After four years in Japan, watching so many good friends move on and having such a challenging time forming deep friendships with locals, Quill was feeling isolated. It was having an effect on him, dampening his enjoyment in life. He found it increasingly difficult to get up in the morning with any sort of real motivation. And he’d taken to giving up on activities and people more and more and just sitting around at home, streaming too much TV. More and more, like tonight, he was resentful of the way some things, like his job, worked.

Looking around at the ever-present Shinjuku crowd, folks always around no matter the hour of the day or night, he made a sad smile. He couldn’t decide if being around so many people made the loneliness easier or worse.

He leisurely turned down a street in the general direction of his hotel, in no rush, happy to walk off some of the too-many calories he’d consumed that evening. Luckily, living in Japan meant a lot of daily walking and bicycle riding, which helped to stave off becoming overweight. Although, while he might say that now at thirty-six years of age, it might be a different story once he hit forty. It was hard to lay off the all-you-can-eat-and-drink here in Japan, though. The food was so good!

The ramen, the barbeque, the sukiyaki, the sushi, the nabe… Visions of umeboshi plums danced in his head.

Many stores were still open, as it wasn’t quite time for last train yet. He strode by large, brilliantly glowing windows of convenience stores and fast food restaurants. He passed a darkish alley with a drunk salaryman pissing on a trashcan in full view of everyone passing by; it was odd how often you saw that in an otherwise very well-behaved country.

He felt a burst of disgust. Stopping at the opening of the alley, he called out. “Oi! Oterarai janai yo!” Hey. That’s not a toilet!

The man slowly turned his head, his expression one of utter contempt. “Eh? Shine. Baka gaijin.” Huh? Die. Stupid foreigner.

Quill shook his head. What was wrong with so many people? He moved on.

Coming across an electronics store, he saw that the window was plastered with huge game ads featuring fantasy warriors and mages and monsters. One particular brand dominated them all:

A pang of nostalgia coursed through Quill, and he came to a halt, causing a ripple in those suddenly forced to go around him. He smiled.

World of Fantasy (WoF) was the original MMO, the first to really grow massive, and it had dominated the market for much of the past twenty-some years. In terms of tech and gaming, that was basically like saying they’d held their own from the stone age to the modern era; it was very impressive.

Quill had first played World of Fantasy in its earliest days. Back then, the game had been a wonder. The vast, open world had really felt like an adventure. Exploring it hadn’t been something people would do just to grind up levels and move on from; the exploring and questing itself had been the point of the game. And he’d loved it.

He fondly remembered starting out as a solo player, gradually making friends in the game, teaming up to complete overworld quests, hanging out, and doing the occasional dungeon. For almost two years, he’d spent his days anticipating nights with those friends in that amazing world. Adventuring together, sharing goals, and growing together had created deep ties between players despite being in entirely different countries and cultures.

Career changes and a girlfriend had put more demands on his time and had led him to eventually quit the game for a long time. He’d come back, about eight or ten years later for another go, hit hard by nostalgia that time as well. But he hadn’t lasted long in the game. The open world had been dumbed down to super easy mode, and nobody teamed up for it anymore. Players would just grind it as fast as possible until they were high enough level to get to the next dungeon and then run dungeons over and over for the best gear.

A dungeon-finder system had been introduced, allowing people to instantly find others to party with, removing any need to talk to others or to build relationships. And people didn’t explore dungeons anymore or take their time to do every mini-boss or see every room. People just signed up with the dungeon finder to get on a team and then speed-ran the best bosses for the best loot and quit, then endlessly repeated the process. They didn’t even talk to each other during runs. The social aspects had vanished.

Quill had been incredibly disappointed in the lack of adventure, the advent of grinding, and the brutal loss of community. When he did talk to people in the game, it felt like they were now all hard-core gamers and had zero tolerance for anyone new. Toxicity, a rarity in the past, was now everywhere as people had come to focus on competition rather than comradery. He’d quit the game after only a couple of weeks, too heartbroken by the changes to stick around any longer. That had soured him on gaming in general, and he’d never really regained any interest, devoting himself to other pursuits instead, like sports and romance.

He wasn’t the only player to leave that world behind. Over the years, the game developer had been hit by scandals: sexual harassment suits, poor working conditions, and union busting. NOVision, the corporate publisher and developer, had merged with Wizard, the design company behind the actual game. Micro-transactions and monetization had exploded. It had been easy enough to find reasons to stay away.

That was then. But now…

Standing outside that store window with his briefcase in hand, bathed in florescent light as a crowd flowed around him, it wasn’t the heartbreak he recalled now, but the golden days of yore. That was likely exactly what NOVizionWizard was promoting with this new game.

World of Fantasy, Golden Impact was the game developer’s first foray into the recent explosion of full-dive MMOs, which had only become possible thanks to new technologies. Unlike their previous games, which had been played on a computer, full-dive games were one hundred percent immersive. You plugged your brain directly into the game machine and entered a whole new world that felt just as real to you as the everyday one did, interacting with all your senses. Needless to say, once the tech had progressed to the point where full dives now felt realistic instead of pixel-like, the genre had taken over.

