VRMMO: The Returnee

Chapter 1

Chapter 1. Returner (1)

2010 was the era of smartphones. They changed the lives of millions of people.

But technology continued advancing, and in year 2030, the smartphone era came to an end.

It was now the new era of virtual reality!!

Pegasus Corporation’s virtual reality connection device, Neuro gear or the Arkane capsule, gave way to the beginning of this era.

For just 10,000 Yuan, any household could dive into the world of virtual reality.

The smartphone era was nothing in comparison to the VR era. Virtual reality did not just absorb the technologies of the real world, as new content developed just for the virtual world.

Among them, virtual reality games were the most popular.

Game companies didn’t hesitate to invest millions or even billions of dollars into developing this new technology.

As a result, they could release higher quality content than any other business in the world.

At the same time, it was the start of a war.

Due to their investments and preparedness, their games had similar quality, and none stood out as the best.

It was the beginning of a warring era.

Game companies experimented with new methods of raising their market shares, and many went bankrupt as a result.

The one that put an end to this warring era was the same company that has started it- Pegasus corporation.

It released the game that changed the whole virtual reality scene, the game that was initiated with the help of a A.I. program called ‘Origin’.

The A.I. program named Origin created the virtual reality game called Ark.

Ark!!

With a typical fantasy setting, the game was not too different from the other games in the market. In fact, it was much tamer compared to games where the players battled with light sabers or flew in the air with wings.

It was the scale of its world and its stability that made it unsurpassable by others.

Ark's secret lied behind the artificial intelligence program called Origin. Without it, Ark was just a normal virtual reality game.

Simply put, the game wasn’t controlled by the company but an artificial intelligence program. Its initial development cost was huge, but the management cost was ground-breakingly small.

At a time when the price of VR game programmers was soaring to the sky, the method proved to be especially efficient.

A.I.s didn’t need a salary.

Plus, it was easy to copy and mass produce an A.I. Hiring a thousand professional programmers took at least six months, but obtaining a thousand copy of an A.I. took only about a month.

Countless A.I.s worked to control and manage the server with Origin at its center and as a result, Ark became a game that surpassed any other game in existence.

Of course, there were some top programmers looking over the game and ensuring that the A.I.s are working properly. They work as game masters or GMs.

November 26, 2033, a year after the game made its debut, the player base was well over a hundred million. By its 2nd anniversary, the number rose to over a billion, worthy of the game’s title as the greatest game to ever exist.

One billion was definitely not a small number.

To play Ark, one would have to buy a neuro gear or the arkane capsule. Pegasus corporation controlled 95% of the virtual reality devices.