YGGDRASIL

"A DMMO-RPG where strength is not everything."

- Lilith describing the game, YGGDRASIL.

YGGDRASIL (ユグドラシル Yugudorashiru) was a fictional online game created by Lilith Choi. It was a DMMO-RPG (Dive Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) developed in Korea, but later translated to Japanese.

Infamous as the game was, its degree of customization made YGGDRASIL so popular that at one point in Korea, the word "DMMO-RPG" was practically synonymous with YGGDRASIL. The DMMO-RPG's feature ignited the creative spirits of its Korean players and sparked what would later be known as a Stylistic Revolution.

On the other hand, the game had been active since its release and until 2019. In the current year, 2019 however, the game's community by then already lost the vibrancy it once had. As a result, the remaining players still playing YGGDRASIL met their final day online.

Description
YGGDRASIL is a DMMO-RPG created by Korean Programmer and Hacker Lilith Choi. According to the developers' website, YGGDRASIL was a game of exploration, and so many things were mysteries left unknown for players to discover on their own or in groups. It was a game where all you were told was the controls before being thrown into the deep end. In other words, the special thing about YGGDRASIL was the incredible amount of freedom given to players, compared to any other DMMO-RPGs out there.

YGGDRASIL requires an exclusive console to play, which records logs for the week. Though the game is full virtual reality, it does not provide a sense of taste or smell and has a limited sense of touch. Due to the lack of technology when the game was developed, facial expressions and artificial intelligence are not supported. However, there were statuses like hunger and thirst which existed among players and the mounts they ride on in the game.

The most distinctive feature of YGGDRASIL was its flexible system to allow players to freely make choices. Players could select numerous races, jobs and various tools, allowing for customization in the game. If a player were to use separately sold creator tools, they could freely alter the appearances of weapons, armors, interior data, character visuals, and advanced settings of their in-game residence or home. The customization system was really far-reaching and broad, even allowing basic programming.

When It came to Equipment in YGGDRASIL, one could equip magic items in the following slots: head, face, body, three pieces of jewelry apart from one’s rings, underclothing, arms, hands, left and right rings, waist, legs and feet. Even a suit of full plate armor only counted as taking up the body slot. Players could only put one ring on for each hand. However, by using the power of a Cash Item, players are able to put a ring on each finger. A player could tinker with the game's database by using the creator tools and form original items. One could also buy appearances within the DMMO-RPG. Through doing this, a player is able to create an unlimited variety of original items. After a certain patch was updated into the game, players were given several ways to change their equipment’ appearance without changing their gear.

However, there are player characters from different races who are unable to make facial expressions in the game. In the beginning, YGGDRASIL characters had no facial expressions. As a result, a player’s avatar could not change expressions to match their voice. At the same time, a character’s mouth would not move with their words. Later on, external appearances were fixed.

Because of this, facial expressions were impossible to design, however, it was somewhat possible for a player's expression to change by using their own words. For example, it would not be that difficult for humanoid players. However, it is impossible to do so, since writing macros to move the faces of demi-humans and heteromorphic beings was extremely difficult. Instead, players can use their bodily motions to compensate for the lack of facial expressions in YGGDRASIL. Not only that, but a player can also touch their console to select various faces from one of the emoticons, using it as a way to identify the feeling and mood they have right now.

Nonetheless, the only way to tell how someone else was feeling was by their tone of voice. Producing a normal voice and minimizing the times one sounded different was not a skill unique to just a single person. When players had been depressed, someone else had also seen through how they had forced themselves to appear jovial.

The game had a system where players could pay a fee in order to participate in a lottery to win a rare item. This would include a type of cash gacha within the game where players had the opportunity to cash in money with the chance of winning a prize.

Cosmetic skins were only released and made available in limited quantities. If one missed out on them, it would be extremely difficult to acquire them afterward. As such, players tended to buy up any new cosmetic item that looked halfway decent.

On the other hand, Lilith did not provide any information about the game world’s map, and she was also inconsiderate enough not to supply any news about the game’s dungeons and things such as ore mining, food preparation or the raising of magical beasts. In a world like this, one had to investigate and discover things on one’s own. In fact, even the items that one could and could not use could only be felt out through repeated trial and error on the player’s part. There were walkthrough sites and news sites, but those sites only hosted a compilation of publicly known information or very untrustworthy rumors. YGGDRASIL was a game of exploring the unknown. Thus, any information one uncovered would be very valuable. There was no merit in publishing this valuable information for any stranger to view free of charge.

