Times had changed.
Few people came into the old shop anymore and the Old Man had been getting frustrated. Version after version of his transformative pastime, "the Game of Change", had helped him wile away the hours watching hapless mortals go through metamorphosis after metamorphosis. But recently his business had worn away to almost a trickle. If it weren't for his command of so many magicks that money weren't an object, he would have had to close down his little shop years ago.
He'd grown disconsolate. Depression crept into his long life for the first time in what seemed like centuries. Some weeks only a single person would come in and sometimes, even then, only to ask to use the bathroom.
He'd changed such people into rodents and made them scurry out of his shop through the back door into the alley, but it wasn't the same. People rushed by at an increasing pace, talking into -first- their cell phones and then, as months stretched into years, their smart phones. Gods only knew what would come next. Everyone was moving at a fast pace and the Old Man felt as if he were being left behind.
He remembered the day well when his fortunes changed.
A quartet of teens came into the store, their leader -a brash, young fiery red head- looking for a last-minute gift for his girlfriend's birthday. The Old Man had been about to try and sell him a copy of his latest version of The Game when his attention was captured by the small, hand-held toy in one of his fellows' hands.
"Excuse me," he'd croaked. "But what ...is... that?"
The boy had looked up, brow furrowed at the obvious question. "It's my DS. Why? You got a policy against video games?"
Video games.
The Old Man's heart nearly skipped a beat.
He bustled the boys out of his store with a bottle of cheap perfume and a wave. With memory and knowledge spells at his disposal, he swiftly had gone to work learning all he could about the age of the Internet. With games such as "City of Heroes", "Guild Wars", "Rift", and -best of all- "World of Warcraft", he soon found his new angle ... his new way to stave off boredom in his eternal life.
Within a week he'd learned all he needed to conjure a daemon into a box and make his own computer. By the end of the month, he was navigating the Internet and designing Web pages like a pro. By Summer's end, he'd completed work on his latest game.
He dubbed his techno-arcane creation an "MMORPGoC" or "MMORPG of Change". To the outside world, it's name would be "Trasformazione Online" or "TransformaZone".
On the first day of Autumn he fired up his necromantic servers, listened to the wails of captured demonic entities powering the mother boards, and smiled. With glee he sent out the first of his advertisement emails calling attention to his "Free To Play" game. Within five minutes, his servers recorded a hundred user sessions.
Now, a week later, he sat back and watched on his monitor as player after player got pulled into his dungeons and adventures, their bodies paying the price as they sought fame, fortune, fun, and more. Some enchantments woven into the software hindered players from making outright warnings to newcomers but he found that was unnecessary. Enough of those logging in became addicted to his arcane trickery that, soon, they were inviting others in and luring them into the game's most interesting places.
Idly, he checked the server for the latest arrivals.
A new group was just logging in and creating their first characters in one of his well-developed game settings. Of them -"Fantasy", "Science Fiction", "Horror", and "Supers"- "Fantasy" was the most popular.
He watched his screen, seeing through it directly upon his victims. He chortled and leaned back in his chair, pleased at the newest to come into the TransformaZone.