3 Chapter 3 - Game Launch, God of Positivity

A few days passed since Jiang Jiahao introduced [Lord of Supreme Immortal] to Li Shenyang and weekends finally arrived. Li Shenyang has already downloaded the game a few days ago when the game company released the download link on their home page. Now, the players who have downloaded the game has been waiting anxiously in front of the computer for the server to open. Li Shenyang was no exception.

Li Shenyang launched the client and watched as the game load up. On the main log-in screen one can see the motion graphic of several areas in the game being played in the background. The design could be said to be top-notched but of course, for the highest settings, one would need a high-spec PC, one of which Li Shenyang is not lacking.

So the first thing that Li Shenyang did was to go to the game settings and set the graphic up on the highest settings. While browsing through the general settings, he noticed that there was an option to use a mouse and keyboard, a controller and something else that was left darkened with three '?' as an input. Then, there was also a setting where if you would like to turn on the VR-mode which was not advertised on their website at all. But Li Shenyang understood why it wasn't advertised because just like the three question marks in the input settings, the VR-mode section was also darkened, making players unable to make changes on them.

Li Shenyang glanced at the time, and saw that there are still 10 more minutes before the server is finally open for logging in. He decided to screenshot the settings window, opened a browser on his second monitor and went to the game forums. Surprisingly, despite the game has yet to be launched, there was already a lot of people posting in the forums. Most were looking for teams to tackle the games in the early phase so that they could get the rewards for things such as first kills or first clear.

There was also a guild recruitment, which Li Shenyang assumed, was posted by companies that owned a professional team. After all, the game company did announce that they plan to make a professional league for the game. It might just be a bait for the investors since there was still nothing being announced about the league after that. The only thing the company said is that they are receiving team registration starting September and currently, it is March, so there are roughly six months for the professional team to get everything ready before the registration.

Li Shenyang turned on the forum filters and turned off all the advertisement section before he refreshed the page. Now that the forum page is free of any advertisement thread, Li Shenyang could finally see the things that he wanted to see. Things that are related to the games. There were already discussions about the demonic sect, righteous sect, the advantages and disadvantages of each class, and even the side profession of which a player can learn in the game.

He scrolled through the page, reading each thread's title. Only after finding that none of them talks about the settings, Li Shenyang finally created a new thread to talk about it. He had just posted it, and then refreshed the page, only to see that there were already 5 replies to his thread. "Whoa, just how high are these people's APM to actually type this fast?" Li Shenyang wondered. He quietly read what they thought on the two settings that were still locked.

[Matchless Condor: I have also seen this earlier. I sent an email to the developer and they have yet to give an answer.]

[Whispering Snow: I heard rumours that the company who owned the game is working with a group of researchers to create a new system of VRMMORPG.]

[Worthy Buffalo: Heh, I won't think much of that. I don't even have a strong enough computer to even play in medium settings.]

[Timeless Turtle: Imagine the company suddenly announced they made a new device which allows you to immerse yourself into the game.]

[KStarMaster: A friend has a connection with an insider. It is said that the company will announce this after this week as they are still making few, final tweaks on the system.]

Li Shenyang stared at the name KStarMaster and can't help wondering if this person is the same one as the one who played with him on his last game of King's Arena. Clicking on the username, he got to the other's profile and then, sent a private message.

[YangYangLaoban: Hello! Do you play King's Arena? This is YangShen, if you are the person who plays with me last time, please give me a reply!]

After sending the message, he saw that there are only a few minutes left before the server is open so he quickly went back to the game screen on his main monitor and waited patiently. The game developer seemed to understand that the players would be anxious so on the last minute, the log-in screen showed a countdown.

Li Shenyang inputs his username and passwords, then waited for the countdown to reach zero. As soon as it reached zero, Li Shenyang clicked on the log-in icon and the screen fades to black. Next, he was brought to the character creation screen.

Luckily, before the game launched, the company had released an engine where interested players can simply create their characters early. That way, during the launch, they didn't have to waste hours on creating their characters. Li Shenyang followed the instruction, went to the load existing character files, and picked the character file that he spent almost 3 hours to create just a day ago.

The next step was choosing a name for the character. Li Shenyang was too lazy to think of a cool, complicated name so he simply used a homonym of his name and flipped them around. His parents named him Shenyang, hoping that he would always bring positivity to his life. His game ID, [YangShen] used the same 'Yang' character of his name, but the 'Shen' came from the character god. Thus, the 'god of positivity' was born in Lord of Supreme Immortals.

The moment he clicked enter after typing out the name, the screen fades to black once more and again, Li Shenyang was greeted by the motion graphic of the loading screen. He didn't have to wait long though, all thanks to his, as his good friend, Jiang Jiahao said: God-like PC.

Just as Li Shenyang thought that he would start playing after the loading screen ends, he was proven wrong as he was shown a cut-scene instead. This cut-scene tells the lore of the game, the history of Xuhuan, and how the demonic sects were formed. Of course, Li Shenyang does not have the patience for it so he skipped it. If he wanted to know, he can always look at some videos posted online. "There are thousands of players playing, surely there will be one who will upload the footage," was all he said as he watched the screen change to show the view of the village.

Unlike most normal MMORPG, Lord of Supreme Immortals actually used the first-person view. So for those who are not used to it, it would feel weird for them. On the upper corner of the screen, there's a mini-map of the village. Li Shenyang wanted to familiarize himself with the game, but then, he noticed that more and more players have logged in. Before long, this spawn point will surely be filled by a lot of people and navigating through those many avatars would be hard.

So the first thing that Li Shenyang did was to move away and look for a secluded place. Unfortunately, because the game has just launched, a lot of people would stay in the beginner's village and get used to the control before venturing out. So Li Shenyang can only find a less crowded place to get familiar with the game.

First, Li Shenyang opened the character interface.

[Name: YangShen]

[Sect: - ]

[Title: - ]

[Bloodline: Human]

[Spirit Point: 0]

[Cultivation Level: Realm (0), Level (1)]

[Cultivation Rank: Mortal]

[Cultivation Path: - ]

[Basic stats…]

Li Shenyang stared at the character interface. In the game, there are six major bloodlines - Humans, Demons, Dragons, Qilins, Phoenixes and Beasts. Other than human, the rest have different kind of sub-bloodlines, which all have both pros and cons. The demon bloodline was unavailable upon character creation because it needed to be unlocked in the game. The method to unlock it has yet to be announced. Human, on the other hand, is what others would say, average. Li Shenyang understood this when he looked at his basic stats.

"All of them are only ten points…" Li Shenyang murmured softly. "But human growth is the most stable amongst the rest so they can be very versatile. Not to mention, they can join any sect they want."

Then, Li Shenyang's eyes went back to his spirit point and cultivation level. He assumed that Spirit point is this game's equivalent to experience point. But he doesn't understand the cultivation level. Hovering his cursor over it, a pop-up box appeared.

[Notice: Cultivation Level are divided into Realms and Levels. Each realm has nine levels and only after reaching a certain realm will you be able to break through to the next rank. After breaking through the next rank, the realm will reset to 0]

"…" Li Shenyang was now speechless. A normal MMORPG usually just use levels and most of the time, it goes from level 1 to level 100. Even that was already grindy. If Li Shenyang did not remember it wrongly, there are 9 ranks of cultivation but based on the description of the cultivation level, just going from one rank to another might need the character to power up until they reach ten or even more realms. And then, after breaking through, it will reset to zero. "This game… don't tell me it's actually a heavy pay-to-win game, ah!!"