Eight Months Before Launch

The handsome man in the expensive suit stood on the stage with a broad grin and waited for the clapping to die down. Holding his hands up palm out, he looked like a celebrity in front of his adoring fans. The coliseum was filled with gamers waiting for information from Solutions A.I. on their latest game, and here on the last day of Game Con, they would finally get some information.

The crowd noise had finally diminished to a manageable volume, and he began to speak, " I am Micheal Greenway head of marketing for Solutions A.I.. We at Solutions A.I. are beyond proud to give you the first look at Destiny's Forge. It isn't a game; it is an entirely virtual world. Every single NPC has a complete life. They have struggles, jobs, desires, motivations, and skills. They are as perfect and rounded as any real person that one would meet on the street. Some are kind, and some are cruel. Some are racist. There are the very rich and the very poor.

Destiny's Forge is nothing like anything that has been ever created before. It is a completely virtual world. The magic system is absolutely open-ended, allowing for a player to imagine their own spells and tactics.

You don't want to hear from me though you want to see and play this game yourselves, right?"

The masses gave the smiling man precisely the response he was hoping for and erupted in yells of approval.

" Okay, I will call five random numbers. If you were given the corresponding card, please make your way to the stage. Everyone else, please be kind and make room for them to approach.

The man looked off the stage to his left and asked, " Ellie, what number did we get up to?"

He obviously got an answer and began to call out the numbers.

"Let us start with 36."

A typical chubby gamer complete with thick glasses began yelling and waddling up to the stage.

" 173"

A tall, lean man with bright blue hair began shouldering his way to the stage.

"532"

The corresponding number belonged to a young woman who looked more ready for a board meeting than a convention. To everyone's surprise, it was the actress Mandy Morevain who was at the convention signing autographs and promoting her newest holovid sci-fi horror movie.

" The final two are numbers 325 and 193."

A thin early twenties black woman wearing a retro Wonder Woman shirt and an older man with thick arms and a beer belly made their way to the stage amid applause and no small grumbling from some of those that didn't get picked.

While the final two were making their way up, workers came out and began attaching lapel mics to the prospective players. When the workers finished getting everyone ready, the host took quick advantage to the celebrity on the stage.

" Mandy, I didn't know you were a gamer. What are some of your favorite games? "

" Well, anything that Solutions A.I. makes, of course."

The man beamed at her but tried to engage the others. Looking at the woman in the Wonder Woman shirt, he asked, " Are you ready to be the first person other than testers to experience the next evolution in gaming?"

She nervously responded, "I..I guess."

The man had the comfortable ease of a seasoned game show host as he interacted with people on the stage. Eventually, something caught his attention to the side of the stage, and he announced, " It looks like we are ready to take you backstage and get you into the pods."

Some techs came from the right side of the stage and removed the mics ushering the players off stage. The host waited as the people left the stage and continued his presentation.

" The first time you log into the game, it takes a little while for a full scan of your brain. While the people get prepared and entered into the game, please enjoy this live cam from inside the game world. Please note that this isn't a precomposed cinematic, but this is a live feed from an admin flying through the world invisible to both the NPCs and monsters that call Destiny's Forge home."

The lights dimmed, and a massive screen came to life behind where Greenway had been standing. The view darted down from above clouds revealing an enormous city. The center castle was loosely modeled on the Tower of London and surrounded by an inner-city with stone buildings and paved roads. The inner city had a wall linning it and separating it from the outer city, which mainly had wood and thatch buildings. People bustled about doing all manner of activities.

The video followed as a boy grabbed a piece of fruit from a cart and bolted. The red-faced merchant began to yell, and guards gave chase. The video followed the boy as he weaved through the crowds and buildings. Eventually, having lost his pursuers, he climbed the side of a building. The boy jumped to another roof, climbed a water tower, and sat down—the mangy boy took a satisfying bite from the apple in delight.

The video panned to where the boy was looking to reveal a coliseum. An older man dressed like a monk stood in the center, seemingly at ease with his surroundings. Two gates opened at each end of the oval building, and a score of men flowed out of each. The video zoomed in on the man as the other groups approached. The old man was smirking confidently undaunted by the number of younger, thickly muscled men as they approached cautiously.

When they finally surrounded him, the old man lifted a hand, palm flat, to his face and blew gently. The sand in the coliseum began to whirl. The clothes and hair of the people in the stands stirred to life dramatically. Within moments the entire arena was obscured buy the sandstorm he created. Then screams and clashing began and ended in moments. When the sand lazily fell to the ground, the older man as sitting in a lotus position surrounds by headless men.

The video then raised itself out of the city and shot through the sky. It flew away from the city above trees and fields. It flew past a group of centaurs running down deer with spears. Through a dwarven city in the mountains. Past fields worked by halflings or hobbits. Lage dogs pulled at plows and carts.

The video slowed again when they neared a metropolis filled with gnomes. It was distinctly different from the dwellings of the humans or dwarves. The level of technology was far more advanced. Trolleys were going up and down the center of wide roads. The citizens drove weird and wondrous contraptions. Some had two-legged vehicles that looked like the body and legs of a bird. Others had a car like thing that resembled early Model T Fords.

