Sirius clambered out of the pod like a corpse rising from the grave. After lying still for a few hours, his previous soreness had really settled in. His stiff joints protested even the slightest movement as he ambled down the hall towards the pantry for a snack.

‘Its launch day — I can cheat a little…’ he rationalized as he flipped on a light.

Soon, club crackers laden with cheese were being shoveled into his mouth in an endless stream as his stomach growled eagerly. In conjunction with his workout routine, he tried to keep his snacks and meals relatively healthy, but he still frequently succumbed to excuses and had a tendency to go overboard in terms of sheer quantity.

Finally somewhat satiated, after devouring nearly a whole sleeve of crackers and a chunk of sharp-cheddar, Sirius pulled out his phone and laptop and set himself up at the desk lodged in the corner of the kitchen.

There was a single text message waiting for him. And it was from his mom.

Momma Rowd: I saw that your game comes out today. Have fun but be safe. Just because those capsule thingies let you stay inside for a long time, doesn’t mean you should. Love you.

Sirius: I know — I’m already out for the day. I’ll be careful. Love you too, Mom.

Sirius smiled faintly as he clicked send. His mom had always been secretly supportive of him, despite his dad’s disapproval. Well, neither of them really saw anything wrong with chasing after his dreams, but they did worry that he had acted too soon and didn’t leave himself with a clear back-up plan. Corbin Rowd had been irate when Sirius dropped out of school. And made it clear that he would have to bail himself out should his plan fail.

But while it may have seemed rushed to them — Sirius had felt it was his only shot at having a chance to break into the eSports scene or join an organization that could offer a more standardized salary and benefits.

Selling items for gold and converting that into cash could provide a nice supplementary income, but he didn’t want to have to rely on drops and lucky finds to make a living. It would be too stressful that way.

‘Ahh, here we are…’ The AoA forums were a complete mess. As expected. Sirius chuckled to himself as he re-directed his focus to the computer screen.

Thousands of threads had already been started as players logged out after their first day in the game; the vast majority of them heaping praise onto AoA. Many were just completely blown away by the level of realism VCE & DigiEdge were able to achieve.

Of course, there was a fair amount of toxicity as well — an inevitability in any gaming community. People loved to have something to complain about and there was always a group who were up in arms when they actually had to look for things and figure out game mechanics on their own.

Admittedly, Sirius had also felt that the amount of up-front information was lacking at times, but there was also a certain charm to just diving in and figuring it out as you go.

But despite the lack of transparency and fledgling life of the game, he still wanted to quickly browse through a few posts just to see if anyone’s experience had drastically differed from his own.

The search yielded mixed results. All of the players were still stuck in their Tutorial Zones, but it did seem that each zone’s main objective varied widely. However, only a few of the Human, Elf, and Dracae starts were relatively ‘peaceful’ so to speak. They seemed to be engaged in a sort of Bootcamp, wherein the followers of their chosen Deity were preparing them for venturing out into the world in order to conquer and explore.

Members of the other races saw this and whined about how unfair their own circumstances were, leading the players in question to protest that their starts were actually grueling and generally unexciting.

It devolved into a whole lot of ‘Woe is Me!’ Sirius grew sick of it after merely a few lines of scrolling and had to step back. He moved away from the general threads and started browsing through the other tabs.

There was one pretty funny post he came across. It was from a Rogue in another zone who had gotten himself captured when trying to sneak into an opposing faction’s camp. While locked up, he’d tried to kill himself so that he could respawn back in town, but the NPCs had seen his attempts at self-harm and responded by restricting his limbs. Now, bored and alone, he could only convert faiths or logout to pass the time because he couldn’t delete the character either.

Honestly, Sirius felt pretty bad for the guy, and he was confident the man wasn’t alone in such a predicament. It was a crippling punishment to receive so early on. Players loved to do stupid shit to find exploits, but it seemed like testing the limits of the AI in AoA could backfire in a serious way if you didn't have any strength or connections to fall back on.

However, other than that amusing and somewhat informative scenario — there wasn’t much to be seen. Some players were clamoring for more survival mechanics like satiety and thirst, while others demanded more gore. Sirius certainly did not envy the Vault Creative community liaisons who had to sift through all of this crap.

His initial hope was that a few of the Beta Testers would break their silence now that the NDA was lifted, but it looked so far like they were either still compiling their knowledge or just didn’t see it fit to share their advantage.

Sirius couldn’t blame them. Though, he had expected at least a few of them to release guides in order to attract views and attention to their websites, videos, streams, or whatever. The Testers were chosen through a random lottery, but surely a few influencers had managed to sneak their way in.

‘Well, so be it…’ Sirius sighed as he closed his laptop.

He took a glance at the clock on his phone and leaned back in his chair. Currently, it was 8:14 pm EDT. The game had launched at 3 o'clock, which meant he had spent just under 10 hours in-game. It had felt much shorter than that but the truth before his eyes couldn’t be denied.

‘Tomorrow is a Saturday, so I’m sure it will be just as crowded as ever. Probably even more so.’ The quest at the food repositories had been fine because there were plenty of rodents to go around, but after experiencing the line at the registry, he wasn’t sure if the same could be said for the other jobs. His main goal for the next day was to complete the four remaining objectives and to find out how to advance himself in the main questline by speaking with High Priestess Necrah.

‘I guess I’ll start with Alchemist Bolivar’s request because I already know how to complete the bonus objective. While I’m there — I’ll try to ask around about the other tasks…’

There wasn’t much to it, but Sirius still always liked to have a solidified objective in mind each morning.

With that settled, he set an alarm for 3:30 am returned to his room to get some sleep. It would be another long day tomorrow and he wanted to keep his mind fresh.