More importantly, YGGDRASIL was a game where information itself held value with a great example being the World Item. The number of people who freely shared newly discovered information with others was small and they usually had to pay a price if they wish to know about it. The same could also be said with classes such as Eclipse that possessed a secret trump card. Although a lot of information had already been collected, most of it pertained to dungeons or other locations, and it was estimated that only 30% of the nine worlds had been mapped so far. During the final years of YGGDRASIL, the chances of reliable information being made public on the web was rather high.

There are endless discoveries (special classes, items, etc.) players could find and obtain through adventures, such as focusing on certain skills like instant death spells, etc. with one example being the Caloric Stone, a World Item among one of the hidden items discovered in the game. Besides World Items and skills, there are also apoithakarah, scarletite or other prismatic ores that were of the highest tiers in YGGDRASIL.

When it came to players, functions existed (Forced System Access, Chat, Call GM, Log Out, and so on) that they used in the game. For example, using the shout command or a GM call would put the player in touch with a GM almost immediately, and shows how effective the functions were. Another example is the chat channel, where players can look up recent news, like the shutdown of YGGDRASIL. In addition, players can open a system console and connect to the developers’ website to inspect the official guild rankings.

World and Dungeons
As it can be guessed from the title, YGGDRASIL mainly refers to Norse mythology and has nine separate worlds based on it which are: Asgard, Álfheimr, Vanaheimr, Niðavellir, Midgard, Jötunheimr, Nifheim, Helheim, and Múspellsheimr. While each world is a leaf of YGGDRASIL with their own particular traits, they were estimated to be two to three times the size of Tokyo. Other leaves were eaten by Navagraha the World Eater, or shed and transformed into World Items.

There were nine huge Guild Bases of level 3,000, one for each world. If a weak guild were to control it, they would immediately be embroiled in complex guild wars, and holding on to the base would be very difficult.

Each of them was ridiculously huge, and there were many places within them which were difficult to explore. For instance, there were gigantic swamps, verdant expanses of rainforest, scorching deserts and the like. Players needed special equipment to delve into the dungeons there, as have a proper strategy and the determination to their life away for the trip. This was because these hard-to-find dungeons contained monsters which dropped valuable data crystals.

In any world, be it either Niflheim, Helheim or Muspelheim — things became more dangerous the further one went from the center of the world. In addition to wandering monsters, the very terrain itself became a hazard.

Some dungeons could only be found under certain conditions. For example, the entrance to a dungeon amidst a field of flowers in the depths of a forest could only be seen under the light of the full moon. Additionally, there was also the Frozen City in Niflheim, which could only be entered during a blizzard.

The first time one ran a dungeon, there would be a bonus, or about 10% more treasure chests. Also, the first time a dungeon was cleared, the big treasure chest would offer equipment with item levels up to 10-20% higher than usual. Clearing the dungeon under certain conditions would reward a World Item such as the Throne of Kings.

Tabula Smaragdina stated that dungeons existed with an even higher difficulty than the Great Tomb of Nazarick. In particular, he seems to know that one of those unnamed dungeons needs 36-man parties (a legion) and allows two guilds to cooperate in invading them.

Dungeons ranged from different types such as a simultaneous attack dungeon like Nazarick. Many people hated simultaneous-attack dungeons, also known as “die-by yourself dungeons." Dungeons like these required several parties working in unison along different routes to complete and were typically designed so that everyone would meet up at the boss room, where they would face the raid boss together.

Level
In YGGDRASIL, the maximum level a player can reach is 100. The game YGGDRASIL has two types of levels, Racial and Class levels. Monsters are different, however, since they not only have Racial and Class levels, but Monster Levels too. This is added to Class Levels if they have any.

Additionally, when a player died, two things occurred. The first was the loss of experience points and a consequent loss of levels, enough to set you back 5 levels, though that depended on the way they were resurrected. In YGGDRASIL, this wasn't that big of a drawback, since experience points could be regained rather easily unlike in other games. Characters below level 5 would disappear immediately upon dying, however, the death of a player character with a level lower than 5 will just revert them back to level 1. Secondly, one would drop a randomly equipped item. In other words, when a player character dies, they lose 5 levels and drop a random piece of equipment they had equipped.

