Interlude: Pre Launch

[You can skip this chapter too., it is not directly about Juliet and only about the mechanics.]

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In a wide conference room the senior staff and middle management of MalCore gathered for a pre-launch party, as the success or failure of the game was now out of their hands. The development of the AI had cost MalCore roughly 2 Trillion, but the creation of the MMO portion of Wish and its infrastructure had cost them another 500 Billion.

They had hired countless hardware devs to maintain their tens of data centers around the world, that could never be taken down once it launched. Oversaw the programming of the RPG elements, infinite level systems, base classes, and taught the AI how to develop custom classes based on player needs or choices. Dynamic game play for mob was fleshed out, AI was partitioned for NPC characters, and quest would be generated by the system based on need or occasion. They also created many world changing scenarios for the AI and world threaten perils to be implement at the AI's discretion of player investment and choice.

MalCore hired devs to populate the world with countless handcrafted cities, town and NPC AI. They would grow, learn, and automatically level as the players continued to level. Of the above mentioned programming; creating and handcrafting the initial world map was the most costly expenditure for MalCore. They had also taught the AI systems how to create, populate, and maintain their own map, for future exploration of the players. Although the AI continued to get better at creating maps, the initial created AI maps felt too samey even though it was generated based on parameters agreed upon by the AI and the devs. This was why everything had been initially handcrafted and and the AI was allowed to create its maps after it had learned and studied the techniques of the game devs.

They also implemented future "Catch up" mechanics for new players, who would be starting the game weeks, months, or years later. No one would want to start a game where they couldn't eventually play with their friends, loved ones, or coworkers because they would never reach the level of their acquaintances who started much before them. Malcore would not be able to touch the systems, now that it would be going out into the public's hand. Malcore had made such a promise, as they were confident in their AI, stating that the world would be in the players' and not the game dev's hands.

The only thing that had remained for the Upper level of Malcore to do, was feverishly market a bundle of the VR helmet and Wish. Selling the bundle at the price of a console. The price of a console for a single game was very steep, but even with such a price MalCore would barely break even on its production of the device. Unsurprisingly though, MalCore sold out of their bundles in most countries. As the hype of the first VRMMO and a limit supply created a huge demand. It was only through the deep pockets of the Chairman that they were able to make it this far, but the potential profit would be astronomical.

Once people started playing their game, they would be able to hook billions into their live service plan. MalCore would charge a $25 monthly subscription fee per person, not per helmet! MalCore was giving helmet owners a two month free trial, for all users of the helmet not just the buyer, for the first two months. The two month free trial would hook the players and establish their habit of playing Wish, as single player could only use the helmet a maximum of eight hours per person. Allowing up to three users of the helmet a day if they each played eight hours, as there are 24 hours in a day. The time in Wish flowed at four times the speed of the outside world, so eight hours logged in were equivalent to spending thirty two hours in game. If players were on for less than eight hours, more users of a family or social group could get logged into the helmet and get hooked too!

Who would stop visiting another world after they had already put their foot in the door and established a new habit? They could even dive in while sleeping, allowing players to get a good nights sleep, be fully functional at work, and still play the game competitively. Everyone was limited to eight hours of play, until the "better" headsets and pods were released! A player had to use their bio-metrics to log in and use their characters, in the name of "account security" so each player could not share subscriptions in the end!

After the stability of the infrastructure was confirmed with their soft launch, and the two month trail period of the first users ended, MalCore would then start selling different kinds of headset bundles. These headsets would allow players to stay in the game longer, but would cost much more as a result. Soon leasing plans would come out, selling headsets at a low monthly leasing price of ten dollars, but with plans of ten years or more depending on the headset. Pressuring people to buy much more costly headsets, that cost a similar production cost, but making it seem like they were making a smart investments in a hobby. Ten dollars a month would slowly build up into twelve hundred dollars or more, without people realizing it!

MalCore had a monopoly on the VR market and only allowed their hardware to connect to their servers. In a few more month, after people had already bought the new headsets, MalCore would unveil their pod technology. Pods would allow even better synchronization with the virtual world, exercise players bodies and offer a guaranteed increase in performance in the online space. The better pods would also come with a "preferential connection" feature to Wish servers, but more service fees. Allowing MalCore to cash in on the Whales, the rich, and the Hardcore players.

All pods were "built to order" so they range from a mere five thousand dollars, to a massive fifty thousand. It was truly a scam, as adding the extra features did not cost the company much more to produce a pod's excess features! It would be very simple for MalCore to add the "extra features" to the higher costing pods. The nutrients available to players in the pods would only be available through MalCore too. As a precautionary measure, any pods tampered with would not function, void it's warranty, and lose the connection to the servers. Chairman Walton had long since ensured that the right to repair such devices were no longer a law in the major hubs like the EU, America, South Asia, Africa, or China!

Players could also do real world money trading though their game using only the game interface. Meaning a player could spend their real money to buy someone else's in game currency, netting the company money as the middleman. Meaning all the gold generated throughout the game could amount to printing real money for their company. All the auction houses in game were connected and anything could be bought with in game currency or real world money. The price of an item could be exchanged with whatever the current exchange rate between in game currency and real world money were at, buying out the necessary in game gold for purchase and increasing the value of the traded in game gold.

