Although my motivation to practice my martial arts was pretty much gone I still practiced every now and then, as I didn’t want to lose my skills after years of work. I woke up at 5:30 am and put on my clothes to start my morning run; when I was done I took a shower and ate breakfast. Afterwards I turned on the television, there was a show about the new VRMMORPG ‘New Life’ it featured a few people who just completed their first month and could finally explore outside of the beginner city. You could almost see the excitement dripping of their faces.
*That really does look like real life, the way the characters move and the detail of the surroundings. That is actually pretty amazing… *
After the show was done I got up and cleaned up the kitchen and turned on my computer.
*How much does that game actually cost? * I searched on ‘buying New Life’ and I immediately got tons of hits. I decided on the link from ‘Netgear’ the company that both released the VR-capsule and ‘New life’ and found out that you could get a capsule for 350 dollars and the game for 75 dollars, if you ordered them together you would get them for just 400 dollars. I quickly decided as I had earned quite a lot in winter and spring with work and my friends always told me I needed a hobby to get over my problems.
As I came home from the local game shop I installed it pretty easily and got in the capsule.
“Connect to new Life” immediately the screen went white and I found myself in a white room with a female.
Female: “Welcome to New Life” she said in a lovely voice.
Female: “We detected that you don’t have an account yet. Would you like to register?”
“Yes please.”
Female: “What would you like to have as a name?”
“Majil”
Female: “Well then, what race would you like? Currently available are Human, Elf, Dwarf, Orc and Beast.”
“I would like to be ‘Human’.” As I hadn’t played MMORPG’s for quite some time and I bought the game pretty much on impulse I went with the save choice.
Female: “Your gender will be male as it cannot be changed from your gender in real-life”
“That’s fine.”
Female: “Would you like to customize your character or go with your real-life look?”
“I would like the real-life look.”
Female: “Character creation done, would you like to hear the tutorial?”
“Yes, I would like to.”
Suddenly the room started changing and underneath him a city appeared.
Female: “This is the ‘City of the Beginning’ you will not be able to leave this city for a month. In that time you can do whatever you want but it is generally advised to learn how the system works and find a suitable class. There are a number of basic classes. Do you want to hear what they are?”
“No thanks, I will find that out myself.” As I didn’t think that the classes would differ a lot from the standard ones in other MMORPG’s.
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Female: “Your body will be controlled the same way you would control your body in real-life. You can open your game menu by calling ‘ Show menu’ in there you can find other key words for other interfaces. Are you ready to start playing?”
“Yes, I am ready.”
Female: “In 5 seconds you will be teleported to the City of the Beginning, good luck.”
“Thanks.”
My vision turned white again and when it faded I was in a city, it looked something like a Town Square.
It looked amazing, it was just as if I had transported into medieval times, buildings of one or two stories high surrounded me with paved roads going in four different directions.
“Show menu” as I said it a blue rectangle appeared with a few options on it. I chose keywords and learned that for opening your inventory the keywords were simply ‘Show inventory’ and for your status ‘Show status’.
“Show inventory” My inventory opened and it contained 20 loafs of bread and a jug of water.
*Okay so for my classes I should be able to get something like a monk, warrior or swordmaster. Those seem like my kind of classes. Assassin or rogue would also be fun. Then I should probably ask one of those guard where I could get a fighting class.*
“Hello sir, can I ask you a few questions?” I asked a guard which looked like he was a little bit higher than the other ones around him.
Guard captain: “Sure, are you new here?”
“Yeah, I just arrived today. So can you tell me where I could get a monk or warrior class?”
Guard captain: “You can’t just ‘get’ the class, you have to find a person willing to teach you. If you can win the in the fighting tournament you should probably be able to find a good teacher though.”
“Thank you, where would the tournament be located exactly?”
Guard captain: “If you take the southern road from here and take the second street on the right you can’t miss it.”
“Thank you.”
Guard captain: “Wait a minute… You seem like you’ve got some skills fighting, don’t you?”
“Well yes, I have some experience.”
Guard captain: “The new adventurers around here barely have any and just rely on stats and levels. Could you teach them that in fighting skills are just as important if not more so then stats and levels?”
“Well sure.”
[Job accepted: “Teach those noobs a lesson”
Description: Win the fighting tournament in the arena.
Reward: Increased familiarity with the guard captain.
Failure: Decreased familiarity with the guard captain. Familiarity will reach unfriendly. He won’t help you again]
Guard captain: “Well then as I am on break as of now I will come to see you fight. But we better hurry because you only have 15 minutes left to sign in for today’s tournament.”
“Let’s go then.”