The next morning, I got up early to send off Jonathan and his friends. Normally, I would have violently reacted to the idea of getting up before ten on a Sunday, but for the occasion, I made an exception.

“Watch out for the big fool, will you?” I asked Jenny, my brother’s girlfriend, when I hugged her goodbye. We always had gotten away very well and I hoped my brother wouldn’t do anything stupid.

“Don’t worry, I have plans for him.” she grinned back, making me chuckle in response. She was far too smart for him, that was certain.

Moments later, I had to hide laughter when my mother started fussing about my brother, something I had never thought to see. My mother was almost always calm and collected, few things got past her professional calmness, something she had cultivated as a psychiatrist. So, seeing her flutter around like a chicken with its tail-feathers on fire was a sight to behold.

But even with that amusement, it didn’t take long for the car to be packed and, after another round of goodbyes, the four of them started their own adventure, with me, looking after them, enviously.

“Treya!” I called out, causing our canine monster to come over, tail wagging.

“Let’s go for a jog.” I told her, grabbing her leash, shifting her from normal tail-wagging into overdrive, her entire hind-quarter jumping back and forth in joy while I put on a pair of jogging shoes.

“Calmly now.” I ordered gently, causing her to sit and wait for me to put the leash on her before we headed out ourselves, not going too far, just about two kilometers, but the jog managed to shake off the sadness of seeing my brother leave. I would have to get used to him being gone. Right now, he had only headed out for a holiday-road-trip but after it, he would spend just a few weeks at home, before going off to University. Sure, there were advantages, for example I would have the bathroom we had shared all to myself, but he had been a good friend, at least most of the time.

“What do you think, girl?” I asked Treya, stopping near a decorative pond in the park we had been running in. She looked at me solemnly, or maybe she just wondered when we would continue, but kept quiet.

“Yeah, you are right, there’s no point in worrying. And in just two years, I’ll go that way myself, heading out into my own life, then it’ll be only you and my parents.” I agreed with her, petting her head a little, causing her to lick my hand.

“Let’s head back, I promised dad that I would look at the material and I want to research Irminsul a little, maybe it’ll give me an idea what I want to play.” I told our dog and we started on our way back.

Mentally, I made a note that I should head out in the morning more often, the empty park felt peacefully solemn. Sure, there might be some pervert waiting in the bushes but with almost eighty kilograms of canine protector, I wasn’t too worried.

Back at home, I only found a note that my parents had gone out to have breakfast with Jenny’s parents, ‘getting to know the in-laws’ as my mother had jokingly added. At least I was quite sure it was a joke.

As such, left to my own devices, I got myself a bowl of cereal and sat on the patio, using my computer-headband to surf the net, only peripherally aware of the cereal I was eating. My mother would have hated it, it was one of her pet peeves, distracting yourself while eating. The only exception were the morning papers, even if those were now delivered electronically and viewed either just as I was surfing the web now, or on a tablet-computer. But what she didn’t know wouldn’t annoy her.

My first query got me to the homepage of Irminsul, looking for general facts known before launch, trying to get a better overview about the game.

The general gameplay-blurb was rather generic, telling about awesome adventures in a world centered around the Pillar of Creation, the mighty Irminsul, so that was where they got the name, in a world ravaged by war. Only now, a new war was starting, different from all the old wars, not a war between races of the world, but against an outside force, trying to break the pillar that held up the sky. Now, the Pillar itself had called for help, creating immortal champions that would repel the invaders. Apparently, that would be the players.

The next paragraph talked about the two factions that had existed before the outsiders had invaded, both alliances made out of five races and those ten races made up the major races of the realm and would be available at the start of the game. I frowned a little at that, wondering how many races there would be and how they would be introduced, it would be quite annoying to pick one of the original races only to have them release a new race a month or two in the future and the new race being better than the originals. Or even worse, they might tie new races to some sort of cash-shop, only for players who paid extra.

Following that line of thought, I went looking and was rather relieved when I found a developer-post categorically stating that nothing but cosmetic items would be sold in the cash-shop. Further digging showed that others had similar concerns about new races pushing out the old and there was a reincarnation-system mentioned, allowing you to sacrifice an existing character to gain bonuses when creating a new one, increased the level-rate and skill-acquisition for a time dependant on the level of the sacrificed character.

Maybe not a perfect system and I had no doubt people would try to abuse it, but it would have to do. With that in mind, I went back to the original page, reading up on the two factions of the world.

One was named the Council of the Wise, consisting of Humans, Elves, Gnomes, Kobolds and Fomorii. The complete blurb was decorated in silver and blue, making me think that were the ostensibly good guys.

The other faction was simply called The Gathering and it gathered Dwarves, Trolls, Orcs, Sidhe and Catfolk. Their colours seemed to be red and gold, and if the Council were the good guys, then the Gathering obviously had to be the bad guys. Hopefully, they wouldn’t go with such a simple world, having clear lines of “good” and “evil” was a little boring.

I skipped the blurb on races for now and went to the classes blinking in surprise when I saw how many there were. I had expected six, maybe eight or ten, but there were fifteen classes and a mention that you could have two classes at any time, as well as two professions. How on Earth would they be able to balance that mess? I continued reading and had to pick my jaw up, each class seemed to have multiple subclasses that you could unlock if you fulfilled certain requirements, which meant it might be viable to double up on a class. That meant there were not only fifteen classes to balance but a crapload more, with over two-hundred possible combinations, just from the base-classes.

A little more reading had me laughing when I found out that a reporter that had played the beta had asked exactly that question and even got an answer from the developers. The developer had told him that, as they saw it, there were two ways to balance, you could either go simple and give everyone essentially the same tools, doing the same things and just slap a different skin onto them, making the difference between a Mage’s fireball, a Ranger’s arrow and a Priest’s Holy Smite merely one of optics. The alternative, according to them, was to balance with complexity, introducing so many variables that generalisation was almost required.

While each class had their thing, if you only specialised on that particular thing, it was likely that you ran into enemies that would no-sell you, making you useless. As they explained it, if you took a Priest of Mondror, the God of Death and Sleep, doubled up on it by making him a Paladin of Mondror with your second class-choice, you would be the ultimate character against undead, smiting them with ease.

But against everything but undead, you would be relatively useless, balancing it out.

It sounded quite interesting, everyone would have to find their own balance between specialisation and generalisation, making a character that was useful in as many situations as possible without becoming useless because you could do everything but nothing well.

That was likely why they had the reincarnation system, so you could quickly reroll if you realised you had messed up your character beyond all repair.