Zombie MMORPG in the Works

Warcry has a very short blurb about a just announced Horror-genre Massively Multiplayer game. Titled Exanimus, the game looks to be set in a post-apocalyptic zombie setting. From the piece: "While most of the world is dead, there are small pockets of survivors that exist in barricaded cities across the globe. Players of Exanimus will have the option of playing as a living survivor or as one of the dead roaming the earth. Exanimus will allow players to experience a MMO based in a horror genre by creating a dark and visually "intense" environment. Exanimus is expected to be rated "Mature" and not intended for anyone under the age of 18."

Comments

Urban dead?

[Ligur]

Sounds like a beefed up version of Urban Dead.

Re:Urban dead?

[ReverendLoki]

HARMANZ GAN... Er, I mean, exactly what I was thinking. Personally, I'm interested in seeing how they make the Zombie side interesting, and able to keep players. Unlike UD, I imagine that when you log out of this game, your avatar goes as well, not leaving a body for other players to attack. What happens when you have 1000 Survivor players log in, and 5 Zombies?

Even if the sides are even number-wise, part of the horror atmosphere comes from being outnumbered by the shambling undead. It will be interesting to see how they handle balancing these inequities. Perhaps they can hire some of the people behind the Natural Selection HL mod for advice?

Re:Urban dead?

[Cy Sperling]

I think the key is to make the zombie portion of the game revolve around playing a mob rather than an individual zombie. Leveling up wouldn't give you more health, rather increase the size of the controlled mob. Playing a zombie character shouldn't essentially be like playing a living character who sleeps outside and can't use items.

Re:Urban dead?

[ReverendLoki]

Hmmm.. in other words, the zombie players would be looking at it maybe a bit more like an RTS, controlling armies of units. Or maybe like a deranged version of Pikmin. Interesting...

Re:Urban dead?

[Cy Sperling]

Pikman is a great example. The player could have a certain amount of points, relative to their level, that they could spend on their mob. Certain zombie types would have different costs allowing the player to customize the makeup of their mob. High level players would be powerful by having larger and more diverse mobs. The zombies themselves could be relatively easy to kill as individuals, but the emphasis for zombie players is the horde. I think the way they handle player death is really a tough nut to crack. Urban Dead does make dead players become zombies. The Necrotech skillset allows other living players to revive zombies back into living characters. I kind of see this as a bit of a cheat. Though this does lead to the fun concept of dumping the freshly dead outside before they wake up as zombies, people wanting to play as living characters don't behave as flesh hungry zombies- they simply head for the nearest advertised revive point. Player death is very tricky in this context... Perhaps player death would lead to a temporary NPC status where for a short time, the reanimated corpse would run wild. Players could respawn but would teleport back to a hub of some sort- leaving a doppleganger NPC zombie in their place. Either way- to actually recreate the threat of the freshly dead reanimating to attack their companions, they can;t leave the zombie-behavior of the freshly dead purely in the hands of the players. Granted some hardcore roleplayers will stick to the fiction of it, most won't.

Re:Urban dead?

[ReverendLoki]

You know, that could be the start of an interesting mechanic... The zombie player starts with one zombie - will call him the "Zombie Lord", for lack of a better term. He gets knocked down, he gets back up, maybe with a penalty, maybe not. He kills a human, the human player goes back to a spawn point of some sort to start again (again, with or without penalty). Meanwhile, the corpse he leaves behind stands up, and becomes the first minion in the Zombie Lord's horde. He follows the ZL around, attacks his targets, etc. Next corpse left by a human he kills becomes the second minion in his blossoming horde. Now, if a minion gets knocked down, does it get back up? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe only after a period of time, and maybe only for a finite amount of time.

Now if they come out with this game and it uses any of these mechanics, we'll have to point back to this thread and demand royalties...

Re:Urban dead?

[Lehk228]

Brnhr.

Re:Urban dead?

