Archive of Our Own ^beta

If Ye Xiu had known his dad was going to be so involved in the Chinese government’s new focus on gaming he would not have bothered quitting Glory in the first place. Like most of these kinds of things, there was a profound lack of understanding of gaming and technology at the higher levels, and the Ye Patriarch had every father’s disease of volunteering that “his son knows about that kind of thing.” It was worse because Ye Xiu was already on the government’s radar as a gaming expert that had won (or rather, led a team to win) Glory for China in the World’s Invitational.

Which is how Ye Xiu found himself monitoring, assessing, and beta-testing the first ever full-dive virtual reality MMO. He would like to state for the record that PC gaming and VR gaming were even further apart than PC gaming and console gaming, but did the higher-ups care? No. They even made him look through the content that had to be approved by the censors before the game could launch, as if he and his extensive MMORPG gaming experience were going to find some deep-seated anti-social rhetoric embedded in the existence of a weird bipedal hog-like boss of whatever floor that wields a katana.

Frankly, if that was social commentary he didn’t want to know.

Playing the game itself was not bad. The graphics were impressively life-like, but adjusting to activating auto-targeting skills through full-body posing was a little bizarre. Nonetheless, they wanted him to play through the early levels so Ye Xiu set about learning the skills and usage of every single fighting style and then plotting the combination that gave him the best results for PvE, which was decidedly not his area of interest. His kinesthetic reflexes improved. His real life body did not. Ye Xiu didn’t really see the appeal, but since he was a man that had spent over a decade sitting in front of a computer and working out precisely as much as necessary to keep himself in ideal health for continuing to sit in front of a computer he probably didn’t have any room to talk.

Ye Qiu certainly found his suffering funny, anyway.

Ye Xiu allowed that the game was pretty good, if weirdly balanced (no healers?!) and not his cup of tea. The side quests were typical of these sorts of games. The mobs were typical of grinding MMOs everywhere. Ye Xiu was used to first-person play so even that didn’t throw him off really, though it was definitely weird to have to dodge fully instead of executing dodging commands.

Unless he was using a skill to dodge, in which case he got himself into position and let the programming do the work. Again, Ye Xiu was not entirely sure what the appeal was, but maybe he was outside the target demographic. Some people just wanted to feel like a hero.

Happy was much more sympathetic to his plight. Su Mucheng, recently retired, happily joined him as beta tester on his own recommendation. Tang Rou showed up in game the first day with a teasing stick of her tongue, her father having gotten her an initial place in the game as a gift. Luo Ji was interested in the math behind it, and was joining them along with his mentor to “experience living in a world created by numbers.” Ye Xiu didn’t ask for more details.

Ye Xiu was only logging in the first day to make sure everything was going well and as a sort of send-off for his friends who might want to stay longer. A general last check to make sure everything was running fine before he logged out and went on to things that interested him more.

But there was no log out button. Ye Xiu sighed and made a report, as was his duty, even though he really didn’t want to deal with a last-minute complication that would undoubtedly cause panic. Already it seemed the GMs were swamped, since no one was free to reply. Force-quitting hadn’t been a technological concern since before the time of Glory’s first launch, when they’d practically eliminated computer freezes, so the fact that NerveGear intercepted all bodily commands hadn’t registered as an issue. Anyway, weren’t there still people outside to pull it off if necessary? And server shutdowns, if it really came to that. Still, he and the others started discussing what to do to keep people calm in the meantime while Luo Ji insisted on tracking down his mentor to discuss how such a specific error could have occurred. Something about array pointers? Again, this was not Ye Xiu’s wheelhouse.

And then they were all forcibly teleported into the main square so the game’s creator could theatrically prove that he was criminally insane. A god of this world? More like a delusional mass-murderer, fantastic. Ye Xiu was really in the wrong place, wrong time. Did this guy even know how much work this was going to be to clean up? No! Because he’d figured out how to make virtual reality and had a psychotic break instead of accepting some deserved acclaim. It wasn’t like he’d fixed the lag problem, and you didn’t see Glory’s creator turning it into a random death game or declaring themselves the ruler of space-time.

