The Lands of Neverwere / The Real World
This is the ultimate MMORPG; it mixes all the good things of EverQuest with all the good things in SquareSoft games and Neverwinter Nights. It's fast, it's gorgeous it's cheap and it's everywhere. The game is sold, maintained and upgraded by Third Orb Software, a company that sprung out of nowhere with the biggest hit in multiplayer gaming.
Architecture: The game runs from several server nodes, each node representing a geographical area in the world of Tlön. Third Orb employs dedicated players to run things as governors or important Personas, and whose responsibility is to set events in motion, such as quests, adventures, even wars. These administrators are indistinguishable from high-level Personas, but they have full admin powers to solve serious disputes that cannot be solved IC.
Playability: As in Ultima Online, there is a lot of real estate that Personas may own and develop, but Tlön is big enough that there is stil a lot of space for enterprising players to acquire and develop. Play Masters pay an extra fee in addition to the monthly payment all players pay; this gives them the right to develop their own stories, items and other game elements, and they are given a particular 'fief' in which to run with limited admin powers. PMs create Control Personas and items at will, but they cannot exist outside the PM's fief unless it is approved by Third Orb's administrators. Several new skins, items and models are born this way, immediately downloaded to players' computers when they run across them. There is a few miliseconds of lag as the item's specs transmit over direct connection between the owning player and others in the same area.
Setting: The world of Tlön is a medieval fantasy world with magical technology available. There are airships and automatons running by magic, as well as mystical firearms and power armour. It resembles Final Fantasy VI in a sense, as it does El-Hazard. Psychic powers run hand by hand with magic and magitech, giving players a wealth of options to choose from. There are no discernible character classes but rather player build their Personas by assembling skill groups. There are general archetypes created by Third Orb to guide new players (you can invent your own archetype for your PC and we will assume it already existed) and there are hundreds of races to choose from (ditto on their creation), with new ones introduced with every upgrade, created both by Third Orb and by contributing players.
Character Concepts: Run wild; cat girl martial artist and magitech technicians are accepted, sentient automatons, plain fighters, wuxia-type monks, airship captains... TLoN is a game so rich that it boggles the mind.
Some Notes: If your character gets ahold of a dose of Ubik and applies it to eyes, ears, nose and fingertips, he will not be able to tell the game from reality until the drug's effect passes.
There are "professional" players who have their adventures video-captured and broadcasted as TV series, like a non-reality show :).
The Fae: One of TLoN's character races, it has several sub-races, all of them playing along Celtic myth. (race by Erich Magnus)
The Black Flag: A guild of Player Killer characters. Not really an Assassing Guild but they had started taking steps in that direction until they were crushed and scattered by the Steelshield Brotherhood.
The Steelshield Brotherhood: A guild of high-level characters devoted to hunting down and limiting the activities of Player Killers. They have semi-official status as their leaders made a base and enjoy a lot of popularity. Rcently crushed the Black Flag guild out of a tip from an ex-Player Killer.
The Knights of the Stalwart Blade: One of the first guilds to be ever created in Tlön, it gathers many role-playing-oriented people from all walks of career.
The Bazaar: A group of item traffickers, they are competition for the computer-controlled stores by selling items they procure by several means. Some of those items they sell on auction websites. They are suspected to have links to RL criminal groups who make contacts in the game.
The Great Museum of Uqbar: An official club run by Third Orb Software. Part fan club, part player guild, they are a prime source for game events and adventure seeds. And money.
Uqbar: Largest city in Tlön, starting point, information hub and meeting place for people and surrounded by a vast desert.
Ogre Pass: A locked zone, a series of canyons going through a big and as yet unnamed mountain range, full of monsters.
Monsters
Avian: A gigantic raptor, does not attack unless attacked first.
Cloud Monarch: A malicious, sentient storm cloud. Attacks with lightning bolts.
Ghouls: Weak, corporeal, mindless undead; attacks in great numbers.
It is the year 2019; computer technology continued to advance at rapid pace, and computers are incredibly more powerful than they are today. The power of today's highest-end laptop/notebook computer can be found in palm-sized devices that children wear to school. Wearable apps and "smart" accessory are common, almost as if taken out of a James Bond movie. A wearable app is a computer or electronic device worn as a piece of clothing or accessory, while a smart accessory is a normal item like sunglasses or sweaters with additional functions.
World Politics: The Bush Doctrine of preemptive strikes destabilised the world and fired up terrorism and dirty wars. The world is not a safe place, especially in the U.S. (who is beginning to look like a corporate-military dictatorship as time passes) and the U.K. and other western countries. The UN is making efforts to gain its own military forces, opposed by the US. Tensions are increasing all around.
The Underground: The thoroughly anti-democratic backlash in many countries pushed anti-war factions deep underground and radicalised them. Many militias exist and electronic warfare is maturing, hackers run the gamut from ruthless cyberterrorists and petty criminals to fun-loving explorers and well-intentioned freedom-fighters.
Character Concepts: Any normal person. Stats shouldn't be above 9 but any Skill level is accepted, as long as it makes sense. Combat in RL will be rare and all the rules of society apply :). I would prefer that all characters were from the same continent at least, or should have the means to travel to meet other RL PCs if desired. If you've watched .hack//<ANY>, you can see that RL PCs can range from brats, troubled teens, businessmen (and women), artists, etc. You -can- have law enforcement and military characters, since, in my experience, many soldiers like to role-play ^_^.