Eldara VR
‘Eldara: Realm of Dragons - The new fantasy virtual reality MMORPG is out NOW! Experience cutting edge graphics and technology as you scan yourself into the game, the character you play as in this epic world… is YOU!’
It was a perfect sunny morning in the Florida suburbs, bright blue skies and not a cloud in sight.
“Come on, come onnnn, where is it!?” Danny said aloud, he’d been pacing back and forth in his living room for the past 2 hours.
“Where’s what?” Colby questioned, watching his older brother walk around the spacious room.
“My Eldara VR! It was supposed to be here an hour ago! Amazon tracking lied to me…” The 14 year old, older brother snapped back to the sibling who was sitting on the couch.
“Well maybe-” Before Colby could finish his sentence he was interrupted.
*KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK*
“IT’S HERE!!” Danny ran as fast as he could to the front door, his bare feet slapping off the floor as he did.
Colby slumped back into the couch and returned to his cartoons.
The large wooden door swung open, the 30 something year old delivery driver standing on the other side with an unimpressed look on his face, a stark contrast to the glee filled boy opposite.
“Package for…” The delivery guy looked down at the label “...Daniel?”.
“YUP That’s me… though everyone calls me Danny…” The teen said with enthusiasm, he was shaking as he looked at the large cardboard box on the ground near the delivery guy.
“Riiiight….Uh Sign here..and here…. Okay enjoy your-” His words cut off as the boy grabbed the box and slammed the door shut in his face. “Kids these days…” He shook his head and walked back to his van.
Danny carried the large box up to his bedroom, almost tripping on the staircase as it blocked his vision.
On the side of the box was a printed logo- ‘ELDARA by Microsoft’
Placing it down of the floor he rapped the brown tape from the top and opened the cardboard flaps, revealing a layer of white packing peanuts, wiping them aside with his arm, and spilling them all onto the floor, he was met with a sleek matte black box.
Using both hands to pull it out, he kicked the empty larger box aside and placed the new box onto his bed. It was about the size of a rifle case.
The Xbox Logo featured in the corner, the bulk of the box’s face was taken up by the logo for Eldara, and an artwork featuring a Knight, a Rogue and an Elven archer stood side by side facing a large dragon that was breathing fire into the sky.
“So coooool…”
Sliding off the matte cover and opening the latch on the box, he was met with a note.
‘Thank you for purchasing the Eldara: Realm of Dragons Virtual reality kit! In this box you will find everything you need to get you questing in the lands of Eldara!
1x - Microsoft Kinect 3.0
4x - Room sensor camera poles
1x - Xbox Virtual Reality headset
2x - Xbox Virtual Reality Controllers
1x - Copy of Eldara: Realm of Dragons (Digital Code)
1x - Game Grab Bag (Digital Code, Access to multiple other games for the XVR)
1x - Bundle of Cables
We can’t wait to see you in Eldara!’
Danny started to pull each of the components from the case, placing them onto his bed and floor. With some light assembly work, he was able to set up the 4 corner stands, fixing the camera’s to the tip.
Plugging everything into his PC, he was met with a prompt to input his codes into the Xbox store App, doing so he saw Eldara added to his game library, and a few other games from the grab bag code.
Karate simulator, Kaiju Rampage, All star Poker & Blackjack, Modern Life…Just to name a few.
However those others didn’t matter to Danny, he was only interested in the main attraction.
After the game had finished installing to his machine, he placed the white VR headset over his eyes, fixing the back strap to his head. He’d never experienced Virtual Reality gaming before, so he was excited.
The first step was to make sure the device was calibrated with the corner cameras and the main Kinect device.
Danny could see himself as a gray, featureless avatar. Waving his arms around, the character in his headset did the same, he could look down and see his body and hands…It was all so cool. Performing a few basic actions, looking at each of the 4 cameras in turn, then the main Kinect camera, a prompt appeared alongside a loading percentage, ‘Generating Character Model’.
Danny watched as from the feet upwards, the gray avatar started to change into his own body. His bare feet could be seen, his blue shorts, the white t-shirt and finally his head. The face rendered perfectly, even his brown messy hair was very detailed, swaying around with the game physics.
“Wooooahhhh” Danny stepped forward, getting a close look at himself in the game, it was almost lifelike. Opening his mouth and sticking his tongue out wide, he could see the scan had even generated his mouth and teeth perfectly.
‘Confirm character appearance?’ The game asked, with a secondary option to enter a character creator and change your appearance further.
*Click*
Danny clicked the button on his VR controller on the ‘Accept’ option, very happy with his own character.
This loaded him into the main menu of the game, from here he selected a server and began to choose his character race and class. He had multiple options, Human, Orc, Elf, Dwarf, Gnome.
