The Floating Capital City of Tokyo
Wings of Darkness Online (オンライン闇の翼 , Yami no Tsubasa Onrain) is one of the many VRMMORPG's that were created after the sudden appearance of The Seed web application on the Net. Developped by the gaming company Icarus with Otonashi Blake at its lead, the game takes place in the 30th century, on the remains of Post-Old War Earth. Published for the AmuSphere and soon-to-be AmuSphere 2, this game was one of the huge virtual hits of Japan.
Background[]
After many years as a massive video game player, Blake, A.K.A. Jyun from the SAO playerbase, decided to create his own game at the age of 18 with the newly born The Seed virtual application that appeared after the sudden first closure of Alfheim Online. Having imagined the idea beforehand and having an A.I. from SAO to help him along the processing, he was already able to produce most of Earth's landscape thanks to a massive modification of the Google Maps application and some animations he had been working on. Presenting his project to his Programming Club at the SAO Survivor School, his classmates were astonished by his work and immediately wanted to collaborate with him, which highly surprised him. With only a small team upgrade, the game's production already got a lot faster as the students slowly got better and better during their school time.
On the 4th of April 2028, Blake had received his masters in Computer Programming, Computer Engineering and Business and was able to buy himself a small building so his team would be able to establish themselves in comfortably, his teachers frankly shocked by the young man's intelligence. Right when they finished their preparations, the closed beta of Wings of Darkness Online was published on The Seed for only 500 players to participate in and the company Icarus was born. A month later, the open beta was open to a limit of 5000 players.
The beta testers were all astonished by the team's work. Not only was the gameplay considered to be amazing and innovative, the lore and storyline were also very impressive, maybe even movie-like. After three months of feedback, the game was finally and officially launched on the 3rd of June 2028, ironically on the same day then GARDen's game, Burst Fire Online. In a matter of hours, most stores were already sold out because of the massive hype around the game from the beta testers, whom published their experience on popular websites such as Youtube, and the game was directly sent in the top selling charts. Thanks to the great sales of the game, the team went on to directly traduct the game in multiple languages so it would be sold outside of Japan as well with North America at its first target.
System[]
World of Darkness Online was created with the help of the free VRMMO game development support package, called The Seed , and utilizes FullDive technology to set players inside a post-apocalyptic world. It is thus part of The Seed Nexus, allowing players from other games that are part of the nexus to convert their avatars in the game into WDO and vice versa, though at the cost of not being able to transfer items, having the avatar's stats adjusted to maintain the relative strength between the two games and the player not being able to use the same avatar in the previous game unless it is converted back again.
Virtual Reality Experience[]
The WDO system is capable of rendering the entire environment with incredible realism. By stimulating nerves in the brain, it is possible to taste food, feel the wind and weather, move one's body, and live in WDO as if it were an alternate reality.
Likewise to ALO, no pain is actually felt in any situation due to a feature called Pain Absorber. As a result, gamers can undergo severe injuries and still only feel a tingling sensation. Though certain stimulation, such as explosions or shots directed toward the head, can result in negative feedback, like headaches and dizziness that last for several hours. Since the game is rated for a Teen audience, there is no visible blood; in its place are orange virtual gashes that are seen in the place of damage.
While playing the game, gamers still feel fatigue and hunger (even if their real bodies are not hungry), yet they can also eat in-game to dispel hunger in the real world, which has developed into a form of dieting for some people as a result.
Death or deletion in the game is visualized by fragmentation into thousands of polygon shards. All monsters and items go through such a process.
Setting[]
The game is set on a Post-Apocalyptic Earth many years after a catastrophic event called the Old War, which destroyed the human Universal Directional System that was letting them navigate around the stars, abandoned many cosmic settlers to their doom on the far-away terraphormed planets of the Solar System and completely ravaged the human homeland, Earth. The Council, a group of four great masterminds, have been able to re-establish the great cities of the planet known as Capitals and separate them from the ground after welcoming most of the Old War's survivors.
Gameplay[]
Equipment[]
Trivia[]
-Wings of Darkness Online was once planned to be bought by many publishers after it was launched such as Sega, Capcom and Namco Bandai, but all of their requests were refused by Blake, him not wanting corporations to start corrupting The Seed with their procedures.
-The ExoSuit system and the weapon generator was entirely programmed by Violet.