Some years ago, I had started a story about some group of teenagers who played the newest VR game.
The VR technology in this world is decades ahead in comparison to our own and the VR worlds are mostly indistinguishable to the real world.
The newest and hottest technology that got introduced at the start of the story was the "timeslow". Through some brain research, it was now possible to accelerate time in the VR world, so that the time you spent in VR is massively longer than in the real world.
The AI technology is more advanced and the worlds and their inhabitants feel more natural.
The company behind it set it up, that the time in the games lobby would be 1/60th. So every minute that passes in the real world would be 60 minutes in the game.
From the lobby, the gamer had the possibility to get into other worlds (the real games), where time was accelerated even more. i.e. 1/1440th (1 minute real world, equals 1 day in-game.)
Also, the Company behind it advertised the non-gaming possibilities for people. Like reading a book, or even writing a book! (GRRM, get going!). Or learning something.
I had written 2 or 3 chapters with mostly setting up the premise, or rather, infodumping everything before shelving it for that time.
I had some issues I needed to address regarding the premise.
- meeting up with friends would be a pain in the arse! Just think about it, a friend that was 15 minutes late would be 15 hours late in the lobby! I included the lower accelerated lobby early on because of this issue, or the friends had to wait 15 days in-game for the late friend. But I didn't want to make the lobby real time because it was the premise of this new technology and the PR-Blitz of the company would make it a selling point.
- I wasn't sure what the overarching plot would be. This wasn't a "trapped in a VR game" premise. Mainly just Adventure? An Evil Corporation shadow plot?