Ten major versions happened throughout the ten years of live service for Cyber World Online.
Most of them stretched to point-seven or point-eight before the next one came out.
Each major version covered a different region of Cyverse. New city, new government, new plotlines for that dystopian world. Different architecture, technology, weapons, cultures, factions... usually followed by another reminder that humanity could invent artificial organs, orbital cities and machines capable of rearranging matter, yet somehow still find a way to make people work sixteen-hour shifts for electricity.
And we're starting fresh from the game's release?
I hadn't actually played CWO seriously from day one. Like I said, I was mostly a casual who played the game here and there whenever a character caught my attention. I played mostly for the characters after all.
Still, I stuck with it for ten years.
Version 1 was considered ancient history. Version 2 was also ancient history. Actually, half the game was ancient history.
There were periods where I barely logged in outside of collecting free anniversary rewards. Other times I'd come back because some character looked cool, play for three months, get distracted by something else, then disappear again.
Looking back, my playtime really wasn't very consistent. Still, as a hoarder, I did have a good understanding of the game.
Which meant my knowledge was... weird. I knew the game. I just didn't know it like the theorycrafters who could crunch numbers, or achievement hunters who knew every easter egg hidden by the developers.
I remembered characters better than patches. Meta better than lore. And community reputation better than either.
Ask me which six-star became infamous for needing her signature weapon, two duplicates and half your account's resources before she stopped feeling mediocre? Easy. How about which four-star carried half the playerbase through the original Vesper Grid story? ...Eh, probably.
Ask me what happened politically during the third act of that same region ten years ago?
...
There was a corporation.
Someone got betrayed.
The Doctor probably fixed it. Good enough.
...
I scrolled through the gacha interface.
Version 1.0 was tiny. That was the first thing that really stood out.
Like I said, at the end of CWO, the recruitment tab looked like a shopping centre.
There were banners everywhere.
Limited characters. Reruns. Weapon banners. Regional selectors. Anniversary recruitment. Beginner packages. Occasionally some terrible special banner that gave you slightly better rates while somehow still being mathematically worse than saving your currency.
Here?
Two main tabs. Standard Recruitment | Limited Recruitment
The Standard banner had the original permanent cast. Characters who'd been in the game for so long that even people who hated them probably had several copies sitting around somewhere. Some of them had aged surprisingly well. Others became the thing you prayed not to see whenever a high-rarity animation appeared. I recognised practically all of them.
There was Transporter.
Four-star. Transport and evacuation support, quite literally.
Everyone got him eventually.
I remembered people calling him the "free bus driver" because one of his old event copies had been given away for doing something embarrassingly easy. He wasn't even bad. Just boring in a game where later characters could teleport across half the map and summon orbital artillery.
Charlotte Holmes.
Another four-star. Investigation specialist.
Barely used in combat unless you liked manual play, but old exploration guides loved her because she could reveal hidden objects and reduce investigation time. I remembered her mostly because someone once made a twelve-minute video arguing that she was "secretly account-defining". The comments had not agreed.
Then there was Major Cael.
Five-star. Now there was a character I remembered properly.
Cael had been one of the original characters used to sell CWO's cyberpunk setting heavily in marketing material, before later regions started throwing increasingly exotic technology at the screen. Dark combat coat over a plated neural-interface suit, one artificial arm, blue optics running along his jaw and a smart rifle that looks like the Dominator from Psycho Pass.
His kit was also where the difference between four and five-stars became more obvious.
Cael could practically control a small firefight by himself.
Five-stars were usually where CWO characters stopped feeling like they had one job and started feeling like they had an actual playstyle.
And aesthetically... Yeah.
He was very CWO. Neon targeting lines. Synthetic muscles visible through gaps in the artificial arm. Ammunition counters projected directly onto the rifle like the BR55 from Halo. Even the magazine had unnecessary glowing strips along the side.
Completely impractical-looking.
I loved it.
There were three other five-stars in the permanent pool alongside him. Different roles which carved out the earlier parts of Cyverse, giving the Standard Banner four four-stars, four five-stars...
And the two launch six-stars.
One man. One woman.
CWO did know its audience.
The first was Nyra Adjest — Blackglass Sentinel.
Heavy assault. Six-star.
Even ten years later, I remembered her silhouette immediately.
A streaker in hardly any clothing but skintight blacks for fanservice, sleek rather than bulky, with translucent plates around the shoulders that darkened whenever her defensive systems activated. Her weapon was some kind of magnetic lance-rifle hybrid. Long enough to look ridiculous indoors, but it could fire accelerated metal slugs before splitting open into a close-range polearm. Uh-huh. That's Nyra's selling point, Weapon Transformation, before they were introduced to later characters as a staple.
At launch she was considered the best DPS character for account progression, since she had the physical advantage of two main weapon types.
Then there was the other one.
Riven Arclight — Ghostline Hunter.
Six-star. Completely different style.
Light combat armour instead of Nyra's heavier frame, which felt almost like the developers were flipping armour stereotypes for both genders. Long coat split around the legs, silver neural cables disappearing beneath his collar and enough small cybernetic implants around his eyes that screenshots of his face used to look ridiculous whenever people zoomed in.
