Nia had made lots , to be exact, stacks of potions in the workshop room. She then took them to Aurrum, the shopkeeper to handover partially filled quest list. She was discussing the rates of her potions she would leave in his shop for consignment when sounds started blaring. Aurrum did not look worried though. He flinched once, that's all.
"Time to close the shop," he said. That sound was warning to let the residents know that night curfew would begin soon. Soon, all the residents would close their shops, tidy up everything and snuggle inside their homes. The night curfew was being enforced strictly. Unless there was an emergency, no one was allowed to move around in the village.
The vision would be low. The patrol people would kill anything that moved and only then would check what or whom they have killed.
Chief Tomashi had seen the world, thus he knew things were never simple. So, as soon as he felt something was amiss, he discussed it with elders and with their back up came up with patrolling, night curfews, engaging help from adventurers etc.
The inn in the village was not large enough to carter to all the adventurers who had flocked to Daka village. So, one of the village warehouse which was empty currently [Resource depletion has extended to this level?] was converted into dormitories for adventurers aka the players by villager NPCs.
As the price was not fixed to suit Nia's expectation, she just left around 10 red and blue pots on consignment. She would meet this shopkeeper again when she finished her quest. There would be time to fix the new price then.
She entered the newly converted dormitory . There would be no more work done. She had also noticed a timer had appeared when the horn was blared. There was only few minutes remaining in it. She sighed. She still had so much to do but the time was up. She had to go back to real work now.
Nia did not wait for timer to go to zero but disconnected from it early. She was pulled back to her favorite picnic spot from where she had entered the portal to Daka village. She chose option of disconnecting completely there.
The world turned dark.
Blink.
It was still dark but darkness was different. She blinked again and realized she was in her sleep bag still wearing the helmet [The gaming console in case if you had forgotten. I know I could have said ,'she was still wearing gaming console', but...come on, where is fun in that? Sleeping with helmet? Just imagine and you know it looks funny. It is not funny for those wearing the helmet, though! I know because I was a curious young puppy once.]
The transition from dream or in this case, a VR game to reality is different for each person. Some can differentiate easily, so they can alter between them easily. Few people are groggy for sometime, they need time to adjust themselves to reality, to shift from might warrior/mage/priest/..... to student/unemployed/daily wage worker/blue collar worker/white collar worker/...
The gaming company knew some problems might arise. So only for the first weekend of opening of the game JIN HO, they would pause the game and the game would work only for six hours irrespective of the type of console you use.
Fear not, game lovers! SIA works know that you can't get enough of the game, its possible you have not done much and there is still so much to do in the game. Why don't you try new features of the JIN HO forums, check related websites? You can upload your videos- directly or after editing in our video uploading site. You can even use the auction site! WHAT??? You don't have much credit or coins? No worries, mate! We have you covered too. Try our brand new 'Barter' site. You barter items there, no need for coins or credits. It's a poor man's market or auction house.
You could barter with fellow players within the village, within nearby villages or else. Shipping charges would not be included for bartering within the village. You could barter anonymously or with your own name or you can open up temporary shop.
The shop costed money and it would be there till you entered the game. As soon as you entered, the shop would close down. IF you have not bartered or conducted business by then...sorry, no refunds given.
With the charges for specific shop name which can be blocked for certain periods, like for 1 week or 1 month for a bit of extra cash and the rent of the said temporary shops being absurdly high, at least in the beginning of the game, it was evident that it was geared towards guilds.
Come on! You just said it was poor man's market and you shove the guilds at us. Is this fairness you had promised? The people cried in the forums when they learnt the features of the off game -barter system.
The moderators : .....
'Who said you have to go into the shop? The shop would be one of the pages in the barter site. You can sit and sift through thousands of barter items slowly and diligently. No one is stopping you. You want to save your time and yet make money? Not with us, buddy! ' - The moderators did not mention it so directly though. They were paid oodles of money to say bad things in a feel good way. They had received training for this sort of things. [ can you guess who were the teachers for these moderators? Insurance policy sellers, telemarketing people, used car salesmen...?]
Soon, few intelligent gamers found a loophole in this barter system. But was it really the loophol though?