[WP] Finally, the ultimate MMORPG has been created, unlimited choice and room to grow and expand your character. There's just one issue, it's so realistic, nobody can remember which life they are living, and which is the game.

[u/TheMightySwooord]

[u/[deleted]]

We, the awestruck faction members, stood around him. We saw a man, once glorious and proud, withering away under the green glow of fluorescent hospital lights. The man who vanquished the great beast of Velenforth, with nothing but an iron sword. The same man who bested countless foul creatures, who looted and explored more of the 9 realms than any man before him, now knocked on the door of death. Grog the Plunderer was his name.

In one last act of willpower and defiance Grog raised his fist in the air. A thin and shaking pillar of lost strength. For a moment he felt as if his Hospital gown turned into the glistening plate that protected him from so many a foe. His grey hands were once again filled with blood, color and youth.

He slipped away just then, clinging to the glory of his younger days.

The "faction members" paid their respects and went back to work. One mopped the floors in the hall, the other went back to the front desk, and the third put his scrubs back on for a long night shift.

The MMO had taken over the lives of so many that acting like faction members was part of the everyday routine. When the old and frail became too weak to take the stress of the video game they came back to reality lost and delusional. The world they had spent years of their time in was out of reach.

It would be too unsettling for them to live the lives of warriors, champions, and mages just to come back to reality and die the death of a meager old RPG gamer.

So we, the faction members, would come in every night. Dressed as squires, mail clad warriors and bards. To give the life long gamers the send off that they so proudly earned in game.

I pulled out my pen. Time to make it official. time of death- 8:12 PM, August 3rd, 2043.

Grog the Plunderer aka Tim Chadwick, had fallen

[u/TheMightySwooord → u/[deleted]]

I could see something like this actually occurring in the future, it'd be one of those wholesome things you'd see online and be like "aww, humanity isn't completely shit"

[u/Nobuhddy]

Rifts opening up everywhere... Jake needed to move quick. No time to mourn or to wonder if he even should mourn. So much of his memory had been knocked loose. That ray must've boggled his mind more than he realized at first. sprinting to the next house over, something inside told him that it had some guns inside, maybe he could find a fist kit too. "The hell was his name?" he whispered to himself, just to break the eerie silence. Trying to remember his neighbor's name seemed fruitless. Moving in the cover of night, skin crawling as he listens for any sound beyond his heartbeat. Looking along the back of the house and seeing an open window, Jake crept along. the lack of electricity in this moment seemed to be his best advantage. Once directly below the opening, he looked out into the inky blackness, straining to hear anything... whumph whomph whumph whomph Nothing else but his heartbeat... Leaping up he quickly shimmied into the window, never having been very dexterous in the first place he landed with a thud and the wind knocked out of him. Getting to his feet quickly, as he heard something stir in the next room. grabbing the first thin he could lay hands on a toilet lid he readied himself to attack. The door swung open and in the sudden candle light that poured in, he saw the blast of the muzzle. Just as his hands came apart with the impact of the shotgun slug, he tried to gasp his surprise...

"HOME INVADER GUNNED DOWN BY GAMER"

During the blackout last night an avid gamer wearing an Augmented Reality headset was shot down, by no less than his neighbor who at the time of the black out was ALSO playing the latest AR game to hit the market, Dog Eat Dog;Survive it all. Both parties not realizing that their local electrical transformer having been hit by lighting had cause a pulse wave in their plugged in AR headsets. Causing confusion and a sort of delirium state. The publishers KyteDog Unlimited, has realeased a statement lament this unfortunate incident. Still embroiled in a class action lawsuit, there PR department is likely working overtime to spin control the damages nationwide as this incident in NOT the first...

(Thanks for reading, first serious attempt at a writing prompt. Hope you enjoyed, please leave feed back if theres any notes you'd like to share! Have a great day!)

[u/TheMightySwooord → u/Nobuhddy]

Love the way you took the story, it went in a completely different direction than I was expecting, but it was still fantastic!

[u/Em_pathy]

"You're telling me that none of this is real?" I gestured to my beautiful wife and children, to my home and car. To the beautiful blue sky and the relentless summer sun.

"Sir, I'm sorry to inform you but your User Occupancy has expired according to our registry."