He chose Human, picking the class of Knight.
After a short load screen he was in the game, he was in the world of Eldara, it’s what he’d been waiting for, for months.
Upon spawning in he saw multiple other characters around him, presumably people who’d also bought the game recently too, some of their models looked very real, others had clearly gone through the character creator, sporting ridiculous features and wild hairstyles.
Just as Danny was about to approach one of these people and speak to them, he was startled.
“DANNY!”
“Wha- Huh-!” The teen jumped as he lifted the headset from his eyes, his younger brother stood in the doorway to his room.
“I saiiiid can I play?” Colby asked.
“Play? Bro it’s a 1 player game…” Danny was dismissive, as he went to lower the headset once more, his brother continued.
“B-But there’s other people that run around, aren't there?” He said in a sad tone, he wanted to play the game too after seeing the ads on TV.
“Well yeah, but you need one of these headsets to play man and I think there's a height requirement ANNND this cost me A LOT of money, you know how many paper rounds and car washes I had to do to save up for this?” The older boy was right and he knew it, his smug expression confirmed it as his brother sulked.
“But-”
“Look Short Round, i’ll stream it on Youtube for you okay? Will that shut you up!?” Danny snapped.
“I guess…” The young boy looked down and walked away, slowly shutting the door behind him.
Danny opened his youtube channel and began to livestream the game, initially he only had 1 viewer, his younger brother, as he started his journey in the game.
He pulled the headset back down and returned to the game.
Colby watched on in jealousy as his brother went about completing the first few quests, the full body motion was very impressive, especially to a 10 year old. The idea of talking to real people in a game and seeing their body movements was amazing to someone who was only used to the blocky models from Roblox or Minecraft.
As time passed, he’d constantly watch his older brother progress through the game over the coming days, he was so jealous.
Danny was fast approaching the end game of this MMO, he’d been leveling efficiently and had become quite good at the game. Even amassing more viewers to his live streams, he would regularly get around 200, Colby lost in the shuffle.
Danny had gained a reputation as one of the best PVP players in Eldara, able to take on any other player in the game with ease, and usually acting cocky after beating them.
“Get shit on noob!”, “Lol you got Fucking stomped bro!”, “You should uninstall”, Just a few of the insults he’d commonly hurl at those he’d beat.
There was a particular player he’d run into a lot, an Elven Rogue named ‘Aeven’ in game, his real name was actually James. He looked to be the same age as Danny, possibly a year younger at most based on his character model.
Aeven had never managed to beat Danny in a PvP fight, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t trying. As Danny’s negative reputation grew in the community, he’d taken it upon himself to ‘Stream snipe’ Danny in an attempt to beat him and shut him up.
“I know you’re watching you stream sniping bitch elf, you aren’t gonna beat me” Danny would proclaim to his stream, the chat encouraging his toxic behavior.
Fast forward a few days and Danny was still at it.
“It’ll be fine” He dismissed his younger brother’s warning.
“No listen Danny, They say you shouldn't use your computer when there’s thunderstorms!” Colby tried to warn Danny, the older boy already walking off to his room.
The rain and wind battered against the windows of the house, the palm tree’s outside violently swayed in the stormy conditions.
As Danny entered the game, starting his stream as usual, he loaded into the world and headed straight for the PvP zone, brushing off a child NPC that had a low level quest for him.
The thunder crashed outside, a bright flash of lightning soon followed, striking near Danny’s home, it knocked out the power for just a second.
An electric bolt was sent through the cables in the house, straight into Danny’s VR headset, electrocuting him briefly before the VR headset and controllers dropped to the floor with a loud
*THUD*
His PC had quickly rebooted itself after the surge, the game auto launching and loading.
When Danny opened his eyes again, he realized he was still in the game, but something was different…
He was TINY!
“Oh haha guys, very funny, someone used a shrinking potion on me when I logged out huh?” The boy said to an audience of none.
Quickly he realized the power surge must have knocked his youtube stream offline, he couldn't see the chatlog, in fact, he couldn’t see any of the game’s UI…
“What the-?”
He quickly reached to pull the headset up from his eyes…but there was no headset.
“WHAT THE-?”
He reached his arms out to feel around his room for any object, but he couldn’t feel anything. Just the cool winds of Eldara upon his face.
“No no NO... what the FUCK is happening?”
Danny looked down at his body in the game, it was him, not some gallant knight in shining armor, but his own shirt, shorts and feet.
“I’m IN the game?!??”
He looked around in disbelief, the Game still looked like the computer graphics, but he looked very much like real life.
He reckoned himself to be around an inch tall now.
