In the first week of it’s game play, there were nearly 6 million RREV players. One of the most significant changes that players saw in the game was the removal of the mana stat and it was replace with a Mana conversion stat (MC Stat). Unlike its predecessor, Royal Road, RREV moved the mana from contained within the player to existed outside in the environment. This meant that as long as one had elemental affinity, any player could use mana. As players played the game more, it became very obvious that higher the MC stat better was their ability to manipulate mana. Though a small change, it was a significant change in way how most RPG thought about mana. From a players perspective, choosing elemental affinity was similar to choosing which type of sorcerer – Wind Magic? Earth Magic? Etc.
The next visible change was the user interface. Royal Road contained only one character stat window. RREV had 3 tabs. First contained the usual physical attributes nearly identical to Royal Road, the second new one was Elemental Stats (no surprise there) and the last tab was Personal Quest Stats. Players were most curious to learn more about this tab as it only contained “???” everywhere and at the bottom said “You have yet to discover your true nature and unique personal quest.”
“Unique personal quest.” This was what was most attention grabbing. Did this mean each player on RREV had a unique quest meant only for them? Many users posted about the unique quest and tried to guess how could they unlock it. Lee Hyun would monitor these postings with a smile, ‘always thinking to himself, excellent my money piggies, make my game more and more popular’.
Another change was the selection of profession. Instead of fixed classes in Royal Road, players in RREV were free could have multiple professions (usually that was the case, there were some hidden and unique professions which once learnt would remove all other professions learnt and not permit the users to learn new professions). So in 99% cases, if you started as a martial artist today, you could also be an archer tomorrow without losing your martial artist skills. Initially players rushed to learn new professions but soon learnt the harsh reality, the first two professions of the players choice can be learnt through the respective schools. Thereafter, one had to learn them through quests / missions or simply trying it in the game. Profession could be considered the same as skills, but Lee Hyun removed most of the differences. Example: if a player was an archer by profession, he would receive booster effects to archery skills. But if the player hadn’t taken it up as a profession, then he simply knew how to shoot arrows there were no booster effects.
Lastly, it was also observed how time was slower in RREV compared to most games. Most VR games fixed the standard to 4 in game hours to 1 RL hour. Unicorn changed it to 3 hrs in game. To add to game play experience, cinematic effects were added (first time in VR history); from boss level music, to suspense music, lighting effects, pre-choreographed scenes, slowing down of time during critical moments etc. Players who had a chance to experience the cinematics were left wanting more. They felt like they became the protagonist in this VR; a feeling which was missing after repetitively playing VRMMORPG titles that were too focused on reality. From a technical perspective, in terms of hardware and software programming there still even more changes. But Unicorn wanted to guard it’s secrets safely, so players could only guess these changes through experience in playing different games. The graphics were slightly dulled in terms of reality detailing (probably almost 98% real, whereas most games bordered around 99% - so only players with a keen sense of sight could tell the difference as the differences mainly ). Lee Hyun had intentionally done this, to free up some processing speed for the additional cinematics that they have provided (he was saving on costs and didn’t want to invest too heavily in buying unneeded hardware). Luckily, the cinematics went on to become a bigger part of the players attention. Unicorn even provided interesting artistic filters to the game. If players selected Crayon Filter, the world would appear as if drawn in crayons (also recommended for children aged between 4-6 to distort violent scenes). Other options included, “pencil sketching, two colors …etc.”
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Other game play aspects were also most interesting. Means of mobility in most games were warp points, vehicles or walking. RREV introduced flying and floating depending upon the players’ affinity. Yes there were games which had flying abilities, but it was AI supported; stretch your hands out like a super hero and say the words FLY. In RREV, learning how to move through these unconventional means required fair bit of practice, but the feeling of accomplishing such feat was most rewarding and fun.
Another new idea implemented in RREV was classes / primary levels (not the same as profession). A player could continue gaining as many levels (also known as secondary levels) as they wanted within a certain class / primary level but it did not mean the character became stronger. Example, you could find a level 1 class E player (E/001) and a level 30 class F player (F/030), both players would be considered equally strong. Class also determined the quests you could access. Class was only upgraded when certain conditions were met or if the player found a class upgrade item. The initial few classes had simple to figure out conditions (example reach level 50 to upgrade from Class FF to Class +FF), but as players would reach higher classes, the conditions were defined by the past actions of the players throughout their gaming history. The exact variables involved were guarded with utmost secrecy. All stats linked to elemental affinity were class linked. The physical stats were partially class linked and partially level linked.
Lee Hyun reused the global map of Royal Road and other game titles owned by Unicorn. To create RREV’s map, by reusing maps, they were able to save previous time in design and development. The game was fairly simple, unlike some of the top games like Athenos which was very complex and had created a completely new eco system. Lee Hyun chose to use the natural human eco-system already in-built in Royal Road (again to save time). There was also the deeper reason; players would hate to migrate games, if there was too little information available and if the eco-system was too different. The top three games already covered known eco-systems (Space with alien worlds, Human like worlds and lastly human like world with aliens. There are some weirder ones, but they weren’t all that popular). The familiarity of the world made it appear very simple. It also boosted the confidence of players into thinking they could beat this game. Information was already available online on maps of all of Unicorn’s VR titles. Players considered Lee Hyun a fool for making the game so easy. There was now just a mindless rush to uncover the secrets of this game and beat it. $1 billion had everyone drooling.
Thousands of new posts were posted daily with regards to the quests and information about RREV and interest started building up…
“Innovative, new and fun!” – VRMMORPG a Gamers Guide.
“Why didn’t the world think of cinematics in the last 40 year!” - The Guardian
“I love the Crayon Mode! It looks very much like my drawings” – some 6 year old kid.
“Unicorn making a comeback! Athenos beware!” – The International Pro-gaming Association
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Authors Note:
1. Will be edited soon!
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Connect to Royal Road – Elementarem Vim next Chapter?YesNo
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