodge” skill levels up, for instance, it would also raise Agility and Reflexes, but only if it was set as a primary skill. Secondary to that would be equipment: the armor or clothes a player wears and the weapons and accessories equipped can also have attribute modifiers. Defense seems the obvious one, provided on all armor, but enchanted rings to boost Luck or a magic gown to boost Charisma seemed equally likely. Finally, there were various traits, feats, and perks to unlock in the game, either via quest rewards, various achievements, or even leveling a class. Some of those could also raise attributes rather than providing other effects.

The net result was that the AP gained from leveling the character could either be used to further strengthen the attributes that the skills depended on or they could be used to shore up one or more of a player’s weaknesses.

Still, a specialist would be better than a comparably leveled generalist. He or she would be stronger, faster, sturdier, luckier, or so on. Not invulnerable, sure, but unless the generalist was able to take advantage of the specialist’s weak areas (such as using mind-affecting attacks such as fear or confusion against a low-willpower player), the specialist was bound to come out on top. It did also seem to promote group play, where a player could cover another’s weaknesses and in turn have her or her own weaknesses offset by another. Someone specializing in dealing damage might not be able to withstand a concentrated assault, but if the player was travelling with someone specialized in defense, often called a “tank” in these sort of games, then the tank could keep the enemy’s focus and allow the damage dealer to survive. Meanwhile, a defense-oriented character might be able to withstand a monster’s attacks, but not be able to do enough damage in return, leading to a stand-off or a war of attrition. Either way, it would likely lead to terribly slow progress. That tank player would need to travel with someone specialized in damage in order to do anything at a reasonable pace.

“So, what do you think, Luna?” I asked the cat. “Should I specialize in defense, damage, or healing, this time?” Healing was the third main path for a player, and part of the “holy trinity” of multiplayer games like this: damage-dealers, damage-sponges, and damage-removers. Groups could make do without a healer, but they’d be limited in the content they could challenge. First-aid kits, potions, or other consumables generally aren’t all the cheap and are better for emergencies than casual use. I like healers, and I had often played them in other online games, but maybe it was time to give something else a try.

Of course Luna didn’t answer, but it gave me something to think about, what attributes to specialize in and what attributes to neglect.

Meanwhile, I rolled out of bed and set the tablet down on the pillow next to her. With a lingering glance at the FIVR pod, I left the room and headed downstairs. Life still goes on, after all, and chores did need to get done before Alexandra made it back home from her early-morning-and-all-day bicycle expedition.