1 The True World
My name is Alexander, Asian-American and I love to play games. seriously, I only work to fund my hobby, which is games. Since I was a junior in high school I've spent 80% of my game time playing the same game, a VR-MMORPG that released in 2192 and was the most popular MMO out there for almost 20 years straight before it started falling from the rankings, [The True World]. The reason is that the player could become gods, the amount of player freedom is insane! The first few months it scared away a lot of players due to the difficulty that comes with this freedom.
While I did play this for all those 20 years, I did lose interest for almost a year on the third expansion, or 10 years since release. They didn't release much new content during those 10 years and it made a lot of players lose interest and quit. But shortly after they announced the release of a new massive expansion that would change the entire game world and I got invested again. It took almost a half year from the announcement to release and I didn't play much during that time, but as soon as the expansion was launched I threw myself back into the game.
Needless to say, I got hooked again and they never stopped updating or releasing new content since then, well, until now. Seriously, almost 19 years, every day, I played this game. I was among the top 10 solo players in the game due to my dedication to one single element.
Let me explain real quick; in the game, you could do anything if you wanted to be a mage that wields every single element and become an Archmage, you could. Many people never stuck to one element because they wanted to explore more or combine a few to make them stronger. I stuck with only one of these elements. Nature.
Nature and Death were the two hardest elements to level up in due to the requirements. Death needed to be leveled up by killing NPCs and players, sounds easy, right? It is... If you got another element to supply it with. The first spells you get with the Death attribute makes it almost impossible to get up and you could not be boosted, you needed to do 100% of the dmg yourself to gain experience in it.
To level up Nature I needed to become a pacifist for almost a year (ps; it was boring, but worth it). Nature was also called Life magic. Nature was the source of all life, which meant If I killed anything I would lose experience in the element. at least until a certain level when you got a skill to damage and kill without causing the experience loss. This could also be avoided by combining Nature with another element. But I was adamant in only having one element, even I don't know why I was so stubborn.
There were very few players that stuck to only one element and all those became powerhouses in the game. I got a unique achievement "God of Nature". I became a literal god in-game, and with my already high level and elemental level, I was unmatched when I was in a nature-based environment. They had to nerf it though, because logical speaking, everything is nature but they made it so only forests areas and grasslands counted as nature because some became God of Earth and Fire, and their domains could be dominated by my Nature which the Devs thought were too unbalanced.
I was not unhappy with this to be honest, while I did a ton of PVP, it was mostly because they came to my domain to seek a challenge like I was a world boss. I was mostly a PVE player and spent most of my time building my domain.
You might have noticed the word "domain" a few times, it's a guild base, except I was not in a guild, and since I was a god, I call it domain. I have always loved nordic mythology and decided to build myself the World Tree; Yggdrasil as the base of my domain. And because I was the embodiment of Nature(life) I could create life. While I could not make overpowered max leveled creatures, I could create a small life and then let it grow.
I followed the usual fantasy tropé and made elves. While it started small, it grew quick and they made cities in my domain. As I had full control over my domain, I could as long as no player beside me were in my domain control the time in it. After I made them I visited them every 20 years for over 2000 years, well for them that is. For me, it was a few hours of God complex and being bored.
Enough about the game that is about to shut down and never see the light of day again, well maybe private servers, but how fun would that be for me who already had everything I wanted in the game. We'll see what I do in the future, but for now, I say goodbye to [The True World].
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I took my VR-Headset off and put it on the table in front of me and let out a big sigh.
'What will I play now?' I asked myself. I had tried many other games that released over the years but nothing stuck as TTW(The True World) did. While the shutdown is happening in an hour I didn't feel like staying for it.
I sat myself down by my computer to browse some forums to see if any upcoming games looked interesting. As I scrolled through the forums I started feeling dizzy and decided to get up to take my medicine.
You see, I'm sick. I've been like this for as long as I can remember. While I did get through school and managed to land a job, my illness would make me dizzy and if I didn't take my medicine within an hour of that I would fall unconscious until I got my medicine. And as someone that lives alone and currently on vacation, I needed not to miss taking my medicine as no one would look for me for a couple of weeks.
