#chaos gate

But I got curious about the sheer number of area locations.

(I also am aware I rarely talk about the series in spite of my Balmung of the Azure Sky avatar/pfp but it's mostly because I'd be talking way more about the Phases and Cubia than anything released from GU anime onward.)

Now for those unaware of the series: with the dot hack franchise the games are designed like a fake MMO because the setting itself is an early example of a VRMMO series. It was out long before Sword Art Online, although Log Horizon has dot hack beat in turn (while still being its own unique thing with Log Horizon more of an en-masse Isekai than the objective secret-known-to-few nightmare that The World is). Each area in-setting of dot hack is supposedly designed by the devs or maybe is just generated out of the box by the blackbox code "Morganna" with humans taking credit.

But because this is a real video game too, instead the area codes are used to help generate which specific style, size, element, level, and sort of drops you'll expect to find in a map. There are some areas that you access only for quest/storyline stuff. There are also some that you are blocked from reaching until you get a specific keyword through the fake forums, emails, or in-game interactions with other characters.

The key code system goes Server then a word from each three distinct codeword banks. So like the most famous example in the series is Delta Hidden Forbidden Holy Ground, but accessing it in Theta, Lambda, or Sigma for example would result in a very different map. Holy Ground is one word as some keywords are like "Sea Sand's", "No Face", or "Royal Edict".

dot hack IMOQ are spread across four games. There's a total of 5 listed servers (I forget if Omega is accessible before/after the finale), 101 word A, 103 word B, and 102 word C.

dot hack GU, which is now 3.5 games, has as far as I know 3 servers with a viable Chaos Gate (the teleportation system to reach the dungeon maps) and 150 word A, 91 word B, and 131 word C.

Even just by the basic number of words I already know this is going to be insane. I never even did more than 200 maps in one set of games, goodness... Admittedly I don't remember if any game locked some key codes off for plot reasons but this is insane.

Basic probability used: A times B times and so on, this results in the potential combinations.

IMOQ: 5 times 101 times 103 times 102 = 5305530, or 1061106 per server. That's 1.06 million combinations. Per server.

GU: 3 times 150 times 91 times 131 = 5364450, or 1788150 per server. 1.79 million combinations.