3D Zombie MMORPG, would it work?

[Tharwen]

Maybe if it had good mechanics for choosing a hiding spot, barricading it, and surviving, rather than "my friend turned into a zombie, go get me his sword" etc.

 

[Mr. Purple]

Would it work?

Would you play it?

What would you want to see in it?

What WOULDN'T you want to see in it?

I know there's that flash one, but I'm talking proper 3D MMORPG, on a scale similiar to WOW..

<color=purple> I sure hope so. O.O

I would.

Lots and lots of zombies.

Ummm, I would not like to see any senseless humor or ridiculous gameplay i any way. I would want it to be a completely serious zombie MMORPG. Thats right. An RPG.

 

[lwm3398]

I can imagine it as having some similarities to raiding in WoW. Get a bunch of random other players together and fight zombies, only in this game instead of that being an optional thing on the side it's a necessity. I can see it working. I imagine it will also be fetch-quest heavy, what with running to find safe-houses, weapons, etc. Also escort missions, get the 4 year old to her mother relatively unscathed.

What about vehicles? Find a gunner to help you and run over some zombies.

 

[josemlopes]

In general an apocolyptic horror MMO would work, with say the world decimated by the return of the supernatural as opposed to a war or whatever. The problem with a game specifically based around Zombies would be that the bestiary wouldn't be very big, and it would get boring.

Having a limited number of opponents works fairly well for a run and gun game, but for an MMO that is supposed to be set up for long term play, the whole zombie-apocolypse idea is kind of limited. Add more monsters besides Zombies though and you wind up with some potential.

You could have a nuclear facilty that exploded and there would also be mutated animals and humans, a bit like the Tank from L4D

 

[kevin_kaya]

In general an apocolyptic horror MMO would work, with say the world decimated by the return of the supernatural as opposed to a war or whatever. The problem with a game specifically based around Zombies would be that the bestiary wouldn't be very big, and it would get boring.

Having a limited number of opponents works fairly well for a run and gun game, but for an MMO that is supposed to be set up for long term play, the whole zombie-apocolypse idea is kind of limited. Add more monsters besides Zombies though and you wind up with some potential.

Any ideas for more "monsters" than zombies? I mean.. a zombie is a zombie.. Maybe just gradually increase the speed/damage zombies do as you progress to different areas?

hell yes, any developers in the crowd, please, please make this game!

Now that you said that, you have to actually pay and play it when someone does make it!

 

[Lamppenkeyboard]

I would prefer something more compact. Zombie media is based around only a few survivors fighting off hundreds of undead. So they would have to take the atmosphere into account.

 

[Death_Korps_Kommissar]

I think it could work extremely well.
If there were several human factions all waring over resources. For example, Just regular people banded together: They learn quickly and scavange well, but don't have access to good weapons early on.
Insane religious fanatics who believe that the Zombies are the apocolipse and are trying everything in their power to stop other survival. Decent weapons and insanely tough but lack ranged weapons and vechiles.
Bands of marauding bandits, just mindless barbarians. Excelent scavangers and a lot of vechiles but of poor quality all round.
Exiled Government, trying to regain controle over the world through brute force. Excellent weapons and armoured vechiles but very few in number and harder to level up.

And the whole thing could be about a corperation who created the zombies but lost controle, so whoever you are, you try to find out how this happened, stop them from taking over and survive......
Shit I really wanna play this!
And it'd be in third person. Like gears just not as cavemanie.

The combat would be you traveling with a small group of mpc's or other playes, searching abandoned miltary facilities, shopping malls, cities all while fending of the undead and enemy factions.

 

[Katana314]

Although I wouldn't mind RPG elements like finding shelter and food, and getting better at stuff, I don't want to lose the awesome shooting factors of things like Killing Floor. Headshots should be fun, and the MMORPG elements should only add to that for downtime and rest before the next headshot-fest.

