CHARACTER CREATION SCREEN
WARNING... INITIALIZING ENTRY INTO SPHERE OF THE WORLDS...
NEURAL INTERFACE HAS BEEN LOADED…
USER ID DEFINED...
TOTAL IMMERSION IN PROGRESS...
COMPLETE DARKNESS suddenly turned into an image of a colorful sky. It felt like I was falling from somewhere high. A few seconds later, the feeling changed to that of flying, which was more pleasant. An invisible force carried me above the clouds, between which, I could see vast green valleys down below replaced by mountains, bright blue oceans, and yellow desert sands. From the bird's-eye view, that unknown force flipped me once more and placed me among the clouds overlooking an incredible sunrise.
SPHERE OF THE WORLDS WELCOMES YOU
PLEASE SELECT ACCOUNT TYPE
Flashing in front of me or inside my mind were captions accompanied by a contralto voiceover. Four diamond-shaped icons popped up in front of me, carefully and skillfully decorated by fantasy ornaments. Let’s see, what do we have here?
WOODEN ACCOUNT was the lowest type of account. As I focused on the icon, it increased in size and lines of text appeared on the screen. The contralto voiceover began speaking.
“Wooden account is the basic account in the SPHERE OF THE WORLDS. This account is completely free…”
“Turn off the voice interface,” I snapped. The voice-over always annoyed me, preventing me from being able to focus. The voice died away, and I focused on reading. So, wooden account. Completely free, a trial of sorts. This was the point ZeroAlex had told me about. Limited list of races and character features. The max SP was 1000. Is it much or not really? I would start off with just a few items. Crafting skills were disabled as well as combat skills and quests. The reputation level was limited to ‘Respected’. Joining tribes was disabled.
SILVER ACCOUNT. The price was three hundred. Limited races, worlds and appearances. Leveling-up and reputation were unlimited. It came with a certain Wanderer’s kit for free. Maybe this was the most common account in the SPHERE: neither too cheap nor too expensive, it allowed you to play, even if it lacked uniqueness.
GOLD ACCOUNT came with a subscription of one thousand red ones and featured all races, worlds, and appearances. It also had a special Starter Kit from the admins that included a scalable artifact. A unique pet or mount for free. Free stuff with each payment. Access to priority support line. This account was for all the fancy kids, I concluded, for those who didn’t count money and liked to show off. I wondered if the unique pet affected the game balance.
The last account choice — DIAMOND for five thousand terro — bewildered me. Instead of a perks description, a notice popped up saying those wishing to purchase this type of account would be contacted by the admins within five minutes who would explain all available benefits. I hadn’t seen this kind of approach in any other game before. I wondered what kind of perks they were offering for that amount. Just to give you some context, a bottle of beer cost about one terro, and for the price of fifteen to twenty thousand, you could buy a decent car.
Well, I’m here to find out whether it’s the game for me. I can always pay later if it makes sense. I chose the icon for the WOODEN account and an invisible force picked up my virtual body taking me down to the valleys, square fields, mountains, and seas. I was thrilled as the wind blew in my face. It was very well made, I’d only experienced that before in VR-avia simulators. Having arrived at the spot with the mountains in the background, I was looking at the ruins of ancient columns. The notice blinked:
CREATING YOUR AVATAR...
SELECT YOUR WORLD…
“DORSA!” I commanded, seeing a long list of worlds with all kind of names.
Most of them were disabled. Their named appeared as either light gray or dark red. DORSA lit up green, available to newbies, just like Alex promised.
NOTE: THE WORLD IS LOADING…
Information on the world was showing on the screen.
DORSA
CLASS B, EARTH-LIKE WORLD
LOCATION — GRAY WORLDS
SIZE — ENORMOUS
1. CONTINENTS — 5, LARGE ARCHIPELAGOES — 2, LARGE ISLANDS — 11
AVAILABLE RACES: HUMANS, ELVES, DWARFS, HOBBITS, ORCS, OGRES, TRITONES, MERMEN, CENTAURS, NAGAS, DEMONS
GODS: YES
AVERAGE ONLINE: 450,000 players, 4th level popularity.
