Dungeon Core Online

Chapter 17

"Was something supposed to happen?" The timer had gone off, the message had disappeared, but to James' eye, there were no adventurers. Where were they?

"Something did happen." Rue had a grin on her face, as she flew higher into the air. "Come with me." James floated after her, heading higher into the sky. As he did, he was able to take in more of the terrain around the entrance to his dungeon. He had to admit, he liked the location. The forest it was near was massive, and the mountain range seemed to be exceptionally large and treacherous, the perfect place for a constantly growing dungeon.

"What are we-" James stopped speaking as Rue stopped, the pixie pointing in the distant. As James's mouth would have dropped open if he had one. At the very edge of his vision, it appeared the forest ended into an actual sea. Atop the sparkling waves, James could see a fleet of massive ships closing in, fast.

"Those ships are going to be transporting the adventurer's to this land." The pixie spun in a circle, laughing. "The developers had made it to where every character, every race, has to come from a different specific island, to the main continent, where you exist."

"So, for the past 24 hours, they have been on ships, heading towards us?" James hated to imagine being stuck on a ship for 24 hours, but had to admit, that would be a crafty way for developers to make use of the 24 hour countdown.

"Eh, more like for the past eight hours." Rue was practically buzzing with excitement, making her rather forthcoming with information."

"For the first 16 hours, adventurers would go through character creation, choosing their race, selecting their features, and choosing their class.Once they finalized their character, they would be loaded onto the island that existed for their race. During that time, they would interact with NPCs, learn about the lore of not only their race, but also the world. They would learn of the rumors of a mysterious dungeon, promising treasure, adventure, and fame on the lost continent. They would then spend time preparing themselves, practicing with their class, learning to use the skills and abilities they received at level one.

"And then at the eight hour mark, they all loaded onto ships?" He tried to wrap his head around this fact. Just how many players were loaded into this instance? He knew that the instances were limited to cities, but he couldn't fathom that, especially understanding now that Dungeon Cores were players too. Sure, his town was one of the smaller ones, with a population of only 20,000, but there were others that had millions of people in them. Were all of those players going to all compete for a single dungeon?

"Hey Rue?" He needed to know.

"Yes Glyax?" She was glancing at him, and he could tell from her expression she was curious what he was going to ask. Especially as they watched an ever increasing number of ships appearing on the horizon, all moving towards the continent.

"How many players are in an instance?" Maybe the developers hadn't really meant cities?

"Hmmm, that really depends on the area. As you know, Dungeon Core Online is a massively multiplayer online game encompassing a single city area." Yeah, I read the news about it.

"Yes, but-"

"But, as you know, each dungeon core is actually a player. Therefore, it would be difficult, in many of the larger cities, to expect a single player to manage that type of a flow of characters."

"So-" James was interested to hear what the developers did to manage that.

"So, the developers came up with a unique solution to this problem." She paused and shot him a smile. The pixie knew he wanted this knowledge, and she was purposefully dragging it out.

"What did they do?"

"They decided each instance of DCO would have up to a maximum of 20,000 players, with one player acting as the dungeon core for those people." So given James's city had right around 20,000 people, he was the sole dungeon core for his city.

"And for the larger cities?"

"For those, they sectioned the cities off into grids of 20,000, and assigned a single core to each of those. The developers wanted to wait until the game launched, to announce this change, in order to prevent the possibility that players would pull out of purchasing the game. It was also to try and prevent players from attempting to escape from their 20,000 grid grouping. DCO is about creating cooperation in a community." For a brief moment, as Rue finished her explanation, James remembered the man's comment before he signed his NDA. The comment about this being a massive social experiment by the government.

"Alright, so how many players have logged into DCO for my instance?" His city had 20,000 people, however it was extremely unlikely every single person had logged in to play DCO.

Rue waved her hand, pulling up a screen James hadn't seen before. Game Population.

"What the-" James glanced from the screen, to the approaching ships. According to the screen, those ships held over 10,000 players. How was he supposed to entertain that many players?

"Don't worry about it Glyax." Rue waved her hand and the screen disappeared. James was curious just how many different screens his pixie could pull up. What other information did she have?

"There are 10,000 players heading towards me, how am I not supposed to worry?"

"Well, for a few reason." She raised her hand, with three fingers up. "First, not all of those adventurers are going to be doing dungeon dives. The developers predicted that." She lowered a finger, and James had to admit, that reasoning made sense. He knew a lot of players would choose to build up a town, and establish their own businesses within the town, while other players took on the challenge of diving into the dungeon. "Two," Rue dropped a second finger, leaving just her middle finger up. Real mature. "Developers have put methods in place to prevent a dungeon from being overrun at a single time." James made a mental note to ask about those methods. "And three," her middle finger dropped. "I am sure more players will log in through the next few weeks, as your game progresses and grows, and they begin hearing about the wonders of taking part in DCO."

"That last point didn't help me not worry." James groaned as Rue started to laugh. The pixie summoned a chair and sat down, eyes fixed in the distance. The ships had begun to slow, and James could make out a mixture of forms riding on smaller ships toward the shore, along with players seemingly jumping into the ocean and swimming towards shore. He could imagine the excitement in the air, as the players swarmed towards the continent, towards him. It was only a matter of time now, before the first set of adventurers would set foot in his dungeon.

"Are you ready for this Glyax?" Rue had a pair of binoculars up to her eyes. When had she summoned those? And why hadn't she given him any? "Judging by the players' progress, I would say you have about an hour, maybe two, before the first players find your entrance."

James glanced from his dungeon, to his pixie, to the forms in the distance disappearing into the forest. Who would be the first to discover his dungeon? How would their first dive go? So many questions began rushing through his mind, but one thing was certain. "I'm ready."