Yggdrasil Online

yes its a cliche title. no i will not be changing it

— Game Director

Famous VRMMO from several years back, tech debt and a lack of bug fixes drove this game to obscurity. Recently trending on Yalltube, due to famous Yalltubers treating it like a ghost hunting setting. Newly nostalgic old players and passerby alike have to come to gawk too.

'Tech Debt':

A technical term in the game industry, in this case, its about how updates were pushed in this game. A lot of updates. There were a solid dozen worlds discovered by players before populations fell, not all of which matched up with the game's assumed Norse mythology. This implied further places to explore that simply never were reached.
This scale, vast as it was, was only maintained by a constant flow of hurried updates, not of which looked back. Integral features were bug laden, and further infrastruture merely put on top, not fixed.
And just how were those updates pushed? What technology could keep them running at that pace?

The Technology:

The game was built off the DreamSens Engine by Company20. A powerful engine that allows sensory data and dreams to be fed right into the development pipeline. This technology can allow for modeling to sped up immensely in the hands of capable developers. Famous VR titles like Lightning Strikes Thrice, Redemption's Seed, and Stardust Online all used it as a basis for their immersive worlds.
Yggdrasil Online never got that level of finish. Large areas would only get short second passes with real eyes, those passes being mostly focused around story heavy areas. The rest of the collision was done via an AI. This adds up to some terribly tested areas, where all sorts of unintended behavior can happen.
This would be bad enough, but the other cut corners only add to the mess. To populate this worlds, Stardust Online's open source True Intelligence program was added. A real star of the industry, the program allows all NPCs to have life-like intelligence and reactive storytelling capabilities. This would be a good thing, in any game but this.
What the NPCs learned, was that their world was one on the brink of destruction. That there were holes none could see, and had no apparent cause. And most of all, they could hear what players were saying: that this world was abandoned. NPCs in the modern Yggdrasil Online are listless, and if you ask them about the holes, why, Nidhogg has been eating away at the world. Someday, he will run out of root, and come for us.
...It is no wonder that today, Yggdrasil Online is seen less as a game with enjoyable gameplay and amazing sights, but a curiosity for streamers. 'Ghost hunting' streams where famous Yalltubers explore this buggy landscape are trending right now, and all eyes are on Yggdrasil to see what happens next. What ghosts lie beneath this tortured surface?

Platform(s)

VirturealmsVR

Release

2XX0

Genre(s)

VRMMORPG

Mode(s)

Multiplayer

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