The light from a fresh login was still faintly glowing on the surrounding scenery while the knight clad in light brown leather armor took in his surroundings.
*How long has the beginning area been this empty? This game must be doing worse than I thought.* The knight thought this to himself as he slowly strolled through the barren starter town. NPCs were scattered throughout the place sporadically, but there was nary a human player to be seen.
Tarren's end was a medieval style game, minted in the first wave of vrmmos that took the gaming world by storm after the success of the first true hit vrmmo game, Gundelous.
Gundelous was a SciFi game that based combat around firearms from a fictional 220th century. Tarren's end saw the opportunity to appeal to people with a stronger affection for medieval fantasy and sword based combat and ran with it, to great success. Lately, however, due to a combination of slow content updates, summer vacations ending, and other, newer games coming out Tarren's player base was beginning to dwindle.
Thus the newly created knight, dubbed Musashi by the man who created the character, made his way through the bog standard medieval starting town.
Fruit stands lined the market area, manned by NPCs in various fancy outfits. Barrels were placed in locations that occasionally made very little sense. Standard European style inns and taverns adorned the housing district. And the player market area, which was once bristling with the sounds of people shouting about the prices of their wares, now lie silent.
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Musashi approached a man clad in shining silver full plate armor, wielding a spear. A yellow exclamation point floated above his head. "At least you're still in the same place." He playfully bumped his elbow against the silver clad knight's chest, but there was no reaction.
*Oh, right. That only works in newer games.* Musashi let out a sigh as he thought about just how advanced the newer vrmmos were. If this were a newer game the knight would dynamically react to being hit playfully depending on their relationship with the player. As it was, the only way to interact with NPCs in Tarren's end was to walk into their line of sight and wave to them, then follow their scripted interactions.
After backing up a bit to make sure the NPC would trigger, Musashi waved at the knight and followed his instructions to the letter. Moving around, swinging his weapon, opening his inventory, all the basics were covered. *I was a top ranked dungeon runner before this and now I have to learn how to open my inventory. They couldn't at least add a skip tutorial button?*
As Musashi lamented his situation, a young looking woman in pink, flowing healer robes approached him from the side. Her long blonde hair extended all the way to her elbows, and the look of her auburn eyes spoke of her soft personality.
"Um... excuse me..." She quietly and rather timidly spoke in his direction. "How did you do that?"