My eyes blinked open and I was back on my bed, slightly groggy due to the dream-state I had been in for the last couple of hours. Standing up and stretching made the feeling quickly fade and once it was gone, I went downstairs, thinking what to make for dinner. When she heard me on the stairs, Treya noticed that I was going about the house and she started to romp around, looking for some attention, which I gladly gave her. A quick look to the clock showed that I had enough time to take her for a walk, before I needed to start cooking.

Outside, it was a little muggy and too hot, especially compared to the cold wind I had experienced in the game, on top of the dwarven staircase. It made me smile, the idea to actually have a vacation ingame, it was something that had become part of the norm in the last few years, either areas in games that were just vacation-spots or complete games that were nothing but a vacation, with a myriad of pleasurable pursuits that could be enjoyed. It was a practice that was much debated, the question if there should be limits on such technology, either by what can be done in such games or by how much time one is allowed to spend in them. I, for one, was of the opinion that, as long as there were no health-concerns, people should be allowed to do whatever they wanted with their free-time, but that was just me.

With music playing in my head, I continued walking to the park with Treya, where she was allowed to run around freely for a bit, as I continued on the paths. Curious, I used my implant to look up a little more about Irminsul, especially in the first reactions-departement. Sure, there had been some information floating around beforehand, but it was always interesting to see what people actually thought.

There were the usual over-exaggerated titles, praising the game as the innovation of the century or calling it the worst trash that had ever been programmed, which caused me to yawn, it was just so predictable. A little further down, it got interesting, with a discussion of the various classes, even if the focus was on the early levels. At some point, I would have to pick a second class, a choice I was looking forward to. The large amount of classes allowed for interesting combinations that might even change how the class was played. But at the end of the day, I was quite certain that some combinations would be more popular than others, due to greater efficiency. The game-developers had made noises about their balancing, which sounded good on paper but only the future would show how well they managed that impossible task. There would be combinations that they didn’t anticipate and some of those would likely be more powerful than they wanted, with strength far beyond their specialisation.

But that idea, to allow hyper-specialised characters and use the environment as a balancing-mechanism on its own, it was a good one, at least in my opinion. What good was a character that was supremely powerful, but only when facing a specific enemy and that particular enemy quickly went extinct?

“Treya, heel!” I called out, causing the dog to leave whatever she was sniffing after and bounding back. It was time to walk back home and start dinner. Mom and Dad had worked the whole day, so I felt it was just fair if I made it.

That was what I was doing when Dad came home, cooking rice, while making sure not to burn the grilled chicken or overcook the vegetables.

“Don’t mind me, you look like you are having fun.” he said when entering the kitchen, where I had been dancing to the music in my head, causing me to blush fiercely. I hadn’t heard him come home causing me to dance like no-one was watching.

“How was work?” I asked, turning my music down.

“Oh, the usual, I made sure to keep my fearsome reputation.” he answered with a laugh, causing me to cock my head in question.

“What do you mean?” I asked, now curious. He wasn’t a physically imposing man, not by any stretch and I doubted that he was malicious to his students, that would be totally against his character.

“You see, if students think that they will be caught if they try cheating, if you have a reputation for catching them and having no tolerance, it cuts down on the numbers of students that try. But if nobody even tries to cheat, that means you can’t catch them, get my drift?” he asked, grinning widely.

“Yes…” I acknowledged, not quite getting his point.

“Well, in every exam, there are a few students that don’t come to lectures, that merely read the script, or who took the class the year before and failed the exam, so it’s not like in school where you know your classmates by name and those in your year at least by sight.” he began to explain, but I was still not getting it.

“A couple of colleagues and I started to exploit that, asking trusted students, sometimes grad-students from other courses, to sit in the exam, pretend to do it, even if they just doodle on a page, and get “caught” cheating. That way, we kick a cheater or two out every year, making it very obvious and public. You should read the comments on some of the ratings given by students, they make me out to be the eagle-eyed guardian, watching for even the slightest attempt at cheating to kick you out of the exam.” he finished with barely suppressed mirth. I had to laugh, it was such a curious idea, just crazy enough that it might work. Which, apparently, it did, it wouldn’t get rid of all cheaters, some just thought they wouldn’t get caught, no matter what, but some would likely hear rumors that it was pointless and not even try. And even if it didn’t work, there was hardly any loss by kicking out someone who was just there to be kicked out.

“And how was your day?” he asked, when I stopped laughing.

“Well, the new game’s out for pre-orders and I got to play some.” I began, knowing that Dad played quite a lot, using the chip to play in dreamtime. But, while we had played in some of the same games, we had never really played together, Dad was mostly playing with his old friends, people he had known and gamed with for decades. While they were not necessarily competitive gamers, they were a tight-knit group that had achieved some success in a couple of games.

“Any downtimes?” he asked, sounding slightly envious.

“No, that would be so 2012. Everything went just fine, I had fun, even if the start was a little…” I struggled for the right word, lamely finishing with “dramatic.”

“Oh?” he asked, sounding actually curious, not just asking out of politeness.

“Have you looked at the setting?” I asked in return, continuing when he nodded, “Well, you might have noticed that they portrayed the humans as the good guys, attacked by the evil orcs and all that?” I stopped again, and, again, he nodded. “They were quite smart about that, marketing one faction as good but making them practise slavery, so there will be controversy. And my start was as one such slave, in a cage, on the way to an arena.” I finished, causing him to blink in surprise.

“And the tutorial set you free?” he asked, able to guess where such a start would lead.

“Yeah, it was quite a ride, multiple ways to complete it, likely leading to different starting-areas and factions. So, now, I’m a mighty Orc-Barbarian, starting amongst the dwarves.” I explained, causing him to nod.

“So, you went with The Gathering? I’m not quite sure what I’ll pick, maybe we’ll end up playing together at some point.” he mused.

“Sure, I’d like that. But remember, you can only start playing next week so you have some time to figure things out. I have to do that as I go along.” he grumbled something under his breath, about thankless sons, knowing where I had gotten the pre-order from but I could see that he wasn’t actually annoyed, merely trying to be funny. But it also ended our talk, dinner and the task of keeping it from burning, occupying my mind.

During dinner, we somewhat picked it back up, to Mom’s chagrin, she wasn’t too much of a fan of multiplayer-games, preferring to spend her time in solitary pursuits, reading or knitting. I had asked her about it once and to her, downtime wasn’t something she wanted to spend on solving meaningless problems for imagined beings. Her job already required her to listen to people’s problems and help solve them, so I could see that she didn’t want that in her downtimes.

But it was fun to discuss the various options with Dad and I was quite sure that he leaned towards one of the pure caster-classes, likely a Wizard, from his reactions.

After dinner, I spent some time reading before logging back into Irminsul, looking forward to the next quest.