The lights began to come back on, and the video faded.

" I have time for a few questions, and then we will give you the live feed from our five lucky players."

" You in the Thor shirt," Greenway said, pointing at a young man practically jumping up and down.

" How did you write and program all the inhabitants of such a vast world to have the complete backgrounds you speak of." the young man asked, surprising Greenway with the seriousness of the question.

" Well, to be fair, we didn't. We wrote some specifics for every race then we started a simulation that went through ten thousand years. This allowed the world, and it's residents to enjoy a full and organic history. Every character in the game was born to parents and had a childhood just like you or me. They learned and developed skills in the same way that the players will."

Greenway had to pause for a few minutes because of the buzz this created in the crowd. When he finally felt he could continue, he called on a woman wearing a red cap.

" Will there be the normal classes a person would expect to find in an RPG?" she asked.

" No, not at all. People will have the same sort of options, but they will be far more adaptable. What you think of as classes mage, warrior, and the like are considered professions in Destiny's Forge. This developed after our first attempt at simulation and seeing that it didn't work well for the inhabitants of the world."

The woman quickly spoke up again, " How will that affect people who want to adventure and craft."

" Good question. It won't. Players can have any number of professions they choose; however, like skills in the real world, if you don't practice, you will lose levels or proficiency in those skills after a period of time. In the end, all levels are in this game is a quantified level of ability."

" Grey sweater in the back, please ask loud so I can hear you," Greenway said, pointing.

" Is the game going to be free to play, or will it involve a subscription of some sort." the man asked.

Greenway was elated that someone asked and had even thought about a plant to get this question asked. One of the game's biggest draws was bound to be the economy, and the company wanted news of it to get out as soon as possible.

" That is one of the most exciting parts of Destiny's Forge. The game economy will take the subscription cost and use that to decide the drops and resources in the game, creating a real-world value for the game's currency. We will offer trading of credits for in-game currency and vice versa. We have even partnered with outside auditors to ensure the fairness and stability of the said currency."

Again he looked off stage, " It appears our players are ready. "

Greenway said nothing more and moved off stage as the lights again dimmed. The players were standing in the same arena as the monk. There were two warrior types a rouge type and two magical types among them. Surprisingly, it was possible to tell which player was which if you had gotten a good look when they were on stage. The actress was a mage of some sort with a crimson robe slowly lapping in the breeze. The Wonder Woman wearing woman was obviously modeled after her hero wearing feminine armor and brandishing a whip. The tall man was the rouge of the bunch in leather armor and daggers. The chubby gamer had traded flab for copious amounts of muscle and an ax. The middle-aged man with the beer belly looked like a shaman complete with animal hides and a crow on his shoulder.

The gates rumbled open, and monsters came out. From one end came something that looked like a combination of a lion and porcupine covered in frost. Its quills glistened in the sun as it sprang forward quickly, eating up the distance between it and the gamers. The shaman stared in disbelief, his mouth slack, and his eyes wide. The ax wielder panicked and started running the opposite way. The amazonian took a fighting stance and lazily twirled her whip. The actress sprung to life, moving each of her hands forward and back shooting fireballs like a double-barreled cannon. The rouge disappeared in a puff of smoke.

The ax wielder stopped dead when he saw a giant snake slither from the other gate and burrow beneath the ground. He then looked back and forth between the porcupine thing and where the snake disappeared beneath the sand, unsure of what to do. He eventually chose to return to the group taking cautious steps backward.

The frost creature stopped short of the group and growled in rage as a pair of fireballs slammed into its face. It immediately shot out a bunch of quills in every direction. The rouge reappeared in a yelp as a frozen leg, with a quill in it, tripped him up, and he fell flat on his face. The Wonder Womanesque warrior rolled to the side, missing all the projectiles. The fire thrower managed to melt any of the quills that came near her. And the axman took a quill in his back but shrugged it off.

Then the beasts struck. The frost beast lunged at the mage, but the amazon lashed out with her whip, and it wrapped around the creature's neck. The creature had its maw open wide to take a chunk out of the mage, but a mighty yank on the whip sent it to the dirt ten feet away. The rouge leaped onto the exposed belly, sinking both his daggers in to the hilt.

The snake launched into the air with an eruption of sand. Then arced and came straight down mouth open wide as if to swallow the axman whole. The shaman cast a spell, and a large ethereal raven wrapped its wings around the man, who screamed in terror, causing the snake to bounce off. The rouge got in some severe damage before the frost beast frantically scratched with its hind paws ripping massive open wounds to the man's chest. The mage finished the beast as soon as the rouge rolled away with a torrent of fire that left her on her knees, panting.

The ax wielder finally came to his senses as the snake began to turn to face him one more time. Two massively powerful swings and the snake was in three pieces. When the screen went black again, you could have truly heard a pin drop in the auditorium.

Greenway stepped back onto the stage and did some more Q and A before the players were brought back out. The players also answered some questions from the audience, then the presentation was concluded.