[ultranova]

Though this does lead to the fun concept of dumping the freshly dead outside before they wake up as zombies, people wanting to play as living characters don't behave as flesh hungry zombies- they simply head for the nearest advertised revive point. Player death is very tricky in this context... Perhaps player death would lead to a temporary NPC status where for a short time, the reanimated corpse would run wild. Players could respawn but would teleport back to a hub of some sort- leaving a doppleganger NPC zombie in their place. Either way- to actually recreate the threat of the freshly dead reanimating to attack their companions, they can;t leave the zombie-behavior of the freshly dead purely in the hands of the players.

Simple solution: there's a limited number of lives in the game. In order to have a life, you have to take it from someone who has it. That is, kill a living player and you become one, and he becomes a zombie. Now you just need to have the server control the ratio between living and dead by automatically making some people living and some zombies at the start...

A zombie cannot be permanently killed, but will always raise back up again after a short while. However, a zombie can't earn exp, and will always be "level 1" - if you had levels as human, you lose them when you become a zombie, and regain them when you regain your humanity. Same for items. That way, all the zombies will desperately want to become humans, and because they are so much weaker, pretty much have to attack en masse. Since zombies can't level, the various grinders are sure to fight tooth and nail to become human again.

As a practical matter, you don't immediately become a human when you kill one, it takes five minutes (with a running countdown). That way you have time to escape from the fight - otherwise you'd just be killed as soon as you turned human in the middle of the battle.

Logged-of humans fall unconscious. An unconscious human can obviously be easily killed by any zombie, so better find a safe location. No place is inherently safe (zombies can attack you everywhere), but of course the players can establish player-guarded resting areas in the ruins of abandoned cities (in fact I'd put the entire game into such a city), and of course zombies would consider those their main targets. People will still have to leave them to get exp, to scavenge for resources, and so on.

Oh, and the zombies can see in the dark, while the humans can't. To avoid cheating, a zombie in suitably deep shadow is invisible to the client as well - that is, the server won't send the geometry at all.

Of course all this requires a game engine that can take a lot of people in the same area at the same time. It would also require pretty low lag, since zombies hiding in the dark leads to surprise attacks. Alternatively, you could perhaps determine a "guard location", so that your character shoots as soon as a zombie pops to the guarded area - this would make the game more strategic than reflex test.

Anyway, that's how I'd do it.

Hey!

[MyLongNickName]

Players of Exanimus will have the option of playing as a living survivor or as one of the dead roaming the earth.

It is based off of my experiences at work. I demand royalties!

Un!

[tehshen]

Players of Exanimus will have the option of playing as a living survivor or as one of the dead roaming the earth.

Sheesh, how many times is this? Undead, not dead! Zombies care very much about these things. You should too if you like your frontal lobe.

Re:Un!

[YU Nicks NE Way]

In my experience, zombies care very little about much of anything except the frontal lobes of pre-zombies. I guess I've been associating with the wrong zombies.

Is it possible to "win"?

[khasim]

Given that the zombies will not breed (except by converting the living), there would be a finite number of them.

Would it be possible to "win" this by killing 6 billion + zombies?

Before you start laughing, remember, we're talking an online game here. It is possible to kill thousands and thousands of "monsters" in other games. Five years into this, will the few remaining living be searching for the few remaining zombies?

Re:Is it possible to "win"?

[tehshen]

That actually sounds like a clever marketing ploy - five or so years after its release, the game will suddenly get many more players who want to be the final zombie-killer.

Re:Is it possible to "win"?

[Lord_Dweomer]

What I would love.....and what would never happen...is to have "rounds" of the game. You start off the world, and you have a single zombie running around and he converts a few NPCs. Then it spreads....the world would start off very heavy on the human side, but gradually, if things went smoothly, it would convert to zombies only....depending on the organization of things. Of course what you can't account for is griefers who might get converted to zombies and try to prevent them from killing humans, or humans who try to get other humans killed.

After all of one side had been killed off, the game would "reset".

Re:Is it possible to "win"?

[guardiangod]

At least the non-pornographic ones!

I find your idea intriguing and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Is it possible to "win"?

[2008]

Absolutely.

