“I can’t believe how excited I am about this,” Juno said while bouncing lightly on her toes.

In only a few minutes, the President of Quantumsoft gaming would make the final announcements for Elysium Online and open the character creation portal for everyone with a ticket. Earlier in the week, Robert, Juno, and Sam had all attempted to log into the system and were met with a stunning teaser trailer and information on the launch event. Since then, it was all they could talk about.

Robert had a tough week outside of VR. Besides his normal struggles, his mother’s report card from the therapists showed decreased strength in her arms and legs. Although they were diligent with her therapy and workouts at home, she was getting worse. He’d read every book or article he could find on ALS and knew it was only downhill. The real world was just getting too real, and he needed an escape. Elysium Online was precisely what he needed.

Sam put his hand on Robert’s shoulder and said, “I think it’s starting.”

Instead of someone walking onto the stage, the stage shifted and reform. It looked like a combination of melting and water running uphill for a moment. Then, there was a thirty-foot tall statue in the center of the plaza. Unless he was mistaken, Robert recognized the figure as a giant version of Dr. Glen Kingsley, the President of Quantumsoft, and the driving power behind Elysium Online. He was dressed in a dark gray suit and stood with his hands on his hips, looking out towards some unseen horizon. He looked triumphant.

Juno leaned closer to Robert and said in a hushed voice, “What do you think this is?”

A moment later, the statue looked down at Juno and him with a grin. “Hello, and welcome to the final announcement for Elysium Online. I’m thrilled to welcome you all here.” At that point, the statue started pacing back and forth. “As you might guess, I’m being projected into the home plaza of every registered ticket holder of Elysium Online, but I wanted to make a big deal out of it. The marketing guys told me I should just record a video or have everyone come to a specific venue, but I thought this would be better.”

He stood there for a moment, obviously uncomfortable, and then said, “Maybe I was wrong, but I guess that doesn’t matter now. Anyway, onto the announcement.”

Robert leaned forward a bit and said in an almost whisper to Juno, “I thought I was bad at public speaking.”

She laughed through a hand covering her mouth as the giant Dr. Kingsley continued, “This coming Saturday at eight in the morning Pacific time, we will open the gateway into Elysium. While you have likely heard a bunch of rumors about the game, I can assure you they are mostly wrong. Elysium Online is a fully immersive and groundbreaking VR MMORPG environment. Through our innovative code base, you will experience immersion like never before. The sights are sharper, the smells are more realistic, and the NPCs are indistinguishable from the players.”

The statue of Dr. Kingsley stopped for a moment looking around the crowd like he was lost and then continued, “In fact, that’s one thing you will notice when you enter the game. There are no labels for NPCs or players. No helpful icons above their heads, letting you know if they are good or bad. You can even add NPCs to your friend list and to your adventuring party. You will just have to figure it out on your own. The shopkeeper you interact with could be an NPC or another player who found they like trading and making money more than dungeon running and fighting monsters. Anyway, you’ll see.

“While you will see some of this in the tutorial and character creation environment over the next few days, Elysium’s world is so much more. I’m not usually one to boast, but we really set the bar high on this one. So, let me circle back to the character creation for a bit.”

Robert leaned into Juno. “They should have just sent a message. He’s kind of all over the place.”

She nodded as the statute said, “Unlike most other games of its kind, Elysium Online takes charge of the character creation for you based on an immersive, and to be honest, thorough evaluation and tutorial. You won’t be choosing anything through a menu. It will all come from your actions. The first time you log in, we will assign your original appearance and attributes based on public records and detailed scans made through the VR interface. Don’t worry; you can make minor adjustments, but the basic structure will be auto-generated. Exceptions will be made according to your records and correspondence with the support system. For example, if you are genetically male and identify as female, we can work with it. We want you to be comfortable in your virtual body, but we don’t want people to troll or misrepresent themselves. Anyway, I’ve rambled.”

He stopped and looked at something for a moment, like he was reading. “After your tutorial and evaluation, you’ll have access to the loading environment where you can learn about the world of Elysium and even set up a trading account. This is where we come to our next big announcement. While in the world of Elysium, you can earn real-world credits for certain actions and the normal trading of gear and items through the marketplace. Actually, every transaction in the marketplace will give you the option to pay with Elysium gold or real-world credits.”

Robert couldn’t believe they were making it so easy to monetize the game. Every other game he’d played had restrictions on what could and could not be sold or traded for real-world credits. Looking around the plaza, he saw a lot of excited players talking animatedly with their friends.

“Wow, that’s great! Maybe you can use this to save up some credits.” Sam said, looking at Robert.

“We’ll see.” Robert replied.

The giant statue held his hands out, motioning for everyone to calm down and said, “I can see you’re excited about that. One of my biggest issues with playing fully immersive games is that society has always looked at it as a pointless hobby. I remember my mother always telling me to go get a job rather than playing my favorite games. I hope to change all that.

“You may ask what type of tasks or actions in-game would be worth paying for? That’s a brilliant question, and it took us a long time to engineer an economy where it made sense. Some quests or tasks that you complete will be valuable for us at Quantumsoft from a gaming and psychological study point of view. We would typically build focus groups and other events around collecting that data. Instead, we have made those a part of the experience. Certain quests or activities will require debriefing and access to your action logs during the competition of the question. That is something we think is worth a little compensation.

“Ok, I can see you are all getting restless to hear more. The third aspect of Elysium that we wanted to tell you about is the tournament system. One of our biggest challenges is how to make Elysium attractive to players who prefer fighting and tournament gaming. How do we turn those players into genuine fans? Well, Elysium will have its own tournament system call The Arena!”

Robert and Sam exchanged looks and focused on the rest of the announcement, “There will be leaderboards, tournaments, and prizes. The prizes will be a combination of Elysium rewards and real-world credits. We will broadcast these tournaments just like other tournaments. The first tournament will be a week after launch, so you should prepare. One thing you should know, though. We have designed the first tournament in The Arena as a team tournament. You will need four-person teams to be specific. So get out there and see what you can do to put together the best team you can. We hope to make Elysium Online home to all gamers.

“And there are many other surprises and additions to the game that I will not tell you about right now. Those are the big ones. I guess I will leave you with one last thing to consider. Nothing in Elysium Online is given to you. You have to earn everything, but with that work and struggle will come rewards that make it all worth it.”

The giant stopped at the end of the sentence and scanned the hopeful players’ faces around him. “I can see many of you are as excited as I am. I look forward to seeing you in Elysium.”

With that last sentence, the Dr. Kingsley statue put his hands on his hip, striking the pose he started with and dissolved back into a normal stage and podium. Immediately the crowd began to either disperse, walking in different directions or just logging off. It was rather anti-climactic.

Robert turned to his friends and said, “I’ve got to get back to work. It sounds like the character creation and initial tutorials will take some time. Let me know what you think after you go through them.”

Juno responded, “I’ve got a final in a few hours, but I will log in and start it when I get home. Depending on how long it is, I could still be online when you get home. Let’s catch up tomorrow.”

Sam’s eyes shifted between them, and then he said, “I’m jumping in right now. I’ll let you know what happens. I’m curious to know more about the tournament system and what that looks like.”

“Ok, I’ll talk to you both later. Philip will kill me if I’m late.” Robert said as he pulled up his interface and started the log out sequence.

Right before drifting into shadow, he raised a hand and said, “Later.”