Nia turned into a cook and merchant on her second day in the game JIN HO. Though she had not earned much, her future was literally filled with coins.
The end of second day in game brought more and more people participation. Few guilds and their subordinates even started referral bonus system. More people you rope in and they join their guilds, more the bonus you will get.
Pull in more people. So what if they have long work hour jobs? You body is resting while you play. Don't you even sleep for 6 hours a day? So where is the problem? Look at us, see how energetic we are though we have played the game for 6 hours yesterday night. Just join. Its free for limited time anyway. If you feel, you can't keep up, you can stop playing and handover the gaming console. If you can still play, then why worry? Join our group, our party ...and you will definitely earn more than enough to pay for subscriptions and yet have some money left in you pocket.
[As part of advertising, JIN HO was completely free to play for limited time and the company would pay the rent of the gaming console during that period. After the trial period though, the player had to pay monthly subscription fee to the game and to console. If you did not have enough cash in the linked bank account, game coins would be used and of course ,a small fee will be added to facilitate this transaction.]
Meanwhile, everywhere in social network sites, there were new updates, nearly all showing, flaunting their levels in the game. They made short videos with them as heroes as they hacked and killed monsters. Few showed off their powers, their new skills.
The whole world was immersed in the game and its effects.
Few news channels consulted psychiatrists, few talked with old game legends, few had chats and special episodes with normal people to share their experience in the game. Noted news channels pulled big guns, had talks with legends and famous people and guild heads or head-in-charge. This turned into sort of advertising for the guilds, which guilds needed very much right now.
Business channels were discussing how many people had played the game, and how many more would join in near future. They talked about new revenue points, new ways in which the game would influence the real life. It had already been leaked that major cloth brands were in talks with makers of JIN HO for advertising. It was not just the clothes, though. Many more companies were in talks to get involved in the game.
Bah! Who cares about these deals? Certainly not common man. He would just play the game to enjoy. So he would look at JIN HO site to see any new updates. Previous day, they had released auction site and off-game barter site. What new change would the game bring in today? The game company did not disappoint anyone.
They started releasing details in batches. The first one itself was a bumper news. The newbie benefits will be withdrawn.
The explanation given was that people had gotten used to fight monsters and had adjusted to the game. Indeed the statistics showed that most of players had passed the landmark of level 5. Thus the game would no longer consider them novices but beginner level players. This meant that the penalties were bad but they were better than what would happen later.
The gaming company even went forth and declared that the level 10 would be considered watershed mark and all penalties would be in full effect from then on.
There would be penalty for dying in wild- either from monster attacks, natural disasters etc or when hunger and thirst is 100% for long time or when one consumed poisons repeatedly.
The other extreme would be player killing. PK would be frowned up and each PK would result in PK point aka Sin point. More the sin points, redder your name and worse is NPC relationship. At certain level, you would be actively pursed by NPCs and put into jail. Escaping from jail would be impossible. So you have to spend many hours doing nothing(may also suffer from torture if Sin points are high enough) or bail with huge amount of coins. On top of it, the jailers may or may not confiscate few of your items as you are brought into jail.
The Player killers or the colloquially used red players had to pay double penalty if they die in anyway either from monster attack or from player attack. So till level 10, normal people would only loose certain amount of XP and probably an item or two from inventory. But red players would lose whole level and loose more items and coins in their inventory.
The next shocking update was that there would be no pausing of the game anymore. After playing the game, it was understood that 6hrs in real life would be 1 day in game. But the gaming company had plotted out timeline which showed 6 hours in real life equals 1 day and 6 hours also equals 1 night. Though the game allowed other to play longer, there were few caveats. The players had to follow some rules, specified by their village zones.
The last update was the game auction houses would now welcome players too if they found an opportunity to enter such places.