Project Overworld

'It's been five months.' Keith realized. Five months since Keith recruited three more engineers into their company and started working on really complex projects. Be it in space or within their land base, they all progressed really fast and used their brain to solve any problem encountered.

Their synergy also improved a lot, according to Keith's plans with the organization in binomes he made. By the end of each week, he also proposed various events to have fun together, be it paintball, karting and some board games.

Michael and Tyler were already close friends with Keith, even before Project Overworld came out. However, this type of organization really deepened the bonds of every member of Spacol and they all considered each other as friends now. Even the shy and hard-working Jim usually relaxed and enjoyed their Sunday playing games together.

Although they had yet to organize an event in real life to all come out together, Leyla did come all the way from Washington District to Atlanta and meet with Keith, Michael and Tyler. It has been an interesting week-end, even though they mostly talked about Project Overworld and player some multiplayer games.

However, Leyla did bring the idea of founding a company in real-life yet again. Keith thought they had definitively sealed off this matter, but she came with an to finance their project. She knew a lot of high standards persons because her father was a large company owner, and she offered to introduce Keith's company idea to some investors.

Keith was really uncertain about this situation, although he had to promise Leyla to consider her offer in the future. The problem for him was that there were several official space agencies around the world doing quite well in that regard, as well as a well-known american private company which was already making plans to organize a trip to Mars with human crew members.

These fact only downed Keith's self-esteem because all he has been doing for now was to play a video game. He would not dare to compete with actual geniuses in rocketry, not to mention he would have to somehow find a way to make money to pay off his debts to the investors.

The more he thought about it, the more unlikely the idea of him making a company became.

'Let's focus on Project Overworld for now and try to develop technologies unavailable in real-life.' Keith concluded. Since reality has been helping them develop within the game for so long, if they somehow managed to invent something knew there was a possibility they could be reproducing it in the 'real world'.

Regarding their progress, Spacol made huge advancements on the 'rocket assembler' they were working on.

They managed to reduce the total time they needed to build a launcher all the way to five to six days. Not only that, most of the work was being done automatically and they only needed to work on the top of the rocket as well as the load it should be transporting to build a complete rocket.

Keith was really satisfied about everyone's work. According to him, they should be definitively done with it by the end of the following month, so in approximatively forty to forty-five days.

In any case, they were officially done with the EOSS for now. They managed to launch every single modules Keith thought necessary for their incoming settlement in space, and the rest of the work could be done directly from up there.

Since it would be a waste of resources to launch any more rocket up there, the project has been totally closed so another binome could be working on the 'rocket assembler' full time. Keith even had to change the organization again because it was not relevant anymore to have three binomes when four people were working onto the same project.

As of now, one binome was left to optimize the crafting processes of their base while a group of four was planning, designing and construction the robots amalgam used to automatically assemble rockets.

Of course, Keith did not forget about letting his employees rest from time to time by holding a few events related to the games they had developed during these five months of hard work.

'I guess it was a good idea to hire some people to help me out on my projects.' Keith meditated. Even though he would have developed a lot more in space if he has been alone, maybe even making it all the way to Mars by now, he would have never dreamt about finishing such a trying project that was to make a rocket assembler.

Also, he was now a lot more relaxed since he could be counting on five other player to help him in his future plans.

'Anyways, let's focus back on that assembler so we are finished by the end of next month. I want to go back to space as fast as possible.' Keith motivated himself.

_______________

- "Without further ado, let's announce the winners of this competition!" Amber exclaimed in her voice amplifier. Today has took place the ninth edition of Inventopia, a really special one since Amber decided to go around the world to organize this event at least once per city.

It has been a really tiring month, but at the end of it she was really elated she has been able to do it. After each event, she took the opportunity to tease a big announcement she would be doing once she finished her tour.

Today was the day she would be revealing Asgard to the rest of the population. There has already been a few leaks about this announcement because people ran into the construction site of the city but she and the several municipal teams managed to keep these posts into check.

After the event was over and she rewarded an inventor for building a working, albeit simply, flying machine, Amber spole again through her microphone.

- "Since I started the Inventopia world tour, I've been teasing a big announcement by the end of it." She started before waiting for everyone to calm down after the event. "There have been many theories about what I would be talking about, and I've also heard a lot of concerns. Although the airplane prototypes are improving by the day, I will not be talking about that today. Instead, I will adress a long-standing problem people have had throughout their journey within Project Overworld."

Again, she took a brief break in her speech to tease the audience some more.

- "This game isn't fun to everyone. I've been collecting a lot of complaints, be it on the forums or within the game, about people wanting to quit the game after a few weeks of playing it. As of myself, I've been having fun taking care of the organization of Midgard for so long, and the Inventopia is also a really good event for me to vent off any feeling of weariness. However, it's not necessarly the case for a lot of new players, who came in here to have some fun while not having to be concerned about real-life matters. The fact is, there is not enough ways to enjoy oneself within Project Overworld. Only engineers and people interested in human history have been really enjoying this game so far."

She explained.

- "That's why, us at the municipal team of Yggdrasil and in partenership with well-known architects of Project Overworld, have decided to provide entertainement to any player who may join the game! There are two main projects we've been working on as of now. First things first, I'd like to announce the future opening of Asgard city! Asgard will be established onto Yggdrasil and will be host various casinos, bookstores, movie theaters as well as a lot of other entertainement-related buildings! If you ever happen to be feeling bored by what you are currently accomplishing in this game, take some time off of work and come visit this city!"

The audience roared in excitement, hyped up about Amber's announcement. This matter was a really big deal since Project Overworld has been mostly reserved to a population fan of simulations until now. This population was really m.a.t.u.r.e and children were not even interesting in joining the game anymore.

Upon the initial launch, there have been a lot of young players investing their time into the game, but mostly because player versus player interactions. Once the largest guilds have dismissed themselves and wars were over, a large portion of the population simply stopped playing this game.

With Asgard, Amber and the municipal team of Yggdrasil essentially manifested her intention to bring back younger players into the game so its popularity may surge again.

- "However, this isn't all I wanted to say for today." She brought back the attention of the public to her. "Some of you may have noticed I've talked about two main projects we've been working on. The second one isn't even started yet, so I won't be dwelling on this matter today. I'm just going to say, if you ever wished you could turn back in time to the start of this server, Project: Vanilla will certainly be delighting you." She finished her speech.

The audience roard yet again at this huge teaser and Amber exited the arena with a smile stetching the corner of her lips.

'Let's see how much popularity this will bring to the game.' She meditated.