LANGUAGE GROUPS: RUSSIAN, JAPANESE, ENGLISH, GERMAN, POLISH
A colorful map and description appeared below.
The vast world of Dorsa is among the oldest in The Sphere of the Worlds. It was here, a thousand years ago, that the mysterious Ancients lost the Great War. Since then, the various fragments of this world have been weak and scattered. The House of Darkness, revived by Goddess Ananizart, who returned from the Abyss, is trying to make Dorsa submit to its power ...
And so on and so forth. I didn’t want to read all that nonsense and moved on…
SELECT YOUR RACE
I looked at the long list of available races. Wow! At least half a hundred names, from regular humans, to elves, dwarves, exotic rakshasas, centaurs, and demons. There were also underwater races such as tritons and mermen. Some races’ names appeared in red or gray which meant they were unavailable in this world. Out of curiosity, I focused on the Elves icon. The system immediately suggested a variety of sub-races and nations: High, Grey, Valley, Sun, each with their own unique bonuses, traits, appearance and detailed descriptions…. It would take me days to get into it and I only had a couple of hours.
Stolen novel; please report.
“Back to selecting races!” I said. “Race — HUMANS.”
Humans are Dorsa’s most numerous race. Human settlements can be found almost everywhere. The physical and mental powers of humans are well balanced, while their customs, morals, and appearance can vary greatly ...
Skip the description, Next, selecting nation. The system returned a long list, where, among the Heyviness, Invars, and Tolu tribes, I found the Eyre People that Alex had recommended. Selecting this one…
Following the fall of the Ancients, waves of Nomadic invasions from the Great Desert swept their former possessions in the north-west of Dorsa. Bloodthirsty Naasy and ferocious Hittites devastated the lands of the fallen empire for hundreds of years. The ancient blood almost dried up, but its strength, although dormant in the inhabitants of these lands, runs within the proud Eyre People. In Kann-Elo, the forgotten language of the Ancients, Eyre means "possession, land, right ..."
The system accepted my choice and suggested an avatar template. I had an option to use my real appearance or to randomly generate one. I chose the latter, and my 3D digital copy appeared against the background of mountain and columns. A handsome man, I concluded, quite pleased with myself, as I looked at my digital reincarnation from various angles and then proceeded with making adjustments. The account didn’t feature a wide selection of hairstyles, hair colors, and other appearance settings, but what was available was more than enough for me. I adjusted the height, making myself taller, widened my shoulders, added some muscles, although not too much. I colored my shoulder-length hair dark-blue, almost black, then changed the shape of my eyebrows and my chin. I pondered a bit more, then made my face scruffy, at the same time, making my character appear slightly younger. That’s good! That what I could’ve looked like seven years ago, if I were a bit taller, had colored my hair, and, of course, been to the gym.
ENTER YOUR NAME…
“Cat,"
“This username is taken,” the system prompted indifferently. Ok then...
“C.A.T.”
“This username is taken.”
Looks like it will take me a while here. Apparently, my favorite nickname was very popular among online games users. Five minutes later, having gone through various combinations from CATinTHeBag to Catt2025, I gave up. I said a command requesting a list of available usernames containing the word CAT, and almost immediately chose HotCat. Like a hotdog, only with the word cat. Funny. I liked it. After I tried the game, I could always delete the character and create a new one. So, I entered the name… What’s next?
A semi-transparent window popped up in front of me, containing a character “dummy,” that looked like an ideal representation of a human being. It was Da Vinci with lots of interesting icons, characteristics, and skill choices. A local chart-list, I concluded. I thought how well everything was drawn, giving credit mentally to the game’s designers, who had developed the interface. Lots of information, symbols, little icons, yet everything seemed intuitive and clear.
Before immersing myself in the game, I checked out various forums and guides about SPHERE OF THE WORLDS. The game didn’t feature the traditional system of classes and levels. Instead, a system of skills was implemented: they leveled up as the game progressed.
