The World R:1
The World is the first massively multi-player online RPG since Pluto's Kiss (a catastrophic event where all computers connected to the internet and comunication network control systems crashed around the globe for 77minutes because of a virus). Developed for the ALTIMIT OS, The World had a lot of media hype, resulting in over 100,000 preorders being taken in November 2007. The World was sold online for download, and in the first day alone it sold 4,576,623 copies.
The World was created by the genius programmer Harald Hoerwick under the name Fragment. Fragment was released as a limited beta approximately nine months prior to the release of The World. The beta was stopped early for unknown reasons and The World was released shortly afterwards.
Fragment was programmed and designed by Harald Hoerwick, who based it off of the epic poem Epitaph of Twilight by Emma Wielant. After finishing the game, which he did completely on his own, he sold it to CC Corporation for practically nothing. CC Corp beta tested the game using a mixture of their own employees and testers brought in from outside the company. Though the test was considered a success, the beta was ended early for unknown reasons and the game was upgraded to the retail version The World. It is said that some of the players died from the game, and that the early end to the test was to cover this up. However there is only one confirmed case of a test player dying, and it appeared to be a suicide.
Unknown to all but a few programmers, Harald had hidden a mysterious Black Box inside of Fragment. This program was actually a womb for a new breed of Artificial Intelligence, and was designed to create an "Ultimate A.I." Not knowing what it was, CC Corp had the black box uploaded into The World, where it would eventually cause the Morganna Incident.