A claim Ye Xiu personally would have found far more convincing than “my new technology’s malfunctioning safety features make me some kind of deity.”

“This is not a defect in the game, it’s a feature,” Kayaba Akihiko said of the missing log out button, echoing slacking developers everywhere. “You cannot log out of SAO yourselves,” he continued. “Should anyone attempt to from the outside, the transmitter inside the NerveGear will emit a powerful microwave, destroying your brain and ending your life.”

“How deep is this hatred?” Ye Xiu murmured to Su Mucheng, baffled.

She laughed involuntarily and then quickly covered her mouth.

Everyone pulled a mirror (or didn’t, judging by the simultaneous activation it also worked from inventory which meant the mirror item was yet another bit of pointless theatrics) and found their game character returning to their real-life appearance. Ye Xiu had not bothered to change his in the first place, pleased with how well the capability of turning a picture into a game character had advanced from even Glory’s attempts, but Tang Rou sighed disappointedly as her fun and elaborate magenta color scheme returned to her normal, refreshing appearance.

Then the game-maker was gone, and it was Ye Xiu’s job as possibly the only government representative here to take charge. Which he did, immediately.

“Everyone please remain calm,” he projected over the dumbfounded, creeping toward highly-agitated crowd. “This is a safe zone, you can’t arbitrarily fight anyway. I am a beta tester asked by the government to monitor this new form of gaming, for which they have assured me there are multiple failsafes in place that will be handled on the outside now. You are not currently in danger.” Not that they could do anything about, anyway, and it wasn’t like anticipating someone accidentally disconnecting their headgear and instantly killing them would help. Might as well forget about it. “We have previously determined an optimal party composition and size for this game, so I ask that you hear your options before anyone tries to challenge the mobs outside. We’re going to need multiple guilds to pass these levels, many of which may never need to put themselves in a dangerous position at all. Chief among these will be potioneers and those who gather ingredients for potions: We will shortly establish a guild for them to be in charge of.” Luo Ji or his teacher would take it, because management would give them the most time and material to crunch numbers.

Ye Xiu was so deadpan and meticulous about his (partially previously constructed) speech that people found themselves automatically calming down in return.

“Aren’t you God Ye Xiu, the champion pro gamer with the most victories on record?” a young voice called out from the crowd as his talk got further into boring administrative details.

“Yes. And I have with me former captain Su Mucheng and other pro gamers from Happy. We intend to party together and lead volunteers in clearing leveling areas to safely level up.”

There was an audible sigh of relief as the crowd visibly decided that clearing this game was Someone Else’s Problem. Ye Xiu hoped there’d still be enough volunteers that they could tackle the bosses properly, but he wasn’t overly concerned about it. In the end, people tended toward wanting to work toward something rather than laze around blankly. They were a bunch of gamers determined enough to get into the first release of an experimental gaming type.

“I’d appreciate it if the other beta testers could join us to share information or coach new players on techniques. I see some of you are children”—notably the one who called out to interrupt his speech about guild setup—“so I’d ask that minors without guardians join a volunteer-run guild to handle their daily needs. For older minors that have gaming experience, you can be vetted by a beta tester to join teams of—you’re a beta tester?” Ye Xiu cut himself off looking at a young man in an edgy all-black outfit who’d come forward at his request. “Why are you 15? No, I guess they try to use as wide a demographic as possible… Okay, minors will be vetted by a beta tester after an adult has cleared all minor beta testers for work. We will be establishing a guild storage as soon as possible: We ask that those who join a monster-fighting or quest-completion guild wait until there are adequate resources before challenging the nearby mobs. If there are questions, please raise your hand and wait to be called on to ask.”

The creator hidden in the crowd had some questions. This was not at all how this was supposed to happen. Where was the panic? Well, maybe this could be interesting too, he hadn’t wanted to be able to predict everything.