Everything seemed quite simple at the first glance: all you had to do was run around leveling up your athletics skills, fighting with swords, developing one-hand weapon skills. Each skill featured ten grades — from newbie to legend — that were represented as skill points. That was about the only thing I understood. The rest was all Greek to me. More advanced skills were made available as you leveled up your basic skills. The learning speed coefficient of the more advanced skills was significantly lower, and it seemed, the more you continued to level up a skill, the longer it took for each level. People wrote that level of difficulty was progressive.
Maxing a skill required thousands of SP and took a very long time; it seemed to be nearly impossible. The amount of total SP a character had illustrated how cool and skilled that character was. Specialization was represented by a few different types, which partially resembled traditional classes in other games. The system assessed the sum of all developed skills and assigned a player an archetype, following combinations of all possible individual abilities, which were, sometimes, quite unexpected.
The main difference constituted an ability to acquire several archetypes simultaneously. However, active archetypes, meaning those that could be activated at the same time, were limited to three. As time went by, archetypes could be swapped and developed to acquire new abilities. There were many archetypes, from common to legendary, which the greatest minds of online worlds were losing sleep over trying to master. Hum… so far, not so clear. I guess I’ll have to try it for myself.
DISTRIBUTE YOUR CHARACTERISTICS…
Eight points for seven basic attributes… Not much. Having thought a little longer about the contents one of the guides I had read, I assigned a point to each attribute, and used the last available point to increase Stamina. Why? Stamina was one of the most important characteristics at the beginning; it directly affected the avatar’s stamina level and how many hits it could inflict during combat. It also accounted for how long the avatar could walk, run, or carry items.
Constitution was represented by hit points and the amount of damage the character could suffer. Durability dictated damage that can be inflicted and the ability to lift heavy weights. Charisma skills helped win the allegiance of NPCs (non-playable characters) and, consequently, to undertake more interesting quests. Intelligence affected the damage done by magic and the amount of mana points available to the character; I didn’t really need it. And then there was Luck, too… the subject of the most vicious holy wars on various gaming forums. Some players believed it to be the least useful skill while others believed it to be the most useful. Basically, that was it.
The variety of available skills was bewildering. The descriptions alone would take half a day to read. The skills were sorted into various groups: Combat, Craft, Social, Magic, and many others. I picked Combat, and of course, there were lots of subtypes: One-handed weapons, Two-handed weapons, Hand-to-hand, Shields, Mental weapon, Archery — these were just the basic ones. Each group featured subgroups of advanced skills, which required first developing the basic skills in order to level up. Having opened the one-handed weapon category, I spotted skills for long swords, short swords, daggers… in order to obtain the skill, one had to be at least level three in One handed weapon 300/1000 SP and so on…
Sounded harsh. I only had 50 starting skill points. I confidently invested them all in trade skills. Why? So I could gain access to the game auction, the functionality of which I was going to try first off. Yes, having gained access to the auction, one could do all kinds of trading, but only after having developed the necessary skills.
ARE YOU READY TO COMPLETE CHARACTER CREATION CHARACTER?
YES!
WARNING. GENERATING RANDOM RACIAL CHARACTERISTICS
What the heck is it? My mouth dropped, but the system gave good news:
YOUR RACIAL SPECIALITY: ‘SMART’!
CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE ACQUIRED A RARE RACIAL CHARACTERISTIC: ‘ANCIENT GENE’!
The character dummy now featured two new icons. The first one was clear:
SMART. Your mind is quick. You can gain experience faster than other players and are able to learn quickly. +10% to experience gained.
Nobody warned me about that — a nice bonus! Now I can level up quicker. However, the description of the second icon was confusing.
ANCIENT GENE. Ancient blood is dormant in your veins, but nobody knows when and why it may awaken.
Mysterious. Well, I guess we’ll find out.
CHARACTER CREATION COMPLETE.
DO YOU WANT TO ENTER THE GAME?
Hell yeah! Here I come, Sphere! Watch out!