His weapon was a compact coil carbine paired with a mono-edge blade. A burst-reliant, speed-build DPS, single-target specialist.
Back then, Nyra and Riven were synonymous with the game's popularity. There were a ton of reroll accounts trying to get one or the other.
Ten years later, both of them had been powercrept so badly that it felt like all the time spent rerolling felt silly.
Still...
I looked at their portraits.
Six-star.
That meant something very different now.
Even an outdated six-star was still an elite combatant from Cyverse.
If Nyra appeared in Lincol right now, I doubted she'd care much about three zombies standing near my lobby.
Actually, forget six-stars. Five-star Cael would probably make the entire convenience-store fight earlier look embarrassing.
Even the four-stars might.
I looked at Transporter again in the details for the Permanent Banner.
In CWO, moving civilians faster was boring.
During an apocalypse?
Maybe not. Also, Transporter also had firearms that were probably much more lethal than standard-issue weapons.
That was another point I was starting to notice.
Game value wasn't necessarily real-world value.
Charlotte Holmes being mediocre in combat didn't mean much if she could actually investigate things better than normal humans.
A logistics character might become more useful to me later on than somebody with twice the damage.
The support characters could use auxiliary weapons much better than me.
A medic...
Yeah.
I really wanted a medic.
I moved away from the Standard Banner.
There should've been another tab.
Limited Recruitment.
I selected it.
"...Huh?"
The banner faded behind a lock symbol.
Huh? Requirement...?
I stared.
"...What?"
The game didn't have this restriction.
...Did the system change this?
To be honest, reality had been a mess. There is still a lot I don't know about this ability.
...
I selected the information icon beside recognised interactions.
A smaller explanation appeared.
Interactions may include cooperative survival activity, conversation, meals, training, exploration or other meaningful shared activity.
I read it again.
Conversation. Meals. ...This is...
Hana glanced up.
"What now?"
"The game wants me to make friends."
She blinked.
"...Game?"
...This. And the bit about Affinity with characters.
Someone—or whatever the hell the System actually was—had changed things.
And only then would it let me access Limited Recruitment.
I already knew what should've been sitting behind that lock.
Version 1.0's first limited banner.
I still remembered that one. Not because I'd actually pulled on it at launch. I don't even think I was playing seriously then. But because the character on it became one of those names people kept bringing up whenever CWO veterans started talking about the early days.
Aurelia — Whitewing Mercy.
Six-star. Healer.
And technically, the game's first Valkyrie.
Well. Pseudo-Valkyrie. That distinction became considerably more important later.
Aurelia had been plastered across advertisements with a pair of enormous white mechanical wings opened behind her, each feather actually an independent metallic segment connected to a spinal flight rig. White medical coat over a black compression suit, glowing red medical interfaces running along her arms, and a halo-shaped drone array floating behind her blonde hair locks.
CWO's first dedicated healer and enchanter role.
A six-star healer during a zombie outbreak.
Yeah. I wanted her. Badly.
But the lock... I poked at the Limited Recruitment tab again as if it might suddenly change its mind.
[LIMITED RECRUITMENT LOCKED]
"..."
I returned to Standard Recruitment.
Z-Chips: 1,000
The number sat there temptingly.
Enough for ten pulls.
And if the System wanted me to recruit a Character before unlocking Limited Recruitment, then this was obviously where it expected me to start. Probably.
The permanent pool suddenly looked less like the banner you reluctantly threw free tickets into and more like my only doorway forward.
That didn't mean I had to immediately spend everything.
I leaned back against the bench, with Hana munching on some chips.
Do I?
Ten pulls. One thousand Z-Chips.
There was no guarantee I'd even get a Character. Four-star was the minimum character rarity, but equipment occupied most of the pool. I could spend everything and walk away with a pile of weapons, consumables and some three-star support equipment. Useful probably. But that wouldn't unlock Limited Recruitment. Then I'd be stuck without currency.
On the other hand... If I did get somebody? One of the other permanent characters. Any one of them would probably improve our survival odds immediately. And I needed one anyway.
The System had made that fairly obvious.
I selected the ten-pull option.
Recruit ×10 — 1,000 Z-Chips
My finger hovered over it.
Then stopped.
...No. I should save.
Currency first. Or at least figure out whether I could get more.
Shouldn't make more bad decisions.
There was a Missions tab sitting right beside Recruitment.
I should probably have checked that earlier.
I opened it. The interface expanded.
More organised than I expected.
[Progression] [Survival] [Combat] [Party]
And below those— Daily missions!
I sat up. That changed things.
The first one was already available.
There was smaller text beneath it.
Daily missions can be cleared up to 5 times each, with scaling difficulty requirements. Daily missions reset at 4AM the next day, with progress not carrying over.
Resets daily.
I see how this works. Ten first. Probably twenty next. Then fifty. Then something stupid. Still, it's repeatable up to 5 times. If I cleared everything, I could get 5 pulls from this mission.
I checked another.
