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A horror mmo with two factions - living and dead?
Amathe
Member LegendaryPosts: 7,630
I think it would be fun if there were a horror PvP oriented game with 2 factions - living and dead.
When you roll your character you are temporarily assigned to one or the other faction. But you are never permanently on either side.
Instead, when you get killed, you join the "dead' faction. While dead, you have to kill a certain number of the living to rejoin them. This could mean assembling a new body from their parts, or taking a certain amount of their life essence.
Once living again you stay living until, well, someone on the dead side puts an end to that. 
Anyway, that's one idea. I would just love to see a horror oriented mmo.
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Comments
I think i heard there was someone making a Zombie themed mmo.
As far as horror goes, the only game that comes to my mind now, which is certain to come out that has the "horror " vibe in it is The Secret world.
Undead Labs is making a zombie mmo for the console. It has devs such as Jeff Strain and James Phinney both who worked for Blizzard and ArenaNet.
Op's math is way off.
Say it takes 1 death to become undead, then it takes anything more than 1 kill to become living again? Need I explain what would happen with that?
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sounds interesting
I am supprised there is no "Van Helsing" error mmo out there already. i
I can see your idea about the living and dead sides with the ablily to be turned form living to dead. Only difference ii see is there would probably have to be some type of quest/ ritual you would have to go through to be turned back or else be stuck somewere inbetween ( a third faction)
I challenged my reflection to a staring contest....4 days later i won
I think it would be better to just have the living side. If the consequence for dying is that you join the 'dead' side, and playing the dead side is just as fun if not more fun than playing the living side, then nobody is going to be afraid to die. In fact, they'll probably be trying to die so that they can run around as a super-zombie. And then it completely fails to capture any sort of horror feel.
So you say they should not include the dead said because it can be fun??? that makes no sense... so little sense that some dev somewhere would probably do it.And it wouldnt take away the horror it would just put it on the users to bring it. they would still be people that want to play either one side or the other just like every other game with two sides so long there are positives and negatives for playing both sides there is always going to be people liking one side and disliking the other.
Plus for it to work correctly they would have to separate the living = good and dead = evil aspect if someone can be living and evil or dead and evil also it can open up different areas of gameplay different sides to join different areas to enter depending on weither you living or dead it could really change how you play the game, add to the story also
I challenged my reflection to a staring contest....4 days later i won
Anyone heard of Urban Dead? It's a simple browser game with that theme. It's all text and simple HTML elements but apparently quite popular as there no absolutely no NPCs or mobs. Everyone you meet / eat is another player.
Oh hells yeah!!! George Romero, Day of the Dead, Seeing how the other half "lives", brain eating, smorgasbord of survival terror, dang!!!
It sounds to good to be true, it would never happen...
*edit- to excited while typing
While in general, the game sounds interesting, I can see problems with it. As someone else pointed out, the math is problematic. One death when living makes you a zombie. It takes multiple kills while a zombie to become living again. Most people would end up being zombies in very short order and then, there wouldn't be enough living players to kill.
Secondly, what about people who want to be zombies? What do they do? Not kill anyone? Or what do the living players do? Killing zombies seems to be a pointless endeavor, what do you get for doing so? It seems the safest course of action is to avoid the zombies altogether so you don't get killed.
Interesting concept, but needs work.
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Just some ideas taken from the browser game I mentioned earlier:
For a zombie to become human again, they could have the requirement of needing biotechnological assistance. For example, injecting some magic serum that knocks the zombie out in one hit (if successful) and the zombie will revive as a human after some period of time. In the browser game, this was actually used as a tactic by the living to take out zombie hordes where the living player can use his limited supply of needles to knock out that many zombies for a few hours. Of course, the needles are not too common as to not give the living too much of an advantage but also not too rare such that there are too many zombies.
The zombie does have a skill to make them resistent to the needle attack described above but if they learn the skill, then it's almost like a one way trip to being a zombie (almost permanent but not quite as there is still a way to revive). There are zombie specific advantages for going down that skill route for those who prefer to stay as a zombie.
The "world" could be temporary and reset when there are no living humans left. In the browser game I mentioned, there are special worlds who are open to new players for a limited amount of time and the idea is to determine the last survivor. The time limit is so that new living characters don't hop on and disturb the balance in the middle of the world's life cycle. It's a seperate world from the persistant one where everyone has join. The last survivor will be famous and could be given a virtual prize.
Zombies could be allowed to kill other zombies but at half the reward for killing a living character.
People of course try to avoid the zombies in the browser game but their characters stay in the world even when the player is logged off. This could be described as sleeping and motivates the players to find and build (barricade) safe places to rest. The places/buildings have to be powered to gain special functions though and powered buildings are a magnet to zombies....
Zombies automatically alert nearby zombies when attacking the living. This results in a horde of zombies gathering at a barricaded building quickly, bashing their way in and scaring the living.
There is no world chat and the living have ot communicate with each other via flare guns, cell phones (person to person talking), radio broadcast, graffiti, and local chat.
The health of the living does not regenerate automatically and requires the use of First Aid kits which are found in Hospitals and some Stores. Yea, this makes those places hot spots for zombies to attack.
Zombie health regenerate via eating the living or each other (at half the benefit).
There are weapons of course but they have to be salvaged at the appropriate places (which are also magnets for the smart zombie).
A tactic of the zombie horde (which greatly annoys the living) is for a zombie spy to revive, get inside a heavily barricaded safe house full of living people, and open the front doors for the zombie horde to come in.
DarkEden have 3 factions. It's horror MMORPG (vampires vs slayers) with hardcore PvP.
I loved DarkEden few years ago, but it's too retro for most tastes.
Actually, there is something similar out there. A game I truly still love, but there are no good servers out so.. It is called DarkEden.
Gosh I hope there will be a sequel to the first one, it is a very fun game. There are 3 races, vampires, slayers and ousters. Vampires have the ability to suck blood, and if this isn't cured in a timeframe the person who was bitten will become a vampire.
E:looks like someone made it before me
Yes, I was going to link that for the OP.
Played Urban Dead for ages and still log in once in a while to see what updates have been made.
In terms of gameplay UD is not too bad for what it is.
In fact... if this site is going to list Travian it should list Urban Dead
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
When's the last time you saw a zombie movie where the protagonists just ran up to the zombies and said 'Bite me! I wanna be a zombie so I can pwn nubs!" The point of zombies is the whole struggle to survive. Why struggle if playing a zombie is just as fun? Making something like this and having it be just another factional PvP game would be a waste.
And when you mention people liking one side and disliking the other, you compound the problem. People who choose to be living and end up zombified would spend all their time trying to come back to 'life', and players who want to be zombies who start out alive will try to become zombies as quickly as possible. And knowing MMO players, they will do it in whatever way will cause maximum grief to other living players. Like the previous poster mentioned in Urban Dead, where living 'zombie sympathizers' would take down barricades from the inside for their zombie buddies outside.
I don't think you could do something like this with traditional 'Night of the Living Dead' zombies, you'd have to come up with your own mythology of how zombies work and what they want from invading the land of the living.
Well CCP (makers of EVE Online) have already acquired a license from White Wolf to make an mmo. White Wolf is better known for Vampire the Masquerade storytelling games.