Some time not too long after the inclusion of nearly all the brands of products the human race had ever known, a change began to take place inside of The Kingdom that would truly alter the way in which it was treated by the outside world. With the coding in place and the continual upgrades to the system over these many years, a fundamental change was slowly brewing in the background of all the different systems. The way that programs could and did interact with each other was leading to a lot more hands-off on the most basic levels of how the world within a world actually ran.
One day, somewhere in The Kingdom, something went different. Something went faster. One day, a Non-Player Character (NPC) was came into being with enough processing to its creation that it slowly became aware that certain other Characters didn't play by the rules. The Kingdom had long since created a perpetual world where when Players might actually log out, their Characters were left in a kind of Auto-Running situation.
Either they were assumed to be away somewhere and not interacting while their owner was offline… or perhaps they even left them leveling up, doing a task for a long period of time while the Player was away. After all, a single human Player might have multiple alternate Characters (Alts) on their account, so the population of Player-based characters was far greater than the actual number of people playing. Those characters, while not under the control of Players, had to be accounted for somewhere… and this NPC slowly became aware of that.
This NPC was, of course, not human. There were a few that were, but they were all Moderators… and though Moderators had god-like powers they weren't allowed to use them to effect the world… except for in situations in which Players themselves hacked the system and were using god-like powers themselves… but these days, that rarely ever happened. A hacked account could be turned off at the source, and a Player Character would be transformed into something akin to a punishment to serve time until an allotted number of hours had gone by and they were allowed to return to their original form.
Transformations of a permanent sense weren't, usually. Actually, no transformations were inherently permanent without an influence of hacking or some other game-breaking mechanic. No, the transformations of a criminal (in and outside of The Kingdom) often seemed permanent due to their duration. Perhaps someone who had done a wrong would be stuck as an animal or even a location for a certain period of time until their time was served. Whatever the case, eventually they had come to learn their lesson, or else they'd stay they way they were for longer still (or even another form). Criminals from the real world were often hooked in an not allowed to leave… doing so was cheaper and often more to the point that conventional means of punishment.
This is important because the transition from criminal back into living society can be a bit of a jarring one. Some of them can't keep the story to themselves and others can't be convinced that telling such a story is ever in their best interest. Once you loose your god-like power and are struck back to the earth with the ban-stick of justice… you're lucky to even be allowed to continue to play at all.
But assuming the usually unaware lifestyle of Non-Players, one of them actually noticing what is going on beyond their normal 'lives' would be quite a development. When Players start having Out of Character conversations in the middle of an Inn on a summit of some mountain range around a lot of dwarf NPC's, for example, the usual two reactions to this are to 'not notice' the Players are talking about things that make no sense… or to 'call them on it'. The former is more likely these days since Player's have their own OOC communication channels built into their characters somehow.
Having said that, this particular NPC might have overheard a conversation which gives them the first indication that something greater than their universe is going on… or have been influenced by Player characters to the point where their transformation into something greater had to happen. This story will lead them on a transformation from irrelevant Non-Player… into someone who might make a bigger impact on the direction of The Kingdom for years to come.