Seven already? I opened the details. Food. Water. Medicine. Ammunition. Fuel. Equipment considered useful for continued survival. So the System recognised normal objects for mission tracking even if Inventory refused to accept them. Weird distinction. And this gives... 2.5 pulls when maxed out.
Next.
Hmm... this is the last one. Totals to 10 pulls a day. It's a pretty well thought out system.
There was something else besides the daily missions.
...Beginner Missions? One of them had been greyed out. Ah... it's the one where I had to kill a zombie or something.
I stared at the reward. There it is. This much was expected to get the player started.
One whole ten-pull just for surviving until tomorrow.
...
I probably shouldn't disrespect the mission considering how today had gone.
There were more Beginner Missions underneath it, but most were hidden.
The direction was obvious. The System wanted me moving.
Kill infected. Scavenge. Travel. Survive. Recruit. Use the characters. Interact with them. Unlock more things.
It was basically the old progression loop, except that there were no 'dungeons' and stamina system. You do have to look out for zombies though.
Fun.
I went back to the Daily Missions and did the maths again just to be sure.
Infected Suppression could be completed five times. Assuming the requirements escalated reasonably, that was five hundred Z-Chips. Scavenger, another two hundred and fifty. Travel, another two hundred and fifty. A thousand total. Ten pulls a day, maximum on paper.
Actually doing all of it was another question. Five kilometres through unsecured territory requires lots of nerves. If the next tier doubled it, then ten. Then fifteen? Twenty? I'm in no condition to walk fifty kilometres around Lincol every day.
Same with the infected. Ten was manageable if I hit my bullets. Twenty? Maybe. By the fifth completion I'd probably be lauded as a local hero.
...
So realistically, I wasn't earning ten pulls a day. Not yet. But the possibility existed.
I looked back towards Standard Recruitment. Maybe I should spend it. Especially with another thousand waiting if I survived until tomorrow.
And if Beginner Missions rewarded that much... recruiting someone might pay back part of the cost anyway. The System was clearly trying to push me towards it. I still didn't like being pushed. Don't push a hoarder.
I reopened Standard Recruitment.
Four four-stars. Four five-stars. Two six-stars. I repeated in my head.
Then the sea of equipment and support items swimming beneath them.
Worst case, I got equipment. From the handgun alone, I know I'd probably not be able to use some of them from weight alone.
Best case... I looked at Nyra. Then Riven.
Don't. That way lay disappointment. I lowered my expectations.
Transporter. Charlotte. One of the other four-stars.
Fine. Even a support-oriented CWO character should be much more capable than Hana or me.
Once I'd made the outline of a decision, I searched through the Recruitment information more seriously.
Nothing useful.
Recruitment results will be deployed upon completion.
Deployed.
...That wording bothered me.
Deployed where? Like a payload?
"..."
Hana crunched another chip beside me, breaking my thoughts.
"There's a reply from Brandon. ...Hmm, things don't look good there either."
"There where? And the signal's back?"
"North. The reply was two days ago." She checked her phone with a worried expression. That must be her boyfriend.
"...The signal's gone again."
I'd stopped checking myself. Communications by this point were almost certainly down.
"We're not going north then. You'll have to keep me company for a while longer."
"Ugh." She mimed out a puking motion.
Ignoring her, I looked at Recruitment again. ...Could wait until we found somewhere enclosed.
That was probably smarter. The problem was I didn't know how long that would take. Our building was still the best shelter nearby, and getting back inside wasn't impossible.
The service route was compromised. Lobby had infected.
There were other entrances. Maybe the side stairwell.
Or connect through another block's sheltered deck and cross back from the upper floor.
Lincol estates were interconnected enough that there were options.
All of them involved moving.
Moving meant Travel progress.
Scavenging along the way could finish the first Scavenge daily mission.
And if we encountered infected... I stopped.
Was I seriously planning our route around Daily Missions now?
"...That's how it starts."
"What?"
"Nothing." I closed the System. First priority remained shelter. The Missions could happen naturally. I wasn't going hunting zombies for one hundred Z-Chips yet. I have a teenager with me.
Hana's phone vibrated. She almost dropped the chip packet.
Both of us looked down.
One bar.
A message appeared.
Her face changed before I could read it.
"Mum."
I straightened.
She opened the message.
Hana, signal may disappear again. We left Central General. Moving patients through North Lincol temporary triage. Do not come to us. Roads are unsafe. Stay indoors if you're safe. I will find you when I can.
North Lincol. That was closer than Central. Much closer. But North...
Hana read the message twice, tears still running down her face. "She's alive... Mum's alive." Then she looked up at me, and I already knew what she was going to ask. North Lincol wasn't far, but her mother had specifically told her not to come. I should've refused. Instead, after staring at that relieved expression for a few seconds too long, I sighed. "...We'll head north. Carefully. If anything looks wrong, we turn back." Hana nodded far too quickly and wiped her face with her sleeve.
For once, she looked genuinely hopeful. I didn't have the heart to tell her that lately, hope had been making me nervous.
It's always the premonition to something bad.