Players could lose one or more pieces of equipment if a dungeon expedition happened to be very difficult. Because of that, players sometimes geared themselves up with second-rate items, the kind they would not mind losing. However, players could not clear the dungeon in one go with second-rate stuff, so they had to use their best equipment. Lilith designed the game so that the most valuable gear would be dropped first, which meant that the chances of an important item that was key to the player’s strategy being dropped would be greatly increased. Nevertheless, this penalty can reduce a bit of experience loss by using certain revival skills or cash items.

As monsters went up in level, they gained all sorts of special abilities. At this level, they could greatly decrease any damage done to them. As a player would level up in a party, the number of experience points gained was reduced in accordance with the level difference between both parties, to a minimum of one point. If a player's level goes down, the skills they've acquired at that level will also vanish and can no longer be used.

However, players who wanted to respect their characters often favored using death as a means to lower one’s levels, so they can gain other racial or job classes in place of their old ones. Though the loss of even a single level is considered to be a harsh punishment in a game where each level required a lot of experience points, losing levels was a very lax prospect in YGGDRASIL. In fact, Lilith wanted its players to explore previously undiscovered regions and find new things, rather than hunkering down in the familiar territory just because they were afraid of losing levels.

Resurrection
When a player uses a revival skill, he or she can choose the location they desire. Afterward, there were four optional methods of resurrection to choose from in exchange for experience points. The first type was an on-site resurrection. The second type was a resurrection at the entrance of a dungeon. The third type was resurrecting at a nearby safe town. Finally, the fourth type was a resurrection at a specified location, such as a guild base where the player is situated in and is a member of.

However, if your character or NPC were to get affected by a World Item like Longinus, it will be impossible to revive the individual without help from the resurrection power of other World Items. There are even items such as one of Lilith's rings that allow her to lower the cost of resurrection. For Shalltear, she has a resurrection item which allows her to instantly revive herself upon dying.

In YGGDRASIL, using spells like [Resurrection] or [Raise Dead] would mitigate a player's level loss if they were to die. On the other hand, NPCs belonging to players or guilds can revive instantly by paying the right amount of gold fee depending on their amount of levels in particular. Their revival doesn't come with the loss of levels, but gold coins instead. As long as the guild paid the requisite fees to resurrect them, they would be revived back to life without any ill effects.

Gold Coin Currency
The gold obtained in YGGDRASIL wasn't just used to buy items, it was also used for many other things in the game. One of those things included covering the administration fees for managing a Guild’s base-defense systems. In addition, it also provided the costs for automatically summoning servants of level 30 or higher, as well as a required medium to launch certain spells. Gold was used to pay the manufacturing costs of items, and even the revival of dead NPCs too, in which the price for doing so can vary depending on their level.

Through using separately sold creator-tools, players could even customize the appearance of YGGDRASIL's gold and experience points in place of its original setting. For example, say a player has killed a dragon. Gold, data crystals and experience points will still continue to drop by these dragons as per normal DMMO-RPGs, but by modding the game, it only makes the visuals of them being dropped by monsters different. While the dropping of gold and experience points does not change, crystals containing data are the ones that dropped instead. Gold coins were always in a stack and they had no weight to it.

Defeated monsters often tend to drop money very easily. This was because there were many crafting classes in the game. Most of them made scrolls, wands, and staves, which were frequently used by magic casters, in which they could use as well. If less money dropped, magic item production would be very difficult, and magic-using classes would have to think twice about going into intense combat on adventures. This went against the design philosophy of having players explore the world. Therefore, the game was actually much more generous than its contemporaries with dropped money.

Based on this game's economy, top-class weapons in any YGGDRASIL’s player shop were estimated to cost at least around 100 million gold coins.

