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Salem: A First Look
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
It wasn't all that long ago that Paradox Interactive introduced the world to Salem, it's upcoming hardcore permadeath MMO based on the legendary city of witch hunts. In an exclusive first look, MMORPG.com Industry Relations Manager Garrett Fuller takes a look at Salem. We've also got an exclusive video and the first debut of the rather smelly Squonk. Check it out and then leave us a couple comments.
Salem is a game that may be flying under the radar at the current point in time, but after recently having a look at it through Paradox, it won’t be doing that for long. Players who are looking for a sandbox style world with open crafting and more importantly open PvP will soon discover Salem. The fun art style only scratches the surface of what this game could mean as players enter the New England woods to begin their settlements. Salem is a browser launched game that can offer some serious fun for MMO players.
Read more of Garrett Fuller's Salem: A First Look.
Comments
FYI salem is from the guys behind heaven and hearth another permadeath sandbox mmo. so expect much the same only 3d.
maybe if paradox get thier foot in the mmo scene they will commision taleworlds to do a mount and blade mmo, or maybe they already are ;D
dev interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ftb-cj2WIs
My blog:
I'm interested. I'm wondering if the place in history indicates that there will be Witchcraft, and if that would mean things like Vampires and Sorcery too. What about things like shapechanging and Werewolves? American Indian lore?
Once upon a time....
defo witchcraft its in the interview I posted
My blog:
Those guys really know how to design a game, H&H is a concentration of great ideas. They just need to put some shiny to their game, and i'm sure it will be a blast; i mean nice graphic, ui and those stuff players usually like.
I just watched some YouTube. Felt like Holloween time at a Kindergarten. I sort of follow the thought that art isn't everything, but come on.
Once upon a time....
Interesting considering that Salem was founded in 1626 and the poem, "The Colossus" was not written until 1883. But hey, so much for historical accuracy.
It will be an intriguing game, as long as you have no qualms about psuedo and fake history heh.
Women cannot, at this time, own property (unless their husband dies and he had no brother, and they had no sons). Slavery/indentured servitude is how a great number of the "colonists" were able to even afford the transport across the Atlantic, so will that be in?
Not to mention that all farming skills from the "homeland" pretty much are absolutely useless in the New World until after local flora and fauna species have been replaced. Not to mention the whole myth of religious freedom lol, do we get to burn people at the stake and put them into the stocks for no other reason than that their land buts up against mine and I want to expand? 
Can we abandon the settlement to join the natives? *Historical fact*: Most colonies had laws on the books prohibiting people from running and going native. Especially with Irish and Scottish settlers, coming from tribal cultures themselves, found the native way of life far more appealing and more natural than the oppressive filth that made up the colonial town life.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
This game's focus will be the opposite of PvP.
In H&H, PvP is usually treated the same as Murder and frowned upon by the community just as harshly as in real life. Players can take the Ranger skill and track down murderers to bring justice to the wilderness.
That being said, there will most likely be bands of murderers who will wipe out entire cities at once and if their servers are global, just like in H&H, it will quickly turn into a real ethnic crusade.
In short, no this is NOT a brutal PvP game, this is a realistic survival game.
I thought that I had read that whwat you describe as being in hnh was what they were going for over here? Could be mistaken but it was from some interview or something right around the initial launch of the game. Along with that this is 100% permadeath, your toon dies, its dead.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
Not my kind of game...make me wish to be a witch, abandon the colony and rush to Natives.
Other than permadeath, why is this any different than Xsyon? And we know that game was boring to most, a niche for a few.
I'm interested in the permadeath system, but I don't like to craft. It seems like everytime I hear about a cool sandbox game, I'm told that the game revolves around crafting. What about players that only care about being a soldier or mercenary. Seems like we'll be left behind by those who split their time between crafting and fighting.
And the Vikings actually discovered America, but whose really paying attention. /shrug
Sandbox games need an economy to pay for wars. If there are too many soldiers, and war alone makes money, crafters can't pay you to be a soldier, and few soldiers pay other soldiers to work for them ;P Horizons would have been a great game if there had been some pvp, item decay, and the ability to take land (maybe not destroy it, but simply tax it). The first few months had a great economy, in that "soldiers" made good money from killing, and smart crafters made good money off them, and both needed the other to survive (especially when it came to housing).
Sign me up for that
although I prefer medi-evil rather than the era of black powder, with fire & sword is fun and all but I think in an MMO setting it would kinda suck.
"Death in Salem is unforgiving. If your character dies, that’s it, similar to those early colonial winters."
Let the great greifing begin !
Game mechanisms from heaven & hearth are just on an other level. I don't know how it will unfold because those guys don't relly have the grandor syndrom so they just do what they like on the pace they like and its not bad at all even for the players i must say, its kind of relax even if the server usually need one full day to go back up. H&H is a game where building a community and a city is the main aspect, so it just a bit more than the usual hack & slash mmo you usually play. You have fully developed feature like farming, crafting is just on an other level and stuff like that. Even their combat system was totally diferent and refreshing compared to those "other mmo". So ye at last a mmo where building mean as much as killing, it was about time really.
I don't know about Salem, but H&H was for me the Uo that should have been if it wasn't sold to EA. As i said those guys should just put a bit more effort on the shiny aspect, but it seam they don't give a shit about this lol, and thats a positive lol on my part right.
Anyway thumbs up to those guys, they are those kind of dev that keep some hope for the genre.
I really would like to see how to build a house, if it would be like minecraft, I would be stunned.
But i doubt that, so please if anyone find some vidos please link xD
No videos have been released that I'm aware of. I haven't been following the Paradox forums closely enough to know for sure, though. I have been playing SeaTribe's other game, Haven & Hearth, and the community there has been great about digging stuff up and supporting the devs. I figure if there is one, it would have made it there.
As far as buildings go, until I see otherwise, I expect it will be similar to HnH: decide what building you want, prepare the ground for it, and then start building by loading materials in. I will allow that they (the devs) have spoken of some of the systems that are going into Salem, so I won't be too surprised if there is something different to it.
Permadeath, open PvP in a setting oozing with intolerance and witch burnings...yeah, this will end well...
If anyone plans to play this, be sure to roll a crafter that makes wooden stakes for witch burnings. You'll make a killing, literally.
Permadeath open pvp, great things until someone abuses it. It won't keep a huge playerbase if it's anything like H&H where the low players constantly get picked off for no reason by non-skillcapped people with stupid amount of stats (Tibia? Especially Danubia, anyone?). It'll just rotate out old players with new and not really expand anywhere, especially if technical support is anything like H&H.
The H&H series has so much potential just going to waste.
I was interested when I saw that this was a colonial mmo. Then I watched the developer interview. No thanks. Burton and New England? Yea... no. Sorry, good luck.