Registration

Josh your average boy with an ordinary family background, is a typical college student you could see everywhere in almost any country.

However, what sets him apart from the norm was that he has another identity—a VR game streamer.

Since virtual reality games have became rather popular worldwide around two years ago, Josh also followed the legion of streamers who joined the VR bandwagon and began live streaming his experience as well.

Coupled with his verbal eloquence and good sense of humor, this simple hobby of his has earned him quite a decent bit of income.

However, unlike many single-player game streamers, he instead specializes in critiquing various VRMMO-RPG games. In Josh own words, although there ar exciting virtual games that are constantly being released, so far there still hasn't been a single game yet that can truly amazes him and makes him want to keep on playing.

He also has a rather infamous nickname in the VR fandom, "The Nitpicking Streamer" whom specializes in pointing out the flaws of various VR games.

In fact, this is quite normal.

Although virtual neural networks have fully been developed in recent years, and Immersion pods have grown way cheaper thus becoming more affordable to the general populace, the vast majority of virtual engines on the market still have a relatively poor performance and often encounter various bugs during gameplay.

Josh rose to fame by being able to win the audience's laughters by finding these sorts of bugs in every games that he played.

Sitting in front of the computer and making himself a cup of instant coffee, Josh opened a well-known streaming site.

"The new episode of 'Abunda Reviews' needs to find a fresh target soon," he muttered, looking around the site in a rather bored expression.

He then finally sighed after scrolling down for almost an hour with no interesting results.

Lately, the quality of various newly released games has been too poor. It's gotten so bad that he doesn't even want to do any reviews on them.

This is also because VR has shown many people its possible business opportunities, and as with all new emerging technologies, all kinds of developers have rushed in to create half-baked games just to capitalize on the hype. Heck, some devs are even just flat out scammers and are merely there to trick people into giving away some personal information.

Furthermore, any game company needs to invest alot of capital and manpower to produce good quality products, and many VR companies doesn't have those capabilities hence the quality of many game releases are lacking to say the least.

Josh is somewhat of a famous streamer and he has a reputation that doesn't look at any low-rated trash games. He only has eyes for those big-budget- A+ games that are produced by well-known game companies.

After all, it's more satisfying to find bugs in these high-profile games!

"I haven't uploaded anything in a week, let's see if there are any new titles on other platforms."

Humming a simple tune, Josh opened the virtual game recommendation on an e-commerce gaming platform.

His gaze skimmed over the ads, but didn't pause for a moment.

"Racing? Hmm…it's alright I guess, but there are already many good titles in that category…plus I already did this genre in my previous let's play series. I want to try something else this time…"

"Another fantasy game? Hasn't this theme been overused already? Tsk tsk, another cheap cashgrab game with lame graphics…"

"Otome raising sim? Hehehe…this is great…good…very nice...big—no, I don't want to get banned yet."

He muttered to himself as he browsed through the various games.

"Hmm?"

Suddenly, his movement paused, and the mouse stopped on a particular .

"'…Cultivation Online?"

It was an unremarkable with a stereotypical art cover featuring a mansion in the mountains.

Although the mansion on the cover was pretty, amongst the vast array of virtual game's, this art cover could only be considered passable at best.

After all, the cover is the face of the game, and no game developer wouldn't make a good-looking cover for their games. Furthermore there are far too many cases wherein the cover doesn't actually match the gameplay itself…

Josh was so used and numb to these eyecandy art cover, but what caught his attention this time was not it, but rather the visit's click-through rate of this game .

"Horseshit, F-Five hundred thousand visitors. This was only released only a few hours ago, did some big corpo bought an army of paid online trolls to brigade this game?"

This made Josh curious and as curiosity arises, it can no longer be suppressed.

Josh took another sip of coffee and doubtfully clicked on the ad.

Like many ads, this game had only one promotional video and a pre-order link for the game. What surprised Josh however was that the number of comments below had exceeded 10,000+.

This is rare especially on virtual gaming category!