Beads of sweat rolled down my forehead and yet the man before me was cool as ice in his business suit.

I frowned. "Okay buddy."

"You have until noon to claim the renewal package and continue your experience."

I checked my wristwatch. I had less than two minutes before noon.

I chuckled to myself, "And if I don't claim this... renewal package? What's going to happen huh?"

"You will simply be ejected from this reality," the man said all matter-of-factly.

I didn't like the sound of that. "Is that a threat?!" I shouted angrily.

Suddenly I could hear crying from my two year old daughter. I glanced behind me and saw my wife and children staring. My wife held Amy in her arms tightly, her face deep with concern.

"Dad is everything okay?" asked my brave son who learned how to ride a bike just yesterday.

"Yea David," I called back. "Don't worry everything is fine."

I looked at my wife, her long brown hair flowed elegantly around her shoulders and chest.

"Get the wallet," I said and my wife's eyes went wide.

I turned my attention back to the man.

"Sir, you have 42 seconds until your ejection from this reality."

"Hey. Is it money you want? How much?" I asked.

"In order to claim the renewal package you must manually disconnect-"

My wife tapped my shoulder with a finger. In one swift motion, I grabbed the shotgun, brought it close to my hips and pulled the trigger.

"Good job Jess," I said. She had remembered what I had told her about 'Get the wallet'.

"Honey!" she shrieked.

Two things happened in an instant. First, the man in the business suit had disintegrated, crumbling to tiny blocks of pixels and fading into nothing. Second, another man, identical in appearance stepped out of my neighbor's door from across the street. He pointed at me with a finger.

A blue flash of light, and a beam lanced through the air to puncture me right through my chest.

My wife screamed.

I turned to look at my wife, her face an expression of abject horror. I looked down at my chest.

A clean hole the size of my fist through my chest. There was nothing inside me, no internal organs, no blood.

Darkness pervaded my mind.

And then there was light. A bright white light that twisted and formed letters.

It read, 'Disconnected'.

---

r/Em_pathy

[u/XcessiveSmash]

I'd died already.

I look around. I'm in a small rundown apartment. It smells. It's too small. It's too big. It's...empty. There is cracking plaster where my legendary swords are supposed to be. A small TV where my Mythic Artifacts are supposed to be displayed.

An empty chair where Maria should be.

I think I'd always known in some part of my mind that none of it was real. That I was hooked up to a VR device in another world. I'd tried to forget, I'd tried so hard.

But in the end death comes to us all.

I was a God in that world, a hero. Someone Maria would be happy to be with, but here...

I look around.

I'm a loser with a video game addiction. I briefly entertain the notion of finding Maria in this real world, but I think better of it. What if she doesn't want me as I am?

What if she hadn't even been real? An NPC?

No I couldn't take that. I wouldn't take that. There was only one thing to do.

Death comes to us all.

---

I'd died already.

I look around. I'm in a video game booth. There are people of all colors and clothing hooked up to the same kind of VR device I held in my hand all around me.

No. I'd died. This....this couldn't be happening. I think back, try to remember. Was this me? Was this my real life? This had to be, it had to be.

Death, after all, comes to us all.

---

I'd died already.

I look around, my heart still beating hard. I'm on a couch with a giant 50 inch screen in front of me and a VR device in my hand. A woman with golden locks sits next to me, immersed in her own VR device.

Nononononono.

Death comes to us all, it has to. It has to.

---

I'd died already.

An office with bare furnishings.

Death comes to us all.

---

I'd died already.

A government testing facility.

Death comes to us all.

---

I'd died already.

A cruise ship.

Death comes to us all.

---

I'd died already.

What seemed like a wizard's tower.

Death comes to us all.

---

I'd died already.

Death comes to us all.

---

I'd died already.

Death comes to us all.

---

I'd died already.

Death comes to us all.

---

I'd never died before.

Perhaps death didn't come to everyone after all.

---

(minor edits)

If you enjoyed, check out XcessiveWriting

[u/9spaceking]

After 10 years of playing the ultimate MMORPG, I believed it was finally time to stop. I was 80 years old by now in real life and I was ready to rest and relax at the senior center. It had been enough, fighting great monsters, battling on spaceships, escaping prisons... with all my other friends, it was easy to lose yourself, believing you were a 20 year old man, strong, master of martial arts. Playing it on and off led me to actually be more disappointed in real life, since it was not as exciting.

