On sunday, November 6th, 2022 the first VRMMORPG was released to the public. Sword Art Online sold 10,000 copies of the game before it even opened.
Sunday November the 6th is also the day those 10,000 players were trapped in the game by the game's developer Kayaba Akihiko.
Two years later, to the exact date, Sword Art Online was beaten.
Despite the damage the first VRMMO did to the reputation of the industry, after Sword Art Online was beaten many other companies developed new and old games to the new system. Looking to expand the experience of their games Blizzard entertainment developed their own VR systems. Building upon their existing servers and programming for World of Warcraft, arguably the most popular MMO of all time. Within a year the beta for World of Warcraft VR went live, with the full game becoming available five months later.
The immediate results were astounding, blowing Blizzard's subscriber record since 2010 and once again putting the MMORPG and the company at the top of the list. Uniquely, what Blizzard did caught everyone by surprise. Rather than tack on a VR option to their current expansion they went back to the original World of Warcraft, the vanilla game, updated many of the mechanics, graphics and classes and abilities to the current standards and re-released the game for the VR platform.
It was like history was repeating. Billions flocked to the new game, old players who longed for the nostalgia and the memories while new players came to experience the old world of warcraft. Though many class favourites like the Death Knight and the Demon Hunter were missing at this new launch players discovered new loves and favourites, as well as discovering old ones. Three years later and Blizzard re-released The Burning Crusade expansion, with Wrath of the Lich King a year after that.
Four years after its launch and World of Warcraft VR was the king of the MMO's, with the highest subscriber base unbeaten in the world. Not even the release of the Cataclysm expansion, which had dropped subscriber numbers before, could damage the popularity of the VRMMMORPG.
But once again, history was to repeat.
Five years after World of Warcraft VR was released the servers came under attack from a mass DDos attack, one which lasted two weeks and that actually brought down Blizzard's servers. Once the company regained the servers they found that one server, which at the time had around 10,000 players online, was still offline. And that all the players were still listed as online.
Despite everything Blizzard could not gain control of the server, nor could they contact any of the players.
It was Sword Art Online all over again. 10,000 players were trapped in the game world, in one of the largest, most famous and arguably dangerous virtual worlds in existence.
10,000 players were stuck in World of Warcraft's Cataclysm.
Hello once again readers. Lord Tomyh here, and welcome to another one of my FanFiction stories.
Now, I don't care what anyone says. I like Sword Art Online, always have since I first saw the Japanese dub over my brother's shoulder. I'm a gamer and the idea of VR gaming is something I have loved since I was 12 (I'm 23). And the idea of becoming trapped in a VR gaming world excited me more than terrified. As you can probably guess, I'm a WoW player, have been since WotLK, and I am loving Legion.
Now, even though this is a cross-over series, none of the SAO characters will be making an appearance, maybe they'll be mentioned. This is because I'm not comfortable writing Kirito and Asuna and the rest. And they're probably busy with other games in 2031. Reason I'm calling it a crossover is because it takes place in the same universe building on the anime and manga, but not actually following on from them.
So, I hope you all enjoy this piece. Not sure how long it's gonna go for, and have a rough idea on the plot and details. So I'll see you again, at the end.
For Azeroth.
Lord Tomyh
