I lay in my bed staring at the ceiling. I was more excited to fall asleep than I had ever been in my entire life. Tonight was the night that Dreamscape would launch!

Dreamscape was a vrmmorpg (Virtual Reality Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) that the user plays while they dream. This was done through the use of a helmet that looked similar to what a motorcyclist would wear.

Who is this creator of Dreamscape you might ask? It is none other than the multi trillion-dollar company Vice Inc. The game was worth investing 250 billion dollars, 100 million man-hours, and 20 years to create. The result, a video game that took place while the you slept.

Instead of dreaming, you played the game. Want to know the best part? Well, they discovered that our brains are able to process information at speeds much faster when we are unconscious than when we are conscious.

The result is a 2 to 1 time ratio! Every hour in the real world is equivalent to 2 hours in the video game. However, to counteract this, 6 hours is the most that any single individual can play the game in a day. That is the equivalent of 12 video game hours!

You may be asking yourself, but doesn’t our mind need to rest. Well of course! Somehow, the scientists at Vice Inc. discovered how to tap directly into our REM sleep to play the game.

This means that you always wake up feeling rested – or so they say, I wouldn’t know yet because I haven’t played yet. Heck, no one has played yet. Want to know why? Because the game launches in 5 minutes. Yes, 5 minutes. So let me tell you all about why this game has been highly anticipated, other than getting to play a game in your sleep and waking feeling fully rested.

The game consists of 10 races and 15 classes. The races are: [human], [undead], [dark elf], [high elf], [dwarf], [orc], [troll], [goblin], [fae], and [beastman]. I know, this isn’t anything new to the video game universe. But hear me out. The 15 classes are broken into three broad categories based on armor.

The 5 heavy-armor classes are [warrior], [berserker], [paladin], [skirmisher], and [engineer].

The 5 medium-armor classes are [archer], [rogue], [beast tamer], [martial artist], and [shapeshifter].

The 5 light-armor classes are [elementalist], [druid], [priest], [sorcerer], and [bard].

Rumor has it that there are secret subraces and subclasses as well. So far though, only a sliver of information was given to the general public, of which I exist… because I am just a regular guy. A regular guy with a regular name- the most common name in my whole country- John Smith.

Anyway, the game doesn’t actually let you chose the race or the class you get to be, that’s decided by Vice Inc. That and the 1000 page questionnaire that they make you fill out. That stupid test was over 5000 questions!

It even asked random questions like, “If it’s a Tuesday and it’s raining outside, would you prefer a bagel, or a waffle for breakfast?” It took me well over 20 hours to complete that absurd thing.

Because I am so average, it will probably give me the most average race and class. Which would be a [human] [skirmisher].

Well, we are about to find out, because the countdown has begun.

5…

4…

3…

2…

1…

WELCOME TO DREAMSCAPE

User: John Smith

Gender: Male

Blood type: O-positive

Please enter your username:

I knew that it was important to choose a name fast, especially when a new game releases.

I quickly yelled the name: [Gray]

Sorry, that name has already been taken, please try again.

This didn’t surprise me, so I then said : [Gray Rain]

There was a brief pause-

Congratulations [Gray Rain] we hope you enjoy your stay in dreamscape.

There was blackness, and then an explosion of color. Blue light shimmered all around me and I appeared in the center of a stone building. I looked around and I could see hundreds of similar blue lights appearing all around me, no doubt the rest of the 2 million players that were logging on.

I held out my hand and saw that it looked gray and decrepit. It took me a moment to realize, but then it hit me. I was [undead]!!! What great luck I seem to have!

The [undead] class was apparently the hardest class to be placed with. The reason being because of the passive that it came with, [Immune To Pain] (a passive skill is a skill that either adds a bonus or modifies another skill. It’s a skill that is always active).

[Immune To Pain]: Because the undead no longer feel pain, they are unrelenting and resilient. The undead take 5% less damage from all sources.

What a godly race! The best tanks in the game would no doubt be of the undead class (a tank is a class that redirects the enemies attention towards themselves to protect their allies).

I was so excited to see what my class was, so I shouted with giddy anticipation.

“Status Window”

A small ding-ding sound rang in my ear, and a panel appeared in front of me with my character information on it.

[Gray Rain]

[Undead][Sorcerer]

Lvl: 1

Attack: 1

Defense: 10

Health: 156

Mana: 0

Favor: 0

My eyes glanced over my stats and my eyes fell on two things. First, my new class was a [sorcerer], second, I had no mana.

It took me a while to realize why this was happening.

Dreamscape races are about balance. So, if one thing is ridiculously good, then something also needs to be ridiculously bad. In my case, the ridiculously good was [Immune To Pain] which causes me to take 5% less damage. The bad, was the other passive that I had forgotten about, [No Longer Alive].

[No Longer Alive]: Because the undead are no longer living, they cannot interact with the natural world around them, and therefore cannot have any mana.

The game had given me a mana based class, with a race that could not use mana…

WTF!!!