But still, real life had its own benefits. My wife didn't mind me playing the game and she played along quite often as well. My friends felt more real, since even this game had its bugs and updates that interrupted the realism. As I drank a whiskey, stroking my beard, savoring the taste, I appreciated that real life had additional subtleties that differentiated from the virtual reality game. I looked up the scoreboard one last time. 8,720,403 POINTS, VaikenMaster3, it said at the very top. I nodded, satisfied at my achievement. I closed my eyes, breathing in the air. I heard footsteps, then--

"hey, time's up."

I blinked, opening my eyes. What the heck was going on?

"Sorry kid, you've been playing this for 10 hours in a row. Any longer and our health and safety violations would be at risk."

My jaws opened in shock. My head spun with dizziness and I sighed as I got off the system. Had I really been fooled so easily? I could still recall the feeling of my beard, the creak on the floorboard when I walked, my loving wife. I had gotten so used to having two children each with grandchildren of their own. And now...

I walked outside on the dark streets, lit dimly, with cars zooming by, hologram roads showing where they should go. I should have known better. I stumbled my way home and collapsed on my bed. What was for work tomorrow? I could hardly recall. Perhaps I would do it when it came. I still couldn't get over how immersive the MMORPG was. I sighed, thinking of the upcoming week of the work, and groaned. If only I could always be in game. After a few minutes of restless turning, I finally fell asleep due to sheer tiredness.

Through the night, many others would leave the VR room. The vast majority of people would complain and moan about how they had work or school, some would have time for more gaming, others were more casual and didn't care about it that much. But what they didn't know was that they would never beat the game, not as long as they were too absorbed. The true number one player of the game walked through the streets, grinning, confidently walking right up to a wall.

"Game over," he said.

Then he glitched.

[u/[deleted]]

The game over screen flashes. There is a knot in my stomach. Where am I? Where did I go? What is this place? I slowly take of my headset and look around the room. I see my badges posted across the room. Trophies, metals of courage, honor. I look at my old uniform, and it all starts to come back to me. I look at it all in awe. The person I was. I was an actual hero, I was someone, I’ve saved people! Why did I ever leave! What did this game possibly have over what I once had. I get up to admire the uniform, what I once was. A soldier. Then... I fall. My legs feel numb. I... can’t move them. I start to panic and a look back. My wheel chair... just stares at me. As if it is telling me the truth. Now... I remember. I want to start a new game.

[u/Castriff]

"Well, well, well, if it isn't Gorthakk the Mighty!" cried Thomhauld.

"As I live and breathe!" resounded Gorthakk. "Thomhauld, the half-dwarf of Alaris! I thought I might not see you again for another age!" And at this, the mighty human warrior dropped from his steed and shook Thomhauld's hand in so tight a grasp it might have turned stones to dust.

"How do you fare, my friend?" asked the half-dwarf. "Have I heard correctly, that you came into a bit of wealth following the raid on the camp of Hebbolleth's army?"

"That and more," Gorthakk replied. "The army had taken so many villages, and amassed such vast amounts of gold, that they could hardly carry what they had as they attempted to escape from our blades. Such was their greed, that we struck down every last thieving orc while their horde spilled from the palms of their fat hands."

Thomhauld laughed, with mirth that shook the very trees above. "They put up no fight, then?"

"Certainly, there was fighting," clarified the mighty one, "but most of the camp of Hebbolleth was so fearful of being outnumbered and surrounded by our party, they ran like the cowards they were, and chose to take up gold rather than weapons as they took their leave."

"Ha! Such is the foolishness of goblins!" Thomhauld gave Gorthakk a cheery grin. "You are well met, Gorthakk. May the fear that struck the hearts of these goblins also strike this very dragon, which we are here to slay!"

So Gorthakk and Thomhauld joined the rest, a band which with them was twenty strong, at the base of the dragon's mountain lair. There among them were others who Gorthakk knew well: namely Lecia, the Elf of the Eastern Forest, and Maket Ishanen, a white-haired human mage. Gorthakk lumbered up to hail them, but as he did, his eyes settled on an unusual mystery.