“Um, yeah, God Ye, my question is if you’re going to need help with guild management? I’m Blue River.” Blue River had come here as a break from Glory. He would like his breaks to stop being more stressful than his everyday, but no luck so far.

“My number one babysitter!” Ye Xiu already felt his headache receding. “Excellent, yes we do. If you could start writing out the guild storage rules that’d be great.”

“Please don’t call me that,” Blue River sighed, but started on the list anyway.

“We’re going to need a legal system,” Su Mucheng reminded him.

“Great. Tang Rou, I don’t suppose you’d be interested in non-fatal PvP and restraint measures?”

Tang Rou gave him her absolute best smile, all teeth.

Not all of the players stayed to listen to Ye Xiu’s unexpectedly practical speech. Some ran rather than trust the crowd, some didn’t care for society and embraced their newfound freedom, some were busy having panic attacks or dealing with friends having panic attacks. Nonetheless, the majority of players found themselves ruthlessly organized under the banner of “this is not a single-player game” and “we don’t need everyone to clear level 100 so long as someone clears level 100,” which comforted quite a lot of people and made them far more willing to help out within safe zones or under expert protection. Ye Xiu set about getting an elite team constructed and pushing everyone to be overleveled, overequipped, and overstocked with potions (and eventually crystals, once they were accessible) before they set out. It took weeks before they’d constructed a proper elite team to his specifications, which was about enough time for Luo Ji and his professor to handle the data Ye Xiu had copied out from memory of everything he’d read would be part of this game. They analyzed attack patterns, skills, and likely recombinations of such if the creator had decided to shuffle things around to avoid the beta testers having too much of an advantage. Tells before serious attacks were turned into bulletins available to all; beta testers had already compiled as much information as possible from their previous experience with large-written caveats that the material was not verified for the game in its current form. Scouts and information gatherers started putting together maps and confirmed information for the game as it was now.

It was disgustingly efficient. Kayaba Akihiko was losing his mind. Administration was one thing, but efficiently organizing a group of ten thousand? (Alas for Kayaba Akihiko, he was completely unaware that Glory guilds connected to pro teams were capped at 10,000 and even needed multiple spillover guilds. While Ye Xiu didn’t have his ideal guild composition here, he was far from unused to the difficulties of management on such a scale.) Even those who gleefully turned to villainy in this new environment were quickly and ruthlessly tracked down and sentenced to confinement by Tang Rou’s team. Forget her capability, half the men either folded or underestimated her at first sight and were no longer a problem within minutes.

“How are you enjoying playing games all day?” Su Mucheng asked Ye Xiu with great amusement.

“Can I retire,” he returned blandly. “This is not my idea of a good time.”

She laughed.

They cleared the first floor with an abundance of caution and steadily plowed through the second. With such a large percentage of the gaming population focused on potion production or resource management after Ye Xiu had made the excellent point that no one actually needed to be in danger if they didn’t want to, Ye Xiu’s strict instructions on health management, cooperation, and timing for potion consumption meant deaths were unlikely without someone intentionally going off the rails. Ye Xiu’s Lord Grim had never died in the open Glory world, an absolute necessity with his precious silver weapon that couldn’t be dropped, but it meant that he had more than enough experience with the idea of strictly avoiding death at all costs. He was so uninterestedly capable with everything that he did that people found it hard to get too worked up by their precarious situation—rather than despair, he exuded such annoyance when reminded of it all that it almost felt like a joke. Of course, he was serious enough about everyone’s not dying that they didn’t dare take it lightly, but in some cases he even openly talked about it as an aspect of resource management—they weren’t going to get more players, no one could afford to pointlessly risk them.

Weirdly enough, people tended to find that more reassuring and convincing than any pontificating about altruism or idealistic morality.