He didn't directly click on the promotional video to let it play, but rather scanned the comment section down first.

[I_Am_Batman][It's the 23rd century, and you still have such a rustic logo background, you still have the nerve to say it is a virtual online game? ]

[Nika_Gear_5]-[But this CG is well shot, and the rendering is also of high standard. Is it a wolf under the sheep clothing? ]

[Le_on]-[Bye, I'd better go back to my "Otome game is for mobs" to kill monsters. ]

[Elgin]-[Haha, virtual reality online games for cultivating immortals are all over the place now, but if they are really 100% realistic, it is worth a try. ]

[Joy-Ride]-[The brother above has a point, but the most realistic virtual online games are only 50% realistic at present. This game is probably just a gimmick. ]

[Eureka]-[Only fools will be fooled. Don't download it. Let's watch the joke together! ]

[+1]

[+1]

Josh raised his eyebrows.

This genre has already declined in popularity in recent years right? It's considered an obscure classic genre although he also heard that it still quite popular in some other countries particularly in the east…

His interest in the game was immediately reduced by half upon finding this fact, but alas he was really bored at the moment, thus he continued to look on.

Thinking about the high click-through rate of 500,000, he decided to watch the promotional video before leaving.

"I'm just gonna watch the trailer"

He lightly clicked the play button, and the screen entered the interface of the promotional video…

As the video played, the computer screen suddenly went dark.

Josh took a sip of coffee and began to casually watch as he reclined back to his chair.

Accompanied by the sound of the water, the screen slowly brightened once more.

The first thing that caught his eye was the mansion…

The camera gradually zoomed back from the mansion, and a series of magnificent landscapes appeared before Josh eyes. Little animals wandered through the lush green forest, whilst some are scraping for food.

Then the scene change were a man who raised his hand and said, "Are you tired of your monotone life? Do you want to experience some thrill? Then come and join me here in this world! I will train you to be one of the strongest "

"That was... lame" Josh couldn't help cringe.

Well regardless of the game itself, the opening sequence is passable.

Suddenly, the screen changed, rows of stylistic and artistically striking large characters appeared on the screen:

"Otherworldly plot and designs that allows players to enjoy the game world!"

"Intelligent AI brings you an unprecedented gaming experience!"

"Create the most realistic, immersive, and highly customizable epic immortal world!"

"On June 1st, the virtual reality MMORPG 'Cultivation Online' will officially start its non-deleting closed beta phase! Everyone are welcome to sign up!"

"The Sect awaits for you disciples!"

The promotional video then ends there.

Josh watched it with a dazed expression and muttered "Why does the last text scream desperation"

Sigh~

"Fine then, I will see what kind of game you are."

Casually, he clicked on the registration link for the game.

The webpage changed again and the screen jumped to the official website of "Cultivation Online".

The official website was very rough, like it was created by an amateur web developer, which made Josh seriously doubt as to whether the company that made the motion graphics of the promotional video the same one that designed this site.

Although it was bad, the website still had everything you would expect to have, including a forum, message boards, and information section.

Josh scanned those briefly and clicked on the registration button on the homepage.

The screen flashed and jumped to the registration page.

[Welcome! Sign up for the chance of obtaining invitation for Cultivation Online closed-beta test launch on June 01.]

[For your gaming experience, please fill in your identity information and related materials. Thank you for your cooperation…]

After looking at the registration requirements, Josh was not surprised.

Virtual reality games are deemed highly addictive, so the government imposed regulations which were enacted about a year ago requiring personal verification of anyone wanting to partake in such games.

He filled out his information smoothly and clicked on the register button.

[Registration successful! You are the 94th player to sign up for Cultivation Online. Thank you for your participation!]

Seeing this number, Josh mouth opened abruptly.

"So small..."

After marveling for a moment, he then continued scrolling down the information section.

[The first batch of closed beta testers will have 50 available spots, and we will randomly select applicants within two days. Please keep an eye on your email and messages for the invitation.]

[Thank you for your understanding and support!]