To accomodate for the large player base that VRMMO's usually pulled, Terranova was created at a very large scale, approximately fifteen times of Earth. Players can also play during the night, and as such won't have a problem trying to conciliate their jobs with gaming.
James had logged in during the grand opening day. Terranova had been open for less than an hour now, so starting towns such as Fallen Oak town were booming with players. Unlike many other VRMMO's, Terranova heavily pushed for team cooperation and as such, establishing a decent party was a top priority if you wanted to get any sort of leveling done.
Terranova's player stats are distributed along 6 attributes:
Vitality, which increases your permanent maximum health;
Intelligence, which increases your magic damage output;
Dexterity, which increases the nimbleness of your character, such as its movement speed;
Constituiton, which increases your health regeneration per second and your ammount of Stamina;
Strenght, which increases your character's physical damage output;
Wisdom, which increases your character's maximum mana and it's mana regeration per second;
As such, when James opened his character UI, he saw the following stats:
Adventurer - "Blind Dreamcatcher" - level 0 Male Warrior
Attributes:
Hp: <120/120>
Mana: <50/50>
Vitality: 2
Intelligence: 1
Dexterity: 1
Constituiton:1
Strenght: 2
Wisdom: 1
Reputation: 0 (free citizen)
Titles: N/a
Even though Terranova was a fantasy world, it still kept most of the modern world's laws. So,trying to kill someone in a city would only end with a City Guard shoving his spear or sword in your guts and you getting jailed. As such, player's Reputation was one of their most important Attributes, since once it dropped below 0, you would scare NPC's away from you, denying you the chance of getting Quests.
Your reputation started at 0, it was the same for every player. It would go down were you to start killing players mindlessly. Therefore, killing players in self-defence was more than allowed, it was even rewarded, where that player's Reputation really bad.
James and Marcus decided to party up and look for a place to level up. Seeing as Fallen Oak Town was a starter Village, it had a forest in its surrounding filled with weak but ferocious animals and critters so as to enable players to get through the first few levels.
Whilst looking for a spot to start hunting for monsters, they spotted a group of players denying passage, claiming it was a hunting spot which their guild had claimed. Huh, so it's like this here aswell - James had heard of such behaviors being common in almost every stage of VRMMO's, where Guilds would look for the best or easier hunting grounds and hoard them and force ordinary solo players to look for other places to hunt in.
As soon as James got close, he was no lucky one. He heard the same thing.
"Please leave, our guild has taken over this hunting ground. If you don't, don't blame us for not being courteous".
"What guild has barred passage here, might I ask?" said James, trying to find a way in.
"It has been taken over by "Psychotic Faith". I wonder why you'd ask? Wanna join us? Like it would be that easy!" - said "Blinding Faith", a Male Mage player.
"Okay, I'll just take my leave now." James started backing up and caller Marcus over. Marcus had started as a Rogue so he had already learned the basic ability which every Rogue got. It was "Stealth".
Stealth allowed a player to become almost imperceptible to other players and monsters. It just had a "slight" catch, that was it only held true were if the player's or monster's stats were lower or almost the same as yours and that you could only cast it out-of-combat.
Being out-of-combat meant that you couldn't have taken any sort of damage for the last 10 seconds.
"I want you to try and get close to that Mage. Please check a few things for me." - said James to Marcus - " I want you to find out if there's any player over there that can notice you whilst you are in Stealth" James ordered, as he pointed to "Blinding Faith".
"Why would we want to get closer to them, isn't it just a fool's trap? Even if I get through what am I supposed to do?" - Marcus asked, looking at James like he had said something funny.
"Do you think the people who manage Guilds are complete idiots? Why would they go to the trouble to occupy a hunting spot, risking incurring the ire of many players so early on? There's obviously something of worth over there, and they can't risk exposing it to the public."
Although James had never played any VRMMO's due to Mom forbbiding him from doing so, he had always been fascinated by them. Therefore, he recognized "Psychotic Faith". It was neither a well-know nor an unknown Guild, but it had been coming up in the recent months. Apparently they had invested in Terranova.
Therefore, James didn't think they would just block off a starting zone's hunting ground for nothing. It had to be something really good, otherwise Guilds wouldn't dare risk their reputation.
Seeing as what James had said made some sense, Marcus steeled himself, activated "Stealth" and got throught the row of players blocking the path pretty easily. James realized why after a few moments, and the reason was that there was no Rogue on the team blocking the road. Rookie mistake - James thought, sneering in his mind.
A few minutes later, James gets a message from Marcus with an image. In it where several players fighting against what looked like a big wolf, bigger than any out in the wild in the forest.
A bit later, James gets another message and notices that Marcus died in the party menu. Seeing as they didn't have any levels nor equipment yet, it wasn't a big deal. James started to look for the Town's Chapel, where players would respawn where they not ressurected by one of the Healer classes. So,for now, James didn't notice the image Marcus sent him before dying.
When James got to the Chapel, he found Marcus waiting for him grinning ear to ear.
"Why are you looking at me like an old uncle who's staring at a school girl?" said James, teasingly.
"Have you seen the image I sent you? Once you do, you'll know why"
Once James looked at it, he was shocked. One had to know Terranova had only opened their servers to players for about two hours now. So once James saw the name of the monster, he was flabbergasted. It read:
Fallen Moon-Wolf King, level 5 Beast, Rare
Hp: <22380/50000>
Skill 1: "Vicious Bites" - deals 25 damage to players in a 3x3 meter cone and aplies a Bleeding De-buff of 3 damage per second, which stacks up to a cap of 5 stacks.
Skill 2 : "Mangle" - deals 40 damage to it's target. Reduce's Movement Speed for 35% for 5 seconds.