Races
There are more than 700 races, including racial classes that need certain levels of low-rank racial class to learn. Races of YGGDRASIL can be roughly categorized into three taxa. In the game, demihuman and heteromorphic races unlocked racial skills when they reached certain levels. Some items can change races permanently. In the game, humans and demi-humans, who had limited lifespan, would grow and age normally. In contrast to them, heteromorphic races with unlimited lifespan would stop growing after a certain stage.
 * Humanoid Races include humans, elves, dwarves, etc. Humanoid races are weakest in basic status and cannot have a racial level. Instead, they can learn more classes which provide high stats or powerful skills more easily, giving them higher potential. Having familiar appearances and advantages, human races were the most popular in YGGDRASIL.
 * Demi-Human Races include orcs, ogres, lizardmen, etc. Demi-Human races can have more basic statuses and have a racial level. Demi-Human races are similar to the average between Human races and Heteromorphic races. While the Demi-Human races weren't visually appealing they can still perform better than Humanoid races.
 * Heteromorphic Races include slimes, vampires, devils, etc. Heteromorphic races own the most powerful basic statuses, which can be strengthened even more by increasing their racial level. High-ranking races also provide special abilities similar to that of a monster's. Besides providing a racial level and special abilities, the Heteromorphic races are able to also gain more ability points than the Humanoid or Demi-Human races. However, they were penalized in other ways as the racial level comes at a cost where it limits the amount of jobs levels players could learn. Thus, Heteromorphic races were very unpopular just for that reason. PKing a Heteromorphic player doesn't give any penalty to the player that did it.

Classes
The class system is considered to be the key elements of character customization. Counting the advanced classes as well as the based classes, there were more than 2,000 classes in YGGDRASIL that players could choose from.

Although 15 is the highest level reachable in a single class, there were some high-rank classes that seemed to have lower level limits. Therefore, it is actually possible for a player to own at least 7 or more classes by the time they hit the overall level cap of 100. If one ignores efficiency, it is also possible to get a hundred level 1 class. There are also some 'optimized' class builds discovered by players. In other words, it was a system where it was impossible to have completely identical characters unless you intentionally made them alike.

Additionally, experimenting with different classes was only possible by dying and losing levels. Even if it was easier to gain levels in this game, it was still a time-consuming process for most players. In fact, some powerful classes were unlocked by PKing heteromorphs and made it beneficial among players. In normal games, most people would spread the news of a newly-discovered class on walkthrough sites to share with others. However, games like YGGDRASIL put a very high premium on information.

Depending on the skills and abilities they possessed, players can pick up different pieces of additional information upon exploring a new area. For example, a class like the alchemists and herbalists, with their herbalogical skills, would be able to learn about the various herbs that they could harvest in the area.

Whereas if there was someone who is level 90 with a rogue class job, or a character over level 80 with full specialization as a rogue, it was near impossible to open a locked box. In a way, a high-level thief would be able to steal items from the box. Just because a rogue could, It did not mean said rogue could just immobilize their opponents and rob them dry. The limit would have been one or two items per player.

There were also some classes in particular, which had the penalty of not being able to summon monsters whose karma values were far too different from their own. However, the fact that Lilith did not have such classes was why she is still somehow capable of summoning angels by using a super-tier spell. Incidentally, the monsters summoned by those classes can only become stronger the closer the monsters’ karma values were to their masters.

The warrior classes were limited by one's real-world reflexes, that restriction only came into play during duels between top-class warriors. For that reason, warriors need to have a good body in real life to perform well in-game. It was not a deciding factor during normal play. According to Touch Me, when in battle, one could instantly sense an opponent’s intentions, thus evading his or her attacks.

Not only that, there were classes with actual stories behind them. For instance, Cursed Knights had the backstory of being corrupted Cleric-knights who had been cursed for unknown reasons that aren't clear yet. Particularly, very strong classes like Cursed Knights are bound to have weak points and penalties as their drawbacks to make the game more balanced.

Trivia

 * During the final years of YGGDRASIL, the chances of reliable information being made public on the web was rather high.
 * In Norse mythology, YGGDRASIL is the World Tree, a great ash tree located at the center of the universe and joining the Nine Worlds of Norse cosmology.
 * In YGGDRASIL, the advantageous worlds for heteromorphic players were Niflheim, Helheim, and Muspelheim.
 * Creating a second character was strictly forbidden in YGGDRASIL.
 * According to Touch Me, it's possible for players to rent a guild base rather than conquer a dungeon.
 * In YGGDRASIL, a blow to the neck counted as a critical hit and dealt extra damage.
 * A fatigue system used to exist in the game.
 * YGGDRASIL characters like players and NPCs have access to their own inventory and its space limit can even be extended through the use of Cash Items.
 * (Game/LN) The game was free to play, so it didn't require a subscription fee. However, in the Web novel, the game did, in fact, have a subscription fee, albeit, with a hefty price attached to it.
 * It was hinted from Lilith's talk with Evileye that the game seemed to have way-points used to teleport players from city to city.
 * Players could also interact with each other by entering a Waiting Area prior to fully diving into YGGDRASIL.