What I really want from an MMO is a kind of massively-multiplayer-co-op-FPS, basically 1000 player co-op Serious Sam, with the squad organisation from BF 2 and with huge GTA-style (but detailed interiors of buildings) freeform levels. Have each round last about a month, starting from spreading out from a beachhead, clearing the streets, rooting enemies out of buildings/rooftops/sewers, defending against counterattacks, then finally taking the city which brings out a final boss. Basically have each enemy that dies stay dead, or be permanantly killable in some other way, e.g. fight your way through a regenerating swarm to kill the egg layer, infected zombies that can convert players, but the infection can be stopped by killing them all. This means you'd actually have an impact on the world, unlike most MMOs. Permanantly destructible scenery would also be very cool, if even more technically difficult.

Make killing the enemies effectively require co-operation, e.g. pilots needing gunners, medics, different weapons more effective against different enemies, directionally-shielded enemies that you need to attack from all sides to beat.

No stat based levelling (i.e. skill based), though rank/respect is good, and medals for killing bosses etc. Preferably no instancing, except for PVP DM levels for those who want them. Respawning and getting back to the fight should take under 30 seconds, apart from in the final phases where finding the last few concealed enemies and triggering the super-boss.

Finally, each reset should bring something different. It doesn't have to be much, a new enemy type, a somewhat different layout, new vehicles.

FPS games do seem to be heading somewhat in this direction, e.g. UT2004's Invasion mode, and Serious Sam 2 have the many-players co-op, Planetside is MMO, but nothing yet has the semi-persistent huge world with enemies that stay dead.

PKers

[Eightyford]

So they finally found a solution to pkers eh? It's pretty hard to kill something that is already dead.

Zombies

[Dukeofshadows]

Given the soullessness of much of modern life and the life-sucking cubicles and jobs found throughout the current economy, along with the 60+ hours that many of fresh-out-of-college employees and others are working already, how far are we from being basically a nation of better-groomed zombies who don't bite each other?

No, you'd want that.

[khasim]

I'd guess if things got too out of balance from their storyline, they could tweak the amount of zombie or human NPCs. More undead could always dig up out of the ground, or more humans could show up from outside the game's scope, to keep things even.

If the living are losing badly, that would add to the horror of the game.

If the zombies are losing badly, that would work also as the living would have to go searching for them. And you're most vulnerable when you're searching. Do you risk being killed for the chance to be the one who kills the last zombie?

Oh for shame!

[murderlegendre]

Shame on you, you should know better than to call them "Zombies"... what is this, 1965?

They prefer to be called the living impaired

I suppose you think they should stick to eating the back of the head, too..

That's funny, I was actually just going to say

[Anonymous Coward]

That it sounds to me more like MySpace

Weapon of choice for zombie slaying

[TrickFred]

Just let me have a cricket bat, and I'll be the first in line. :D

"Mature"

[jayeates]

"Exanimus is expected to be rated "Mature" and not intended for anyone under the age of 18."

So my guess is it'll be filled with 14-16 year old idiots then...

ooer...

[ameoba]

Exanimus is expected to be rated "Mature" and not intended for anyone under the age of 18.

If they can enforce this, I'll definately start playing.

Re:ooer...

[Makarakalax]

They settle down until they don't get the phat loot or something, and then it's evens they'll throw some immature hissy fit.

Re:WTB [Brains]

[Jubetas]

I doubt it would be very hard to have integral trade skills for survivors, i.e.- scavenging, security, various knowledges, etc. Knowing how to run a base that has an electrified fence with a few motion sensors off of a diesel generator you patched together seems like it would be a useful skill. I can only hope that this MMO, which is based on the MMO premise of my dreams, can live up to even a few expectations.

As for zombie skills, that might be a little more difficult, but they could take a little influence from Land of the Dead, where the zombies are able to develop some rudimentary communication. Perhaps you would see WTB [Brains], so that way your zombie could learn how to turn doorknobs or wield melee weapons. I admit that I see very little in the way of actual trade skills for zombies, but I don't really see that as hindering my fun when I'm gnawing people's brains out.

