*Thump*
*Thump*
My heart felt as though it was about to burst through my shirt, my hand were shaking, I gulped to sooth my throat, it all came down to this.
“So Mr Jasper you’ve chosen door number 1, that’s as fine a choice as any.”
“Let’s see what’s behind door 3, here’s the key go open it.”
I calmed down a bit, I knew I wouldn’t be seeing the prize I came for behind this door, I fumbled with the key a moment and pushed the door open.
“It’s a brand new Nintendo 4DS! And you could have gone home with it too, but you’ve chosen door number 1, do you think it’s the grand prize?”
“Who knows, just gotta be lucky I suppose”
A nonchalant reply but I really felt like I was about to die here.
“Lucky indeed, well Mr Jasper I like you, so I’m going to offer you a deal, you can either stick to door number one, or you can switch to door number 2.”
The audience roared, personally I felt great, my odds of winning doubled, and I knew one of the doors had the grand prize I came here for, as to what it was I came for, it all started a couple of months ago.
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“I’m John Coleman and welcome to America Tonight, tonight’s guest is the illusive CEO of Eternium Studios, please give a hand for Mr Nathan Hawthorne.”
A man walked on to the stage and sat on the beige couch, you could see a few wrinkles beginning to form on his skin and in his blonde mane a few grey strands hung, but in his sharp eyes you could still see a man of vision.
“Hi John thanks for having me.”
“No thank you for being here Nathan, so it’s finally time the game America, no wait scratch that, the game the world has been waiting for is being released, please tell us about it.”
“That’s right, we’ve finally perfected VR technology, it’s 99% real and we’ve finished the first VR game ever, Adventures of Eternium, we mostly want players to explore and discover the game itself so at this stage official statements will have little substance, but I can say it’s a beautiful world where one could almost live in it.”
“Only 99% real?”
“Well that 1% is, more of a philosophical 1%, other than the game information screens and magic it’s almost certainly like reality, though the screens begin to phase out once players obtain their first class.”
“I guess this would as good as any topic to start on so I’ll talk about the temporary novice class, as a novice to help players in the game you can see yours, other players’ and enemies’ stats, their health bar for instance and when you hit them you see how much health is subtracted and so you can see how your stats affect your damage and you can learn any skill with enough practice or a good teacher, but this all ends once you obtain your first class, other than your own status and damage dealt you can’t see much more, monster’s health bars, players health bars all gone unless you have an appropriate skill, though you will be able to show your own status to another player and to teammates, we felt that past the beginning the screens just broke immersion, it also creates a whole level difficulty for the game.”
“The reason for skills being easy to learn, is so that players can get a good feel for the kind of character they want to create, though you can only have 10 skills while your character is still a novice not taking into account racial skills, to have learnt these skills you’re likely going in the right direction to get a job where these skills are on the unseen skill list, but if they aren’t on the list you’ll either suffer a heavy experience penalty while leveling them or, lose them all together if they’re incompatible with your class the most obvious example being magic skills to a non-magic class, but don’t worry you’ll get a warning if your class choice will remove skills."
“Skills start out at beginner level 1 where they frankly aren't that great, and every tenth level they will upgrade first to intermediate, then expert, finally master though some people will be able to reach the pinnacle of grandmaster tier, though our team predict it could take 10 years of practice before anyone reaches master tier."
“That’s amazing, but 10 years? I feel I might die of old age before then.”
“Well that’s one more aspect of the game that I can discuss, time dilation, the Eternium gear has the potential to pull the human mind to its utmost limits, time dilation can actually reach a ratio of 1:100, though this can’t be sustained for too long and it would make missing just 2 hours of the game equivalent to 200 hours, so we’ve set it at a nice 1:4 ratio so that 6 hours of playing is equivalent to 24 hours in game, though what you can do in a day is fairly limited, and to help casual players keep up it is possible to play the game while sleeping and while doing so your character will gain the well-rested bonus 300% experience so that casual players can keep up in levels but of course events in the game aren’t increased so no bonus loot or skill experience. Our projections for the end game content to be revealed, is about 10 years in real life, but who knows it really depends on the players’ skill, but a positive projection for players to reach master level skills is about 2-3 years in real life, the aim of the game is to give players a second life of sorts, you’ll be able to taste the finest food in virtual reality, you’ll be able to climb mountains or even feel dragon’s breath on your face."