In the distance he could see other players casually walking around and chatting, all fully unaware of what’s happening to him.
However, What Danny saw next was truly horrifying…
It was a perfect sunny morning in the Florida suburbs, bright blue skies and not a cloud in sight.
“Come on, come onnnn, where is it!?” Danny said aloud, he’d been pacing back and forth in his living room for the past 2 hours.
“Where’s what?” Colby questioned, watching his older brother walk around the spacious room.
“My Eldara VR! It was supposed to be here an hour ago! Amazon tracking lied to me…” The 14 year old, older brother snapped back to the sibling who was sitting on the couch.
“Well maybe-” Before Colby could finish his sentence he was interrupted.
*KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK*
“IT’S HERE!!” Danny ran as fast as he could to the front door, his bare feet slapping off the floor as he did.
Colby slumped back into the couch and returned to his cartoons.
The large wooden door swung open, the 30 something year old delivery driver standing on the other side with an unimpressed look on his face, a stark contrast to the glee filled boy opposite.
“Package for…” The delivery guy looked down at the label “...Daniel?”.
“YUP That’s me… though everyone calls me Danny…” The teen said with enthusiasm, he was shaking as he looked at the large cardboard box on the ground near the delivery guy.
“Riiiight….Uh Sign here..and here…. Okay enjoy your-” His words cut off as the boy grabbed the box and slammed the door shut in his face. “Kids these days…” He shook his head and walked back to his van.
Danny carried the large box up to his bedroom, almost tripping on the staircase as it blocked his vision.
On the side of the box was a printed logo- ‘ELDARA by Microsoft’
Placing it down of the floor he rapped the brown tape from the top and opened the cardboard flaps, revealing a layer of white packing peanuts, wiping them aside with his arm, and spilling them all onto the floor, he was met with a sleek matte black box.
Using both hands to pull it out, he kicked the empty larger box aside and placed the new box onto his bed. It was about the size of a rifle case.
The Xbox Logo featured in the corner, the bulk of the box’s face was taken up by the logo for Eldara, and an artwork featuring a Knight, a Rogue and an Elven archer stood side by side facing a large dragon that was breathing fire into the sky.
“So coooool…”
Sliding off the matte cover and opening the latch on the box, he was met with a note.
‘Thank you for purchasing the Eldara: Realm of Dragons Virtual reality kit! In this box you will find everything you need to get you questing in the lands of Eldara!
1x - Microsoft Kinect 3.0
4x - Room sensor camera poles
1x - Xbox Virtual Reality headset
2x - Xbox Virtual Reality Controllers
1x - Copy of Eldara: Realm of Dragons (Digital Code)
1x - Game Grab Bag (Digital Code, Access to multiple other games for the XVR)
1x - Bundle of Cables
We can’t wait to see you in Eldara!’
Danny started to pull each of the components from the case, placing them onto his bed and floor. With some light assembly work, he was able to set up the 4 corner stands, fixing the camera’s to the tip.
Plugging everything into his PC, he was met with a prompt to input his codes into the Xbox store App, doing so he saw Eldara added to his game library, and a few other games from the grab bag code.
Karate simulator, Kaiju Rampage, All star Poker & Blackjack, Modern Life…Just to name a few.
However those others didn’t matter to Danny, he was only interested in the main attraction.
After the game had finished installing to his machine, he placed the white VR headset over his eyes, fixing the back strap to his head. He’d never experienced Virtual Reality gaming before, so he was excited.
The first step was to make sure the device was calibrated with the corner cameras and the main Kinect device.
Danny could see himself as a gray, featureless avatar. Waving his arms around, the character in his headset did the same, he could look down and see his body and hands…It was all so cool. Performing a few basic actions, looking at each of the 4 cameras in turn, then the main Kinect camera, a prompt appeared alongside a loading percentage, ‘Generating Character Model’.
Danny watched as from the feet upwards, the gray avatar started to change into his own body. His bare feet could be seen, his blue shorts, the white t-shirt and finally his head. The face rendered perfectly, even his brown messy hair was very detailed, swaying around with the game physics.
“Wooooahhhh” Danny stepped forward, getting a close look at himself in the game, it was almost lifelike. Opening his mouth and sticking his tongue out wide, he could see the scan had even generated his mouth and teeth perfectly.
‘Confirm character appearance?’ The game asked, with a secondary option to enter a character creator and change your appearance further.
*Click*
Danny clicked the button on his VR controller on the ‘Accept’ option, very happy with his own character.
This loaded him into the main menu of the game, from here he selected a server and began to choose his character race and class. He had multiple options, Human, Orc, Elf, Dwarf, Gnome.
He chose Human, picking the class of Knight.