Other games had been very successful in releasing full-dive versions, but NOVisionWizard had, by far, the biggest historical brand name and a legion of former fans who probably missed the game as much as Quill now found himself missing it. The company also had vast coffers to invest. He’d read about how they’d vowed to pull out all the stops to become the best again. Golden Impact had been years in the making.

Banking on player nostalgia and a name that had once been grand, investing everything into creating a game that catered to players even more than it had in the old days, they’d apparently created an experience that had caused beta players to rave with excitement. It had lit a firestorm of passion on the internet. Like millions of others, he’d followed development progress, increasingly drawn to the idea of actually being inside the magical story world that had once so fascinated him.

Quill glanced towards the front doors of the store and checked his enthusiasm before it could get out of control. Did he want to investigate the new release? Could he really see himself getting back into gaming? Or was he too old now? Or was worrying about age just silly? Games weren’t just for kids anymore, right? And it’s not like he had a family to spend his time on…

He recalled the excitement he’d felt the first time he’d stopped text chatting and talked to people using their real voices in the original game. He remembered the laughter and silliness as he and his friends had crawled dungeons together. His heart warmed at the memory of hours spent just hanging out in public plazas, teasing and telling dumb jokes. And the times he and a friend had pulled each other aside, just the two of them, sharing feelings and talking about real life together, providing support when needed. Because of the people he’d been connected to, the game world had felt like home.

And suddenly, he craved that.

Impulsively slipping back into the flow of pedestrians, he made his way to the automatic doors, which slid aside as he and others approached. Leaving the summer evening behind, he entered, and cool air washed over him.

Inside the bright main lobby of the electronics retailer, World of Fantasy had set up shop with a huge display showing wicked-cool, movie-style previews. Guys and girls in top-of-the-line cosplay posed behind a row of cute girls with bright grins and micro-mini skirts. The latter handed out flyers and packs of tissue with ads inserted in them. Well-dressed store staff in uniform stood by with polite smiles, ready to help interested people sign up for the game.

Seeing the big World of Fantasy logo overhead felt like a punch in the heart. It was difficult to recall all the negatives that had driven the previous MMO to eventual ruin, yet it was so easy to recall the incredible game it had been. He still fondly recalled the game world itself and all of its memorable characters. The nostalgia sliced right through his loneliness, making him even more aware of the latter and more eager than ever to banish it. He wanted people he could hang out with again. He wanted to feel excited about a game again. He wanted to be in an adventuring party with people who cared about him, rather than ‘the foreign guy’ drifting in a sea of locals who never fully accepted him.

He let himself approach one of the staff.

She beamed up at him. “Welcome! Are you interested in signing up for World of Fantasy, Golden Impact? Only one million slots will be open for new players at this time. And they’re filling up very fast.”

“Oh?” Quill accepted a flyer from the woman.

“Registration started an hour ago—”

“An hour ago?” he interrupted. “But it’s so late.” He pulled his phone out and checked the time as if he didn’t already know how close to midnight it was.

“We’re thirteen hours ahead of New York,” she explained. “Globally, we’re already at more than nine hundred thousand new players.”

“Nine hundred!” Quill marvelled. Apparently, whatever difficulties the company had faced before, the public was eager to put the past behind them and to trust them once more.

She gestured to the tablet in her hand and half turned to stand closer to him, showing him the registration screen. “Shall we sign you up for a new unit before space runs out?”

Quill hesitated, a sliver of real doubt appearing for the first time as practical considerations finally hit him. Full-dive machines were stand-alone devices, the games far too massive to fit on a standard computer. Plus, headgear and an integration system were involved. He looked at a 3D cutout of the machine standing in front of them. The price tag on it made him cringe. This was really a lot more than he should spend on a video game. It’s not like he was a hard-core gamer, right? Think of all the things that money could be spent on. And if he found a new girlfriend, would she approve of something like this or see it as immature and wasteful?

Indecision twisted his gut.

A bell dinged.

The saleswoman checked the tablet in her hands. “Ah. Nine hundred and fifty thousand players now. Better hurry, or you’ll miss out.”

Quill folded. The lure of the game, the nostalgia and desire for friendship, the anticipation of the crowd, the glorious cosplayers, and the cute girls surrounding him overcame whatever weak defences he’d had in place to protect his slender bank account. He nodded, feeling weak but also excited.

She grinned and tapped something into her tablet, then began taking his information.

Quill mentally tried to hold back a powerful, childish sense of anticipation for the game and fear over the money he was spending. The game wouldn’t launch for another three weeks while full-dive systems were delivered. He’d just stay home every night for the next six months to a year and subsist on cup ramen to recoup this expense. But a silly grin crept over his lips, and he felt like an idiot in front of the saleswoman because, after all, he really was excited.

Male

36

QUILL KRAU

Class NONE, Level 1

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STATUS

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Currently giddy with anticipation.

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