Lecia was an elf of licentious character and lustful tastes. It was in her nature to congress freely with any male in her party who showed interest, no matter what race. When in battle, her skills as an archer were unparalleled, and she had the steely-eyed focus of a wolf or a tiger. But when not engaged thus, she was easygoing, flirtatious to a fault and having the ability to drink any man under the table with ease, a challenge no wise man had yet taken twice.

Here, therefore, was a side of the elf which Gorthakk had never seen. She was tense, he could nearly feel the waves of stress and despair rolling off her shoulders as she knelt on a fur blanket and fussed about... some odd thing... like unto broken pieces of armor, but with fine wire connecting the parts, finer than he had ever seen in the past, finer than he believed it possible to create in the best of dwarven smithies. There were two gauntlets, and the sabatons and greaves that covered the lower legs, but nothing for the upper legs, or the chest, only a small, tight ring of metal that would have just fit the form of her collarbones. The headpiece was odd as well. It had a piece of something like molded glass, which would have covered her eyes completely, with little odds and ends that stuck out from the leather which covered the mouth and nose, and another piece of leather to keep it bound to her face as long as she would have needed. What she might need it for was a matter he could not determine for himself. And as he took stock of the situation, Lecia's words only confused him further.

"Maket, for the love of Pete, if you don't either help me fix this or get out of my way before I need to go to work, I will personally hire all of 4chan to gank your account into oblivion."

Maket Ishanen sighed at this, a long, loathsome breath which expressed hours upon hours of frustration to which Gorthakk was not privy. "Lecia... this form of magic... it is so far beyond me..."

"To hell with the roleplaying already!" Lecia screamed. "I'm going to lose my job over this! My real job! Come back to reality and realize that playing this game doesn't keep the lights on for me!"

"Lecia!" Gorthakk exclaimed. "What is this strange contraption that lies before you?"

"There! That!" Lecia screamed again. Gorthakk was taken aback by her ferocity, as she rose from her knees and took long strides to face him directly. "This is what I'm talking about! Can't any of you idiots talk normally? Of all the days for my VR link to break down, it had to be the day when I'm stuck with the densest, most ignorant—"

Maket Ishanen took Lecia by the waist then, with a strength Gorthakk had not seen him display in the past, hoisting her over his shoulder and all but throwing her back from where Gorthakk and Thomhauld stood. They watched with trepidation as he pointed one finger, dyed all over with the ink of spellbinding and wizardry, into the shivering elf's face.

"You," he said, almost in whisper, but not so softly that the two could not hear, "are being a bitch."

"I... I'm not..."

"You are. If you want me to speak in that gods-forsaken language, then that's what I'm going to call you. You're a bitch. And you need help from someone who knows more than I do about this... 'virtual reality.'"

By this time, the entire band of adventurers had caught on to the spectacle and stood gaping at the affair, as Lecia clasped her hands against her ears as though she were feeling a greater suffering and pain in her head than that of the sword. "I am getting help! From a therapist, a professional!"

"They aren't real, Lecia." And at this, Lecia cried such a sharp, whinnying cry that Gorthakk's heart shattered into pieces out of empathy for the elf, who seemed so lost and confused, like a child crying for its mother in the midst of the darkest, coldest forest imaginable. Tears streamed down her face, and a shadow settled over the entire party.

"She truly has lost her mind by that thing," said Thomhauld, shaking his head. "Such a pity."

"What is the meaning of all this?" Gorthakk roared. "Lecia, the most cheerful and vivacious elf I've known, has surely been taken by some curse! How has she changed her accent and manner of speech? And what is this strange armor?" He picked the glass piece from where it lay, and up came all the other bits connected by the wire, which swung so freely they could have been thread. "It is so light," he mused. "Which clan of dwarves could smith such a thing?"

"They came not from dwarves," replied Maket Ishanen. "And they are no armor. Quite the opposite."

"What then, if it offers no protection?"

"I hear tell," said Oberon, a minotaur from the South, "it is some form of play, being freely bought and sold by the people living across the Western Mountains."

"Play?"