After a short load screen he was in the game, he was in the world of Eldara, it’s what he’d been waiting for, for months.
Upon spawning in he saw multiple other characters around him, presumably people who’d also bought the game recently too, some of their models looked very real, others had clearly gone through the character creator, sporting ridiculous features and wild hairstyles.
Just as Danny was about to approach one of these people and speak to them, he was startled.
“DANNY!”
“Wha- Huh-!” The teen jumped as he lifted the headset from his eyes, his younger brother stood in the doorway to his room.
“I saiiiid can I play?” Colby asked.
“Play? Bro it’s a 1 player game…” Danny was dismissive, as he went to lower the headset once more, his brother continued.
“B-But there’s other people that run around, aren't there?” He said in a sad tone, he wanted to play the game too after seeing the ads on TV.
“Well yeah, but you need one of these headsets to play man and I think there's a height requirement ANNND this cost me A LOT of money, you know how many paper rounds and car washes I had to do to save up for this?” The older boy was right and he knew it, his smug expression confirmed it as his brother sulked.
“But-”
“Look Short Round, i’ll stream it on Youtube for you okay? Will that shut you up!?” Danny snapped.
“I guess…” The young boy looked down and walked away, slowly shutting the door behind him.
Danny opened his youtube channel and began to livestream the game, initially he only had 1 viewer, his younger brother, as he started his journey in the game.
He pulled the headset back down and returned to the game.
Colby watched on in jealousy as his brother went about completing the first few quests, the full body motion was very impressive, especially to a 10 year old. The idea of talking to real people in a game and seeing their body movements was amazing to someone who was only used to the blocky models from Roblox or Minecraft.
As time passed, he’d constantly watch his older brother progress through the game over the coming days, he was so jealous.
Danny was fast approaching the end game of this MMO, he’d been leveling efficiently and had become quite good at the game. Even amassing more viewers to his live streams, he would regularly get around 200, Colby lost in the shuffle.
Danny had gained a reputation as one of the best PVP players in Eldara, able to take on any other player in the game with ease, and usually acting cocky after beating them.
“Get shit on noob!”, “Lol you got Fucking stomped bro!”, “You should uninstall”, Just a few of the insults he’d commonly hurl at those he’d beat.
There was a particular player he’d run into a lot, an Elven Rogue named ‘Aeven’ in game, his real name was actually James. He looked to be the same age as Danny, possibly a year younger at most based on his character model.
Aeven had never managed to beat Danny in a PvP fight, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t trying. As Danny’s negative reputation grew in the community, he’d taken it upon himself to ‘Stream snipe’ Danny in an attempt to beat him and shut him up.
“I know you’re watching you stream sniping bitch elf, you aren’t gonna beat me” Danny would proclaim to his stream, the chat encouraging his toxic behavior.
Fast forward a few days and Danny was still at it.
“It’ll be fine” He dismissed his younger brother’s warning.
“No listen Danny, They say you shouldn't use your computer when there’s thunderstorms!” Colby tried to warn Danny, the older boy already walking off to his room.
The rain and wind battered against the windows of the house, the palm tree’s outside violently swayed in the stormy conditions.
As Danny entered the game, starting his stream as usual, he loaded into the world and headed straight for the PvP zone, brushing off a child NPC that had a low level quest for him.
The thunder crashed outside, a bright flash of lightning soon followed, striking near Danny’s home, it knocked out the power for just a second.
An electric bolt was sent through the cables in the house, straight into Danny’s VR headset, electrocuting him briefly before the VR headset and controllers dropped to the floor with a loud
*THUD*
His PC had quickly rebooted itself after the surge, the game auto launching and loading.
When Danny opened his eyes again, he realized he was still in the game, but something was different…
He was TINY!
“Oh haha guys, very funny, someone used a shrinking potion on me when I logged out huh?” The boy said to an audience of none.
Quickly he realized the power surge must have knocked his youtube stream offline, he couldn't see the chatlog, in fact, he couldn’t see any of the game’s UI…
“What the-?”
He quickly reached to pull the headset up from his eyes…but there was no headset.
“WHAT THE-?”
He reached his arms out to feel around his room for any object, but he couldn’t feel anything. Just the cool winds of Eldara upon his face.
“No no NO... what the FUCK is happening?”
Danny looked down at his body in the game, it was him, not some gallant knight in shining armor, but his own shirt, shorts and feet.
“I’m IN the game?!??”
He looked around in disbelief, the Game still looked like the computer graphics, but he looked very much like real life.
He reckoned himself to be around an inch tall now.
In the distance he could see other players casually walking around and chatting, all fully unaware of what’s happening to him.
However, What Danny saw next was truly horrifying…