Wish someone would make a "Land of the dead" style mmofps.

Kungaloosh1

If you are an mmo studio looking for making something unique, relevant and profitable please consider this.

Using George A Romero's "Land of the dead" film you have your setting already in place.

The game could start with a solo tutorial, much like Funcom's "Age of Conan", where the players finds themselves in their home, waking up to the news of an apocolyptical scene with the recently dead coming to life. In a hurry to find a place of safety, the player gets instructions from the radio and sets off.

In this tutorial, the player is immersed into the setting, allowing themselves to get the feel of the world gone mad. Instincts kicking in, understanding that the key to survival is people, protected property and their wits.

I would personally like to see the end of the tutorial with the player finding themselves in a no win situation, only to be rescued by a scout group from the home base in Pittsburgh, Pa.

At this point the players pick themselves up, dusts themselves off and tries to find order to chaos and keep a reason for living.

Players can chose from a number of fields to concentrate on.

Examples of classes:

1-Gunnery

2-Field medicine

3-Scouting and scavenging

4-Leadership

5-unarmed combat

Tradeskilling could be among the following:

1-Carpentry and device manufacturing

2-weapon repair/manufacturing-subset ammunition manufacturing

3-farming/cooking

 

Multiple play spheres for people to concentrate on including

1-Missions and recon

2-city defense

3-player housing (player starts in slums, working their way to live in the ultimate "fiddlers Green"

4-PvP at later stages of the game

Overall it is an "Us vs them" affair. The living vs the dead. The dead are the enemy, and becoming the dead is the goal to avoid.

In terms of pve enemies, the dead can be both the Romero slow and stupid type combined with other faster more intelligent dead. The slow ones, while alone pose little threat to a person, in great numbers can be deadly.

 

Missions and activities could be among the following:

1-resource recovery

2-looking for survivors

3-expanding useable areas for civilized humans (think taking over and securing a mall, hospital, etc)

4-creating thriving outposts outside the city walls.

PvP could be almost gang style. Turf wars outside the city gates, player run towns looking to take over. Realm vs realm in a way, but meaner.

 

 

Now in most of the movies, a bite means certain undeath. For playability reasons i could think that if someone gets bit, they can receive new medication that will alleviate the effects. If it were up to me though, i would rather see things like amputation and burning fresh wounds to kill the contagion.

I would also like to see a special ruleset server where you get one character, survive at all costs. If you die, you become one of the undead until you yourself are "killed".

 

 

The hub city itself would provide a good safe haven for the most part to players. A river on three sides and an electric fence on the other. As the game progresses and ages, more territory can be added, giving players more room to roam.

I know this style is not for everyone, but there are enough people out there who love mmo's, love fps games and are truly looking for something different for this to work.

I could definately see this being a skill set kind of game over a level game, but it could work either way.

Any thoughts?

ps sorry for the gigantic wall of text :P

 

Gamesmith

http://undeadlabs.com/

This is the best chance at a good zombie MMO currently. The company is headed by Jeff Strain and if you don't know that name, you don't know MMORPGs very well. I'm looking forward to their game in a big way.

Kungaloosh1

A couple of things on undead labs.

 

They recently went through layoffs, sending most of the staff home. It is really iffy for this to come through.

Beyond that, this may sound elitest but i wouldn't ever play a console based mmo, especially when it comes to fps style action. I am a purist. I love my mouse and keyboard for this type.

Also, i am looking for a much more adult orientated game, rated 18+ so that the developers aren't hamstrung into putting out a meak game.