The potioneers’ and blacksmiths’ skills leveled up accordingly. No one was required to work if they didn’t want to, but Blue River had cleverly worked in meals with actual taste in the guild storage as rewards, and there were enough people with boring and repetitive jobs in real life that this didn’t feel overly different. Society moved on, with slightly worse texturing and slightly cooler landscapes. Kayaba Akihiko pouted so egregiously about this from his place in Ye Xiu’s elite team that he absolutely noticed. It took barely any effort for Ye Xiu to pinpoint and Luo Ji to confirm every way in which this guy was game-breaking. Ye Xiu decided (after determining that Kayaba was too devoted to the players “finding their own way” to make his game-breaking particularly useful to a team) that trying to jail him was probably better than leaving him in the guild where he might affect morale or throw people into extra dangerous situations for entertainment—at the very least, everyone would know to watch out for him from then on.

The confrontation was absurd from start to finish. Kayaba revealed himself with shockingly little prompting, frustrated as he was by how neither fun nor fantastical all of this was. He said he intended to be the level 100 boss but would accept his defeat if Ye Xiu could beat him one on one here and now.

Ye Xiu could only assume that this man did not know who Ye Xiu was. Everyone had acknowledged his skill in PvE, but in PvP he was a specialist.

Kayaba told Ye Xiu that he’d simply go to the 100^th floor and wait for them if Ye Xiu died here, which made so little sense it almost distracted Ye Xiu from the main point. He couldn’t believe this entire thing was an elaborate suicide scheme. If Kayaba really would die when his avatar died like the rest of them, then clearing the game would mean his death no matter what, and obviously they would eventually clear the game. Or else, given people here could not procreate, if they lost too many people before getting there those unwilling to risk themselves would just churn away in the lower levels until there were no more people and he was god of an empty world. It just…whatever, why question a murderer who’d clearly lost all sense of scale or reason? He could play into the delusion precisely as much as necessary to get them all out of there.

Ye Xiu was not the dueling king for nothing—the man died, which Ye Xiu felt a little weird about, since he’d never killed someone before and had never wanted to. He reminded himself that winning in a game wasn’t normally deadly, so frankly the guy making his own headgear do that to himself was his own problem that had nothing to do with Ye Xiu.

Game Cleared. All Ye Xiu could think about was how unbelievably stiff his hands were going to be when he woke up. He was, in fact, really mad about it. Time didn’t wait for anyone! How dare they waste more of his chances to play games he actually liked?

Whatever. Su Mucheng grinned at him as the world turned to dust, and he was more than happy for her. Ye Xiu woke up.

While he was sleeping his parents had taken over or bought everything that had to do with NerveGear to make sure no one could touch him, which was excessive but nice, he supposed. He hadn’t been too worried on that end. Ye Qiu was mad at him in the way all younger siblings were when worried.

This was the absolute worst assignment his father had ever given him. For a moment Ye Xiu genuinely considered running away again.

Never mind, thirties was too old for that kind of thing. But he was definitely refusing all further requests in this vein.

Pro-Gamer Tang Rou Rejoins Team Happy Mid-Season

“My father was very generous in assuring my condition was maintained during the interim,” Tang Rou said of her seven-month sojourn in notorious death game Sword Art Online. “I’m ready to get back to fighting for true victory now.”

Her teammate Luo Ji has plans to return next year after his physical therapy and possible publications are completed. Although Tang Shusen and the Ye Corporation paid well for every player to receive the best benefits, Luo Ji has stated that he prefers a more gradual course back to competition shape.

SAO Survivors Thank Retired Pro-Gamer Captain Ye Xiu

“I was just doing my job,” Ye Xiu tells this reporter, hands working diligently through a variety of gentle stretches even as we speak. “Those who volunteered for management, grinding, or combat positions of their own accord are the real heroes.”

Has this put him off gaming long-term?

“I don’t know that you could call what happened in there ‘gaming’ in the first place,” Ye Xiu sighs. “It was more like a bizarre type of military bootcamp. Even the benefit of minimized danger from fighting in a virtual reality setting was missing. Say what you will about PC gaming, but it never lets you forget exactly what it is: a game.

“Knowing that the consequences are entirely what you make of it is most of the fun.”