Xeno Cosmos Online

Welcome to Xeno Cosmos Online, the world's most popular science fiction MMO.

From the great cities of old Terra, to the gleaming citadels of the Makarni Empress. From the deep blue oceans of Tehtys to the endless sea of stars at the galactic rim. Xeno Cosmos online is the largest virtual world ever created. A full galaxy of over a trillion stars to be explored, colonized and fought over. Explore an infinite universe of science fiction adventure, a game so real that you'll never want to return to reality again.

Warning. Xeno Cosmos Online is meant for mature audiences, and is not for the faint hearted.

Background

Released in 20XX, by the previously unknown game studio Dharma Creative, Xeno Cosmos Online has long been the world's most recognizable science fiction MMO, and has managed to make the jump from traditional markets like America, Korea, Europe and Japan into emerging markets such as India, Vietnam, Brazil and Indonesia. Central to the game's success was its leveraging of new VR and neural interface technology to allow for an impressive full body experience, in which you are actively immersed into the world of the game. This is combined with an ultra-realistic style in which every working part of the universe is fully realized, from freight shipment to the politics between PC and NPC factions.

Xeno Cosmos Online is also known for having large amounts of procedurally generated and player generated content, with whole areas of the galaxy given over to players to shape. This content was allowed to spread back into main areas of the game by developers, to somewhat mixed effect. It did however allow them to fill large amounts of the galaxy with content.

The game is also famous for its often toxic userbase, who take the game entirely too seriously, and are known to commit vast amounts of time to the game. Online and offline espionage, skullduggery and even use of real world methods to disrupt in game enemies have all been tried by player groups within XCO, and much of the game holds grudges going back a full twenty years.

Twenty years into its cycle, Xeno Cosmos Online is experiencing a resurgence in player count bought about by the massive wars taking place across several sections of the map, and interest bought on by its twentieth anniversary, and a series of new upgrades that have been bought out for it. The current player count is said to approach one hundred million, and the developers believe it may pass over the one hundred million mark for the first time ever on the twentieth anniversary day.

Lore and the structure of the Xeno Cosmos Universe

Xeno Cosmos online is set many thousands of years into the future, after an ancient race of advanced aliens, the Sorsoi, uplifted humanity from Earth and allowed them to roam the wider galaxy. Humanity has since split into six great NPC empires, who divide the centre of human space between them. At the start of the game, now nearly twenty years ago, the galaxy had just been riven by a massive war, which it was only just recovering from, creating chaos and missions for PCs. After twenty years, this storyline is all but forgotten, with the main thrust of the game's story being based around combat between the various human empires, and a hostile alien block, known as the Word.

Aesthetically, Xeno Cosmos Online is a place of sleek lines and stark colours. Most planets seem to have unusually perfect weather. Stations gleam against space, great silver, blue and red castles against the knight, itself shot through with bright nebula, gas giants and sparkling asteroids. Technology is sleek, shiny and with clean lines. Clothes tend to be fashionable looking and well fitted, often tight fitting to the character model, but can include various forms of goggles, horns and back pack sensors.

These aesthetics are somewhat compromised by player generated content in some areas. The most popular aesthetics for this include darker, more industrial looking star ships based on early twenty first century science fiction, and the perennially popular "Korea" style MMO clothing. These often grant excellent stats, but are rather embarrassing to wear, and many players cover them with other clothing.

Mechanics

Xeno Cosmos Online is a heavily realistic space sim, with the player flying ships as they would be flown and performing other actions as they would be performed. Skill is, however, only one part of the game, as aspects of build, and what equipment you're using also can have a great effect on your survival. The game includes technological and psychokinetic abilities that resemble magic for use in personal conflict, and many ships have amazing abilities to tank certain types of damage, or rapidly heal nearby ships.

Stations

The focus of the game world is stations. These include the massive, neutral Sorsoi Stations, which are fitted with ancient devices which deactivate all weapons around themselves, and provide a safe zone, and the various NPC and player controlled stations, which have various services (mission hubs, equipment vendors, crafting and ship construction stations), and secure docking. Warning: apart from Sorsoi stations, no area of space is completely secure. NPC stations will be patrolled by police and warships, but these are only as effective as the AI crews running them. Truly skilled raiders may still be able to raid you.

Death and Resurrection

Xeno Cosmos Online does not include permdeath. If you die, you are resurrected at a pre-chosen Soros life temple, but lose your ship, any equipment you were carrying or implants in your body. In practice, this means that there is a bellcurve in death consequences. Death means almost nothing to new players, who have only free starting equipment, or to veterans with near infinite amount of in game money.

Content Types

Player Generated

==The Setting

Current Situation

You are a group of players who have resubbed, or newsubbed for the twentieth anniversary and the great war, new expansions and other content. You don't know one another well, but you are linked by one person, a user by the name of AnavRin801. You've played with AnavRin801 in a lot of games, and found she's pretty fun to be around. Now she's invited you all to meet her in XCO for the twentieth anniversary celebration, and see some neat content she found.

System

TBD but based on gumshoe

You have a pool of points and can add as many as you want to each roll, but they only refresh once every so often.