Re:MMO + zombie = cognitive dissonance?

[xhrit]

>It shouldn't be hard for a group of people with automatic weapons or explosives to wipe out a whole mess of zombies.

If they are classic zombies then yes. I'd almost rather have a katana. A sword doesn't run out ov ammo. you could just stand in a doorway and hack! At least until the blade got dull.

If they are neo-zombies then all bets are off. I'd hate to try to fend off insane AI controlled alien zombie cyborgs with a sword (unless it was a glowing blue sword).

Re:MMO + zombie = cognitive dissonance?

[illspirit]

"Let's face it though, Zombies are slow, mindless creatures who are stopped by an injury to the head."

Hmmm, yes, and no. Starting with Day of the Dead, zombies started to learn/remember how to use weapons a little bit, and by Land of.. they were using rudimentary strategy. While they're still not exactly rocket scientists, they're still quite dangerous in packs, seeing as it only takes one bite and all. Besides, with a large enough group, even blind weiner dogs could be deadly.

Granted, this only works if you accept the Romero rules. But I'm not going to argue with the guy as he wrote the proverbial book on zombies.

/loves zombie movies

One Concern

[darkmayo]

The problem with having a human controlling a zombie character is they no longer act like zombies. You end up with some big metagaming issues, zombie/human alliances etc.

It will be interesting what these guys have up there sleeves to make sure that doesnt happen.

Oh and if they screw it up it and the game bombs then it will forever taint that genre for a MMORPG. Since I have been waiting for something like this to come around for quite some time, i'd be right pissed.

mmmm zombies.. how I love to hate thee.

Zombie Themes work well...

[miyako]

I DM a regular tabletop game based around a zombie-themed variant of the D20 system called Year of the Zombie (disclaimer: I did some artwork for the book...so buy it and help a fellow slashdotter get some royalty checks) and I've found that the general theme works very well among roleplayers. Specifically, in a lot of the games that I run, I've found that people who can roleplay well get a lot from the games, though powergamers tend to lose interest quickly. I've never let a player actually play as a zombie, and I'm curious as to how the mechanics for it will work in this game (if it is included in the end). What I think could really make the game interesting is if they play up the need to survive. In most of the games that I run, the zombies are more of a complicating issue than the real problem at hand. In general, most of the conflict, and interesting gaming, comes from the need for food, water, and shelter. It would be interesting to set up a system where there are heavily infested cities, and groups of characters have to go on raids to get supplies. PVP also is particularly interesting in this scenario. In my games, players often have to choose between trying to get supplies from heavily infested cities, or try to steal food or supplies from other groups who may be smaller in numbers, but also can shoot back.
I'd love them to make a Mac or Linux port of this so that I could play it...I might even have to consider setting up a windows machine for this game if it looks promising as it gets nearer to launch.

Let the Zombies play for free.

[neo]

Seriously.

Nothing like a bunch of undead zombie griefers to make life hell for the living/paying players. Charge me $4 per live character I play. Make him/her randomly, with skills and equipment randomly assigned so I have a chance to be a soldier or a banker... and let the bodies hit the floor. You wouldn't need any NPCs. People playing zombies would line up to get a crack at killing some paying players... and the paying players would line up to see who could survive and live the longest.

Eventually the free zombies would want to try it on the other side, so it's the perfect demo to get them into the game.

Re:MMO + zombie = cognitive dissonance?

[sesshomaru]

In many the zombie movies I've seen, the problems come about because two human factions are fighting each other rather than fighting the zombies:

1. Night of the Living Dead: Cooper (and Family) vs. Ben (and Friends)

2. Dawn of the Dead: Ex-SWAT & Reporter group vs. Biker Gang

3. Day of the Dead: Soldiers vs. Scientists (with a third faction, the Civilians, trying to ignore both).

4. Land of the Dead: Kaufman (and Militia) vs. Cholo (and Rogue Militia) vs. Poor of Pittsburgh vs. Smart Zombies (lead by Big Daddy)