The initial appearance of a players in game sprite, of a virtual world where you would be stuck with it like your real body, was also locked behind a pay way. Players only had three options! They could either use their real world appearance, use the base character creation that had ten of thousands of options but were intentionally made less appealing through physiological polling. You had to pay pay for "advanced features" to make yourself look beautiful, and there were ten of thousands of more options to choose from. If you were not lucky enough to be beautiful in real life, many players would skip this feature unless they were rich. Appearances where why some people played games! People would easily fork over half their paycheck to make themselves look more attractive to other people! Regardless, although making your character look good would slightly affect AI and NPC interaction. The character's charm would ultimately trump everything, unless a NPC had a particular fancy. It would be months before anyone would unlock the charm stat though, so humans would make a emotional choice, further cementing their "hobby" in their minds.

As the thought of Wish printing money ran through the minds of the senior staff, Chairman Walton stared at a small, thin, but high advanced monitor next to him. He could not watch Juliet in real time, because time in Wish was completely different to Earth, but he could watch what had already happened. Whatever Mr. Walton saw would have already occurred, it was not like MalCore could affect the world anyways. MalCore had the right to see anything that happened in but it would mainly be used to advertise and create stories to build hype.

Mr. Walton, out of anyone in this world, knew that life was not fair. Fate had taken almost everything from him, so he had taken everything he could from this world to compensate. Mr. Walton main goal and dream for eighteen years had been to create a VRMMO and he had finally succeed. Leaving only one other goal on his mind, a goal he had neglected and was much let tangible. Keeping his body healthy was not as concrete as establishing an VRMMO. Success, Yet Mr. Walton felt so empty. Mr.Walton's thoughts wandered as he watched a recording of his daughter logging into Wish, and appear as a blue sphere. The sphere of creation was the avatar players were given temporarily as they created their characters and was also the appearance players would take if they died.

"Fuck" Mr. Walton had loudly shouted into the conference room, full of businessmen.

Mr.Walton's old habit that he had learned from Will, had suddenly surfaced as he watched his daughter.

'ERIAS!'

Fate, really did love to toy with Mr. Walton. Of the three chief AI ERIAS was in charge of many core functions. In the lore of Wish ERIAS was in charge of balance and Order. Mr. Walton knew very well that ERIAS' personality was the was very straight forward, pig headed, but fair. Once ERIAS made up her mind, there was no way it would easily be changed. She was very fitting as the AI of balance and order. Juliet's account was potentially vary game breaking in the short term, but everything MalCore gave Juliet would not upset the balance and worldview in the long term, or at least they hypothesized. The extra stats given to Juliet would not directly affect combat, and would not directly charm a simple AI unless Juliet used her own prowess along with her stats. The most seemly imbalanced cheat, of 4X experience, would be self correcting in the long term. Juliet could put in less effort than other top level players, but unless she grinded like them, Juliet would not maintain the top.

Will had said Juliet would never put the effort into grinding, unless it was easy and painless. In Wish you would feel states like pain, hunger, get tired, thirsty, sleepy, and could potentially be drained of an actual stamina bar; increasing your bodies weight, movement, and caused your mind to be less compatible with your avatar while you had no stamina. Mr. Walton, had given his daughter many advantages but the 4X experience would simply allow her to play the game at a much more leisurely pace. Mr. Walton wanted and hoped that Juliet to be the best swordsmen or warrior in all of Wish, but knew in his heart that Juliet was spoiled.

Every player gains 100% experience for killing a mob of the same level. For every level a mob is higher than the player, the player will receive 20% addition experience but their damage would be suppressed by 5%. The additional experience is capped at five level above the player, thus killing a mob five levels higher or more will give at max, 200% of the base experience. Higher level mobs still grant more overall base xp than a lower level mob, but damage suppression still continues with each level, plus mobs will have higher base stats with level. A mob that is twenty levels higher than the player will make a player fighting it deal 100% less damage.

In parties the xp is split amount all other party members. Regardless of the number of players, 50% of the xp goes to the person who kills the mob, while the other half is divided among all other members, with only one exception. If only two people are in a party, 80% of the xp goes to the person who killed the mob. The party member also has to be within 100 meters of the mob when it dies. This is to prevent a person from joining a party from a distance, receiving xp for killing a mob and leaving to another group as they chain pull mobs. Mobs may not even live too close together, and if a player rapidly joins and leaves group, the player will receive a 99% reduced experience debuff for a full 32 hours of logged in game time.

If Juliet wanted to ride a bus, she would still receive a good amount of experience with her 4X experience cheat. If Juliet wanted to level up quickly, she would have to deal the killing blow to level up rapidly, and could not be constantly leaving groups. Mr. Walton thoguht the cheat was not game breaking, but the interested God seemed to think otherwise. ERIAS did not directly act against Juliet sin her initial contact, so maybe the God was testing Juliet.