ALfheim Online

**ALfheim Online** (アルヴヘイム・オンライン, *Aruvuheimu Onrain*) is a VRMMO and the main stage for the second arc of the Abridged Series.

## Description

ALfheim Online (ALO) is an educational VRMMO for kids that got taken over by a group of roleplayers. It was developed by RECT Progress for their VR console, the AmuSphere, and published by Ubisoft.

## History

ALfheim Online was created by RECT Progress to be an edutainment game for kids, set in a world of fairies. The game's development can be dated back to before the release of Sword Art Online, as an poster for it was amongst the many advertisements that Kayaba Akihiko put into the game. However, following the SAO disaster, the VR industry became a minefield that no company wanted to be a part of, and ALO's development was put on hold.

Luckily, RECT Progress eventually bought the SAO servers, in order to keep the players alive for PR reasons, which gave them access to the game's data and the NerveGear technology. With these, RECT Progress used SAO's data to continue ALO's development, teaming up with Ubisoft, and constructed a new VR Headset called the AmuSphere to play it on.

Unfortunately, when development continued, it was incredibly mismanaged and many of the ideas were contradictory the game's intendant purpose. This resulted in the game having questionable quests and messaging, morally or otherwise, as well imagery that did not match the game's fantasy narrative. This meant that when the game was finally released, no one wanted to play it, due to a mixture of confusing advertising and the fact that the SAO disaster was still fresh in people's minds. Luckily, four months before Kayaba's defeat, a group of roleplayers discovered the game and saw it as the perfect place to live out their campaign, and it soon became a sensation.

After a while, players began to wonder what was at the top of the World Tree, a massive tree in the center of the game, as it was heavily guarded. As they speculated what kind of prizes awaited beyond such a quest, a rumor began to spread that whoever got to the top of the tree first would get their wish granted by the Fairy King. With this incentive, the players divided themselves into nine factions and began fighting in a "war" to see who could do this first, dubbing this competition the "Race War". Unfortunately, this quickly spiralled into the players treating other players, who were roleplaying as different races, like lesser beings and a lot of racial violence.

During all of this, the game's admin, Nobuyuki Sugou, known in-game as Fairy King Oberon, researched SAO's code and discovered that its Charisma stat had the ability to compel anyone into doing whatever the user wanted, becoming obsessed with the idea of using this feature to brainwash people and rule the world. Months later, when SAO was finally beaten, Sugou managed to prevent 300 players from waking up and began using them as test subjects in his plan. One of these players was Asuna Yuuki, the daughter of RECT Progress' CEO, Shouzou Yuuki. Seeing this as a greater opportunity, Sugou held Asuna hostage in the game, telling her that he'd let her go if she agreed to marry him or else he'd brainwash her into agreeing.

## Setting

ALfheim Online is set in a world based on Norse Mythology and European folklore, on an island called Marshmallow Island. The island is the inhabited various magical creatures, including nine different fairy races.

The island is divided into various territories. The main ones consist of nine racial territories, each ruled by one of the nine fairy races. The Leprechaun territory is a reclamation area located in the north-north-east, the Spriggan territory is an ancient ruins area surrounded by a forest to the east-north-east, the Undine territory is a wetlands area located in the east, the Imp territory is an alpine area located in the south-east, the Salamander territory is a desert area located in the south, the Sylph territory is a forest area located in the south-west, the Cait Sith territory is a plain area located in the west, the Pooka territory is a grassland area located in the west-north-west, and the Gnome territory is a frost area located in the north-north-west. The other territories consist of the minor or smaller ones, which are controlled by neutral players.

At the center of the island is the neutral city of Arun, which is at the base of the World Tree, a large mysterious tree with an unknown purpose, which is the end goal of the player's collective roleplay story.

## Features

* Nine different playable faerie races to choose from.
* Players have the ability to fly for a limited amount of time.
* An intricate spellcraft system to use.
* A translation software that can translate whatever a player wants to say into the language of the person listening to them flawlessly.
* A pain absorber that reduces the amount of virtual pain players can experience.
* A profanity filter that causes players to say a kid friendly words instead of the curse words they intended.
	+ Censored words and their alternatives include:
		- Gee willikers = Jesus.
		- Shoot/Shirt/Snap = Shit.
		- Fudge = Fuck.
		- Oh my codfish = Oh my god.
		- Son of a bee sting = Son of a bitch.
		- Gosh dang it/Gosh darn it = Goddammit.
		- Golly/Gosh = God.
		- Consarn it = Dammit.
		- Flipping/Fricking/Fudging = Fucking.
		- Bull honkey = Bullshit.
		- Ash = Ass.
		- Corn nuts = Crap.
		- Cheese and crackers = Jesus Christ
* Various different mounts to ride on.
* If a player logs out while they are out of town, their avatars remain in game in a dormant state.

## Known Glitches, Errors and Problems

* The description on the back of the box is a confusing mess that barely advertises the game and has a rant by the person who wrote it in it that wasn't edited out.
* If a player picks to play a Spriggan, there's a random chance they'll be confronted by a black hole that sends them nowhere near their starting zone.
* If an SAO survivor logs into the game with their NerveGear, they'll begin the game with all the stats they had from SAO, but all their items will be corrupted.
* The profanity filter doesn't censor anything sexual.
* The punishment for failing to answer the Math Tree's question is having your clothes removed. Bearing in mind this was meant to be a kid's game, you can see what the problem is here.
* The skybox over Sylvaine has a random chance of glitching out.
* Two of the locations are called "Kandy Kane Kavern" and "Kandy Kane Kapital", which have an unfortunate abbreviation.
* The NPC in charge of teaching history, the Animatronic Gandalf, has a curriculum full of conspiracy theories and punishes children by having theme killed by question themed monsters.
* The game sold various drugs as status effect items, most notable from an NPC called Terry the Tweaker Tarantula. This was meant to show kids the dangers of drugs, but the cool abilities they granted outweighed the negatives. This has since been toned down in a patch.

## Trivia

* Alfheim, also known as Álfheimr, is the name of the realm of the elves in Norse mythology.

## References

1. ↑ Episode 1
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Episode 12
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Episode 13
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Episode 14
5. ↑ Episode 16
6. ↑ Kandy Kane Kapital's origin
7. ↑ Episode 17
8. ↑ Terry's origin