In G.U., Vol. 2 you got "Data Seeds" by using your avatar against AIDA. In Vol. 3 you got "Virus Cores" by using your Avatar Awakening on regular monsters in the field.
However, in .hack//ROOTS the Twilight Brigade was collecting Virus Cores, which opened the road from the Coite-Bodher Battlefield to Backtop City Megan Fi. That virus cores that opened the road.
However, in G.U. vol. 2 you used Data Seeds in the exact same way.
Was it simply an interpretational error?
Some interesting things to point out:
In Episode 4, Tawalaya recieves his yellow Virus Core from one of his scouts who did a job following a player. They recieved compensation for the job, and the virus core along with it. It was never revealed (to my knowledge) who the player was they were doing the job for.
When approached with the Virus Core, Naobi tells Tawalaya there were lots of them in the old game (which I'm guessing he is referring to R:1/IMOQ). Since he was Wiseman in the original games, and travelled with Kite, I guess he would know that. ^^'
However, when Ovan and Shino tell the Twilight Brigade to start hunting for Virus Cores, Shino does the training, and this is what she says:
Shino:
We need a virus core. It's a special item that can only be found in a Lost Ground.
Now, Shino whips out a virus core she has only seconds later. Where did she get it?
I remember it was in the .hack//G.U. Trilogy movie or the G.U.+ manga, that Shino was the original Innis user, right?
Now, it seems to me, its either of two possibilities:
1) Ovan is using his Avatar to extract virus cores and is leaving them for the Brigade to find, leading them on with false infromation such as "they can only be found in a lost ground". (we know he's already activated his avatar, because he created the Twilight Brigade to look for the Key of Twilight, and save his sister Aina, at which point he awakened)
2) Someone else is leaving the virus cores for the Twilight Brigade and TaN ot find, hoping ot stir things up
So, I don't know. It certainly is an oddity of difference between the games and the ROOTS anime. I mean, in the anime they used Virus Cores, which were items that were outiside the specs, randomly found in Lost Grounds, that were then used to open the road to Megan Fi in Coite-Bodher, but in the games they used Data Seeds, which came from AIDA to open the road, and virus cores were extracted from monsters to level up Lost Weapons, right? xP
I wish I could sort out the differences. Are they interchangeable? Can both Data Seeds and Virus cores open the road to Megan Fi, or did the area itself change?