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“A Second life for sure, I’ve already pre ordered my reality gear, though dragons breath sounds like it would hurt, which brings us to a question mothers around the world are asking, how safe is this game.”
“Well John I can say with confidence it is safe, though we announced the game two years ago the reason development took so long was making sure that player safety was a number one priority, pain sensors themselves are set only to 25% but once you reach a certain limit you just become numb, for example if you got stabbed through the heart, I can’t begin to imagine what 25% of getting stabbed through the heart feels like, but if it happens in game you just feel a little numb in the chest and get the death penalty which is 4 hours of being locked out of the game, you also lose a character level and some of your skills experience, though skill levels themselves won’t go down due to death penalty.”
“Good to know I’m in safe hands, I did read the email sent to me before the show with the game topics you would be able discuss, so I know there’s one left.”
“That’s right the last topic, do keep in mind all this information will be on our website a week before the game begins, is character creation, players will be able to customize their character to an extent, but mostly superficial things like hair colour, and so no cosmetic surgeries or sex changes I’m afraid your body needs to be fairly close to your real body to move, there are hundreds of playable races and you might be thinking ‘what about dwarfs?’, well they are available to make this possible these race are directly scaled down rather than putting you to a mesh of what you think a dwarf should look like, though armour is adjusted to make it look a bit better, other than that only a few races will be available at the start, the appearances for all races will also be based on how you look like and will continue to update, races will also have certain bonuses, though these will be able to be viewed in detail on the website at a later date, the first 17 playable races will includes, Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Halflings and their sub species, we’ve also got a short clip to showcase some of them.”
“Cue the clip guys”
The scene changed and classical music began to play a majestic forest appeared with trees reaching hundreds of meters in height, between them branches grouped together to form pathway and some of these reached the ground, the camera zooms onto a human man on one of these trees a halfling man wearing light chainmail hands him a rusty helmet that matches his armour, he puts it on and many elves with light skin and flaxen hair begin to arrive in groups, wearing silver armour decorated by leaf patterns and engravings, bows and arrows slung across their backs the camera begins to shake and pans out to the horizon an army is coming towards them, it zooms out to the army and see what’s coming, an army consisting of thousands of green skinned barbarians with barely any ripped clothing, sharp ears and tusks, among them are many Short stocky men in heavy armour in siege formations with ballistae , a deep voice shouts “Archers ready.” the camera instantly switches back to the trees, the trees are filled with elves drawing bows “Loose!” the camera switches to the perspective of the dwarven and orcish army thousands of arrows begin to blot the sky before them, before the arrows reach the screen goes black."
“Wow that was breath-taking.”
“Yes, yes it was, and you at home can be a part of the action, at a cost, the reality gear is $5000 but this can be paid over one to fifty years if need be, in addition to a $10 monthly subscription, though in the months leading up to the release date as part of a publicity stunt a number of reality gears are going to be given away as prizes for a number of things, competitions, game shows, martial art tournaments, anything really these will also come with a free lifetime subscription and if you’ve already pre-ordered you’ll get a full refund."
“Ladies and gentlemen give it up for Nathan Hawthorne.”
*Audience Clapping and cheering*
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“So Mr Jasper, what will your choice be?”
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Feel free to rate & review guys, it's my first time writing so constructive criticism is helpful.
I do feel as though these first chapters are a bit meaty with info, can't be helped eventually the action will happen eventually so I'm a few chapters ahead.
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