Chapter 248: A large announcement, Miracle changing their approach

After a few seconds of wondering about that, Eldrian gave up. Knowing that he knew next to nothing of this world. Sighing he wondered if there might be something more specific or conclusive, quickly turning through all the notes in search of another from Ilpas Elpine.

Unfortunately, most of these notes were copied reports of ancient documentation or recent discoveries. As such a large part of them were partial, and most of the notes did not really correlate to each other.

Something which made reading through them and trying to understand even harder as each note was from a different author with a different grasp of what was going on. Along with a different path of learning and using magic.

Eldrian quickly came to understand that most of these notes were written by at least Grandmages(Tier 7) or higher. This held true only for the current compilation he was reading through, as the others had been ramblings from people below Tier 5. Each vastly different from the other, this compilation at least seemed to have a common thread. Though this thread was twisted and obscure.

In this compilation, Ilpas Elpine was the only author Eldrian easily understood, but that was mostly because the extract was so simple. Sadly, even after having gone through all the notes, Eldrian failed in finding another from this Magus.

Sighing he decided to continue trying to connect and understand the mess that was the other notes. Quickly realizing as it became dark, that he already needed to log out. While he didn't 'need' to, he felt it would be better to spend some time IRL after having gone through such a hard fight.

Sighing again, Eldrian hoped that all the others were alright. Determined to go out and find at least Katania or Thesolis once he logged back in tomorrow, even if he needed to make a scene.

Waking up IRL, Eldrian headed down to get himself some breakfast, his stomach having complained as soon as he woke up. Eldrian found this a little strange, but simply put it off as having missed two meals the day before.

After having his fill he decided to go for a calming walk around the main building he was staying at. As he wandered around and enjoyed the scenery filled with nature, Eldrian wondered what more was going on in this place. For the most part, he had not visited many buildings of Miracle's headquarters.

He had only been in the hospital wing, gym, park, and housing facilities. Eldrian did not even know if the place where he first woke up was actually a hospital wing. Having never heard of people coming here for treatment, he felt it was more likely just a facility focused on medicinal research. And as such, they could treat people, even though it is most certainly not the focus of the building.

As he walked Eldrian decided to go to the gym for some practice. Constantin having given him off since the last accident, with them having yet to reschedule their daily practice. Slowly Eldrian was growing curious what else, other than ANW, was going on here. Though he dared not act on his curiosity as ANW was already far too much for him to even fully understand its implications.

After working up a good sweat Eldrian headed back to his room, where he logged onto his pc and looked at the forum for any new advancements. To his surprise, there was actually a very large and important one that had only been released recently, but already had over a million comments.

The announcement started by stating that the company had decided to start boosting the popularity of A New World. Contrasting to their previous claim of not really caring what happened to the game, they now explicitly stated that they were going push this to the front of their focus.

This did not mean much for most of the players, as they felt it was only natural. But for the other major research companies, this was a large shock. While Miracle was not all that well known for its discoveries, that was because they kept most of them to themselves. For some strange reason, Miracle's focus had never been profit.

They would only release something when they needed funding, and never if they had enough money to fund what they were doing. Often they would even release a product through another company, leaving the credit to that company in the eyes of the public. As such the public had quickly forgotten about their other breakthrough, only focusing on ANW and believing it to be an IT, gaming-focused company.

Miracle's first statement on how they were going to accomplish their goal was stating that they would optimize the recording system. Currently, it was quite limited, with it only being from the viewpoint of the player who did the recording. Streaming was also not an option as of yet, the videos recorded could be published or saved onto hard drives. A thing that had to be considered as the headset itself had limited storage.

While this method worked, the company stated, it was clearly not ideal. Limiting greatly the interaction content creators could have with their viewers. The company admitted that they hadn't really placed much thought into this, and they will rectify it now. Though this will not be a free feature, especially the third person recording addon.

That part will work as a plug-in that players can choose to install onto their headsets or not. Installing it will incur a small monthly fee, but doing so will allow the player to completely control the camera viewpoint around them. The range will be limited to a few meters, but it will enable viewers to see the streamer as was normal in many more traditional games.

Also, there will be no lag, meaning that players can also use it as a surveillance camera if they wished. They could control and see their recording at all times through the system interface. The company also mentioned that sexual videos will be highly controlled. For the most part until now, no players had really managed to get close to NPCs as of yet.

While some have claimed of having conquered many, or visiting brothels, there had been no recordings and as such there had not been an outbreak on the forum in this area, yet. Already anticipating problems in this, as is common in social media, the company declared that there will be an AI developed to monitor this and the forum.

Strangely sexual streaming and videos would not be prohibited though, but rather just monitored and left to a certain corner of the forums. Something catching quite a number of people off guard as they expected the company to fully outlaw such things. Naturally, there were many who rejoiced to hear this and wondered just what type of new things would spring up in a magical world.

Is that actually their reason, to see if things would come up? Eldrian wondered, curious how magic would change sex and its industry. Though he only wondered for a second before turning back to the announcement, not really caring if that was the case.

Next, the company stated that they were also working on another feature that would allow worded thoughts to be read, but that they were currently struggling with this. If they succeeded then the players would be able to communicate to their viewers without talking in the game. This will also be implemented with the friend system already in the game. Giving players a telepathy ability through the system, something which would be OP in fights.

Yet this was not the end, the company also announced that they were going to hold a tournament in two weeks' time. Or more precisely start it off then, with elimination rounds to get to a number that would be suitable for a tournament.

The precise manner how this will be held was still being ironed out, but they did announce that there will be a grand prize of a hundred thousand dollars. Thought that will only be given to the final winner, and the consolidation prizes were far less exciting as the second prize would only be ten thousand. With the following all being a thousand less, until things turned into just a few hundred dollars for the top 100.

With just over 10 million bought headsets, one could expect that this would mean the competition would be fierce. Still, this greatly excited all the gamers of ANW, as most had been starting to tire of the monotony of simply training under the guidance of the Empires they had gone to.

While their progress was great, not being able to go on quests and fight monsters. They quickly started feeling like it was just work and no play. They did not want to train to grow stronger, they wanted to fight to grow stronger.

A week or two had been fine, with the second month having been entered this started bothering players more and more. Many of whom have taken to learning crafts or simply enjoying the scenery, irking the empire trainers to no end as even the once diligent Chosen had become lazy.

Now they all quickly became fervent in growing stronger again, even trying to get new equipment as it was not mentioned if it would be standardized in the tournament or if they needed to use their own.

This still was not the end of this single announcement, the company also announced that the game time will be frozen while the tournament was being held. This tournament would take a few weeks, and while the game was frozen, players would be given a virtual space they could use to spend their time in. Thus not forsaking those who did not wish to participate.

Though what they will be able to do in that space would be vastly limited at first. This future would not be retracted and would work as a virtual home for players. On release, it would be possible to invite friends to their virtual home, and at a slight cost, they could even import things such as food, weapons, and drinks. Along with modifying their virtual home to fit their taste.

In this space, they would appear as their avatar but would not need to take care of the avatar's needs. As such all the time inside the virtual home can be spent on whatever they wanted. Here the company pushed that it would be great to use to catch up on work or studying something.

That is a massive change of direction. I wonder what their actual aim is... Eldrian mumbled after finishing the post. Quite excited himself to see this virtual home and learning more about the tournament. Having been mostly isolated with only NPCs, Eldrian was curious if he was actually strong or not compared to other players.

Especially now that they had been trained by an empire.