I took my meds and got in bed to take a nap, I couldn't be active after taking my meds, it would make my illness act up.
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Inside a lush and green forest, there was a small neatly cut grass spot while all around it you could see bushes, stones, roots from the big trees. This little spot even had the sunshine on it, it looked holy. And on this small laid a humanoid figure, It looked like an elf child, but with bark as skin. While it sounds like a monster, this creature had a natural beauty to it.
It was 4"2 (130cm) in length and had a beautiful green bark-like skin, long green leaves as hair and roots around its body that covered its bark-like skin as clothes would on a human. While the creature had feminine features it was impossible to tell its gender, if it even had one.
The creature laid on its back with eyes closed and unmoving and the woods were quiet as if all animals around it were gone. There was no rustling from the trees or bushes as if there were no wind, it had an eerie silence to it. It did not take long before the creature opened its eyes and as soon as it did, all sounds in the woods came back as if they were never there. It was like nature itself asked for permission to exist.
The creature's eyes had a green shine to it as it laid unmoving on the grass field and looked at the sky. The sun was at it's highest and the creature looked right at the sun but didn't look like it was harming the creature. It laid on the grass until the sunset and the moon lit up the sky and stars filled in dark space. It was so beautiful that the creature opened its eyes wider as it took in all the night sky's glory.
For the entire night, the creature laid there and it wasn't until the sun came back and the stars disappeared from the night sky and the creature sat up and looked at its surroundings.
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I woke up and instantly knew I was no longer on earth, that I was no longer human. I don't know why I knew this, but somehow I accepted it quickly. I woke up to the sound of birds singing and the rustling of bushes and trees. I opened my eyes and saw the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. A clear blue sky, not a cloud in sight. The blue sky was a rare thing to see on earth, due to the pollution, so this was my first time seeing it for real, not in games or in videos or pictures.
Then I saw the sun, I remember the sun on earth and it was not this beautiful. It was hard to explain it, in essence, it looked the same, but it was something about this sun that made it me so happy to look at, I didn't want to take my eyes of it, afraid to lose it.
That's when I realized how naive I was. The most beautiful thing I've ever seen I said. How wrong I was, the night sky! It was marvelous. I didn't want to call it the most beautiful thing ever just yet, I had a feeling I'd see more beautiful things soon.
It wasn't until the sun rose the next day that I had the thought to sit up. I got up on my feet without the slightest difficulty, with my illness I could not be fit at all, and even standing up could sometimes tire me. I moved my hands for my eyes to see and saw bark and roots, somehow I already knew it would be there, I knew what I looked like. I looked like my TTW game character. A wood spirit that had evolved a few times when leveling up my Nature element.
I looked at the trees around me. When I say around me, I didn't look around. I could clearly see all around me, even though I only had two eyes. The trees were big, the biggest trees I've ever seen and there were bushes, rocks, and flowers everywhere, it was untouched by civilization.
I saw a small bird on the tree in front of me, looking at me in curiosity. I looked back at it and came it a small, but warm smile as I lifted my left hand and put out my finger, the little bird chirped and flew towards me and landed on my finger, looking at me with its black eyes. It had a green head, brown back, a beautiful lilac breast, and a turquoise belly. I've seen birds before, but only black ravens, this little thing was so colorful and cute I couldn't help myself to use my other hand to pet its small green head.
The bird chirped at me in happiness. I knew it was happy, I could feel it. I decided to not loiter there anymore. I lifted the bird towards my left shoulder and gestured for it to stand there, the little thing didn't hesitate and jumped off my finger and landed on my shoulder. I then started walking, I didn't know where I was going, but I knew there was something in this direction that I had to go to.
I walked for over an hour before I felt that my new friend was hungry. When I stopped it flew off me and I knew it was going to hunt for something to fill its small belly. During my walk, I saw many amazing creatures I've never seen before. I was happy, I no longer felt the constant pain of my old body and I felt my power. It was not the same as I had in the game, but it was similar. I was simply not restricted by the game world anymore, meaning I had no such thing as HP or Mana. I hope this is not a dream, I hope I can stay here, I hope I can see new animals, I hope I can live here, happily.
