Eternal Grand Quest

Chapter 1: The World of Fantasia

Eternal Grand Quest...a Massive Multi-player online role-playing game. (Or an MMO for short) The game has being around for at least two years or so and has quickly become a world-wide activity. A popular game, with a sort of middle-ages theme, played the all over the world. It's a special kind of game using technology called Virtual reality.

Virtual reality (or VR) is where players use special helmets assume the roles of avatars or heroes. They can use these avatars to beat the game and claim the prize at the end.  Once you put on the helmet, you become the hero. The VR system is so advanced, you can feel hot and cold, eat and drink and actually even taste them. You can also convincingly get sick and injured as if it really happened, and even sleep and feel tired.

The game of Eternal Grand Quest is well received for its massive world, engaging battle system, believable environments and in-game characters. The in-game characters are rather simple but those characters important to the story are very well developed. So much so, many people think they are controlled by human players but no-one can tell.

The basic aim is a player fights monsters and bosses to level up, thus, becoming stronger. It's essential to level up in order to achieve the grand goal of Eternal Grand Quest. The grand goal of the game is rather simple; journey to the five temples. Then vanquish the trial that lays before one. Once all five temples are cleared players journey to the lair of the lost king.

Legends has it, that at this lair a great treasure resides along with a reward (in reality) for finding it. Many people wonder if its money, a job at the company, a world trip...no-one knows. The game has been running for at least a year, the previous year was for testing, and oddly no-one has been able to beat the game.

The in-game world is called Fantasia (Fan-Taze-Ear). Fantasia is colossal in size and scope, consisting of a giant Overworld. Every player starts roughly at the same point (different village on the same continent) and picks one of five races. The first four are elves, huntsman, featherfolk and feral. Each of these classes bring their own skills sets and abilities, with the last one being humans.

Humans are balanced warriors without any particular weaknesses or strengths. So, although, they don't bring any unique skills they are more varied than the other classes. You'll learn as you go. Now, the game is almost famous for another reason. The game has...three quirks unique to it's game mechanics, here is the list.

The first Quirk...is a fairly brutal one. The three life system. Every single player is given three lives or lifelines for the whole scope of the adventure. When a player loses all their health, they lose a life and warp back to the nearest town. However when a player loses all their health without any lifelines left...the avatar dies for good, thus, forcing the player to restart their whole adventure.

This may sound cruel but it is quite hard to lose all your health. At any time a player may escape from a fight and move to safety, although at the cost of a few levels of the character. Only in staged boss fights may a player not flee.

The second quirk of this game...is the burst mode. When an avatar is reduced to only a fraction of their health, there is a chance they enter burst mode. A burst mode is sort of a second-chance, where the players abilities are boosted to incredible heights. BUT...before you're tempted to purposefully trigger burst mode...it's not guaranteed. It's more down to chance this state triggers, and it's a low one. However during a boss fight, the chances significantly go up. This may sound dumb, but luck can be helpful in video games.

 The final quirk, and most risky one, is the second wind. When a player hasn't got any life's left, they grow at a faster rate. And their stats are also moderately enhanced. Many players purposefully die to activate second wind to grow stronger more quickly...but this carries a risk.