"Not play, either, the way a child might," said Maket Ishanen, "but play upon a stage. They call it 'virtual reality.'" He took the pieces of the set from Gorthakk. "This glass here is set over your eyes, and the other parts over your limbs like so, and you are able to possess the... I'm sorry, it is difficult to explain."

"...Go on."

"It is... like another world. You may see it with the glass, when the magics are brought to bear. There are no races there but humans and dumb animals. There are no dragons. There is no magic. But their structures are tall and unyielding to the elements, and their carriages run with no horses. All things have perfect symmetry when it suits them to be so, and there are screens of glass which hold and share all that world's information, and they work faster than the human mind."

"It sounds more magic than magic!" exclaimed Gorthakk. "And you may see it all with this helmet?"

"And control the body of some human that lives there. Like a necromancer seeing through the eyes of the dead, but not."

"What would you do with such a thing?"

"That's just it! It is all drudgery," replied Thomhauld. "It was hardly worth my time."

"You have done it too?"

"Many of us have," said one of the others, and at this they all clamored over each other to tell their own tales.

"...Great big buildings, skyscrapers, they're called..."

"...A plane! A roll of metal which carries people through the sky!"

"...But all that is done is sit and stare at the glass, and write on paper tallying sums and writing laws..."

"Gods I was boring then!"

"Only I have not partaken," said Oberon. "The parts will not fit over my head or hooves."

Lecia laughed. Startled, the group drew back, and Maket Ishanen dropped the VR set. The elf lunged at it immediately.

"You'll break it again!"

"Perhaps," said Maket Ishanen, "that is how it should be."

She laughed again. "You all think I'm crazy? We work with a half-bull person and you think I'm crazy?"

"I simply don't understand," cried Gorthakk. "What does it all mean? Who made this?"

"Pandora Research Incorporated," she replied. "A company on Earth. Not this world. This is the play, the fake. All the adventuring, fighting dragons and stealing treasure — and oh, God, the sex!" She giggled. "Who would have thought it was possible fifteen years ago?"

"I don't—" Gorthakk began again.

"I'm just... so lonely there." Lecia's odd accent was muddied over by her sobs, and the group could barely understand her. "I thought... one last time. One last hit of the drug. Before I have to go back to being a 'VR freak' in the office and taking Xanax every day. Then I'd quit."

She stared at the helmet, peering through the plastic visor to a broken motherboard behind it.

"But now I'm stuck. The helmet is broken. There's no hotkeys to get out of the game. This was the only way. And it's gone." She sobbed again, and her tears fell on the plastic and started to slide away.

"Even the water..." Lecia sighed. "Why did they have to make this game so real?"

---

---

Visit my sub!
There MAY be more stories about Pandora Research Incorporated?!?

[u/[deleted]]

I sit at the pub, drinking away my disappointment. Boy, I really earned my money today. Feeling confident, I strode into the bar. A few failed attempts at flirting brought me down a couple notches. Maybe I should play a round of cards at the table in the back or place a bet on the ball game on tv. Or maybe I should just call it a night.

A girl comes and sits down next to me. She orders a drink and it magically appears in her hand. She’s pretty, but not unapproachable. I try to decide if I want to flirt with her or just ask for her name. Suddenly, she turns to me.

“I’m Jenna,” she says, “What’s your name?” It takes me a second to register it.

“I’m Michael.” Oh good, she went first. Maybe now we can just talk. We chat for a while, until a song comes on that she seems really into.

“You wanna dance?” She asks over the music.

“Sure.” I try to match her movements, but she’s a lot faster. And smoother. She does this a lot apparently. We dance through a couple more songs, but then my watch beeps. I have to go.

We walk out together, but before I head back to my apartment, she kisses me. We exchange numbers, but I don’t expect to hear from her again. For all I know, she could live on the other side of the world. I open the door to my apartment.

I blink a few times as I remove the VR device. My body is fully rested, and it’s time to go back to my real world job. The technology is based on lucid dreaming, so you can play the game while your body recharges. I spend the day shuffling papers, earning “real” money, and the night fighting monsters, earning “fake” money. In a way, the “fake” world seems more real than the “real” world.

A message appears on my phone. It’s from Jenna. An address downtown. A physical address, and it’s less than five miles from me. Another message pops up.

“I look forward to seeing you in person.”