 

[kevin_kaya]

I think it could work extremely well.
If there were several human factions all waring over resources. For example, Just regular people banded together: They learn quickly and scavange well, but don't have access to good weapons early on.
Insane religious fanatics who believe that the Zombies are the apocolipse and are trying everything in their power to stop other survival. Decent weapons and insanely tough but lack ranged weapons and vechiles.
Bands of marauding bandits, just mindless barbarians. Excelent scavangers and a lot of vechiles but of poor quality all round.
Exiled Government, trying to regain controle over the world through brute force. Excellent weapons and armoured vechiles but very few in number and harder to level up.

And the whole thing could be about a corperation who created the zombies but lost controle, so whoever you are, you try to find out how this happened, stop them from taking over and survive......
Shit I really wanna play this!
And it'd be in third person. Like gears just not as cavemanie.

The combat would be you traveling with a small group of mpc's or other playes, searching abandoned miltary facilities, shopping malls, cities all while fending of the undead and enemy factions.

Hm.. third person? Why not 1st person? 1st person fully emerses you in the game, you look at the game through the eyes of your character instead of some guy slightly above/behind him..

 

[Death_Korps_Kommissar]

I think it could work extremely well.
If there were several human factions all waring over resources. For example, Just regular people banded together: They learn quickly and scavange well, but don't have access to good weapons early on.
Insane religious fanatics who believe that the Zombies are the apocolipse and are trying everything in their power to stop other survival. Decent weapons and insanely tough but lack ranged weapons and vechiles.
Bands of marauding bandits, just mindless barbarians. Excelent scavangers and a lot of vechiles but of poor quality all round.
Exiled Government, trying to regain controle over the world through brute force. Excellent weapons and armoured vechiles but very few in number and harder to level up.

And the whole thing could be about a corperation who created the zombies but lost controle, so whoever you are, you try to find out how this happened, stop them from taking over and survive......
Shit I really wanna play this!
And it'd be in third person. Like gears just not as cavemanie.

The combat would be you traveling with a small group of mpc's or other playes, searching abandoned miltary facilities, shopping malls, cities all while fending of the undead and enemy factions.

Hm.. third person? Why not 1st person? 1st person fully emerses you in the game, you look at the game through the eyes of your character instead of some guy slightly above/behind him..

...How bout both then=P
For your own personal preferance really.

 

[TheRundownRabbit]

I think JoyMax did some like that except it involved vampires......what was that game called again?

 

[nickd007]

You would have to collect food and water to survive. Then if you got a lot of it you could choose to either store it for yourself or give it to other survivors in your server. Or alternatively, you could see someone hoarding food and go break into their storage and steal it or something.

 

[BonsaiK]

It will never work. Sure, Zombie MMOs may well be made, but they will never, ever work well. The reason why is obvious: MMOs are designed around a static set of circumstances that do not change significantly no matter what the player accomplishes, allowing the game to be played infintely. Without this, you literally cannot have an MMO. On the other hand, any story, film or game involving zombies is necessarily designed around a finite outcome - you either win against the zombies or lose against the zombies (with the option of infinite struggle being functionally exactly the same as loss, because if you can't ever beat the zombies what's the point of trying). Once this finite outcome is reached, that's it - end of game. This is an incompatible state of affairs with MMOs in general.

I would not play such a game even if it existed. Zombies are ultra-trendy right now and thus boring me a little at the moment. I'm kinda craving something different in games right now, not the same old same old.

I disagree. What's the 'point' of any fantasy MMORPG? `There isn't one, it's just get stronger, collect items, meet people, complete quests. Why couldn't it work for Zombies? Seeing as the world is over run by zombies, weapons will be scarce so finding decent weapons will be a hard task, missions can revolve around helping people, i.e "Travel to this place and find Dr. Yeang, he has been working on xxx and we need a sample of it" etc. etc. There could be a huge world to explore, loads of things.. just think about it

It could work for Zombies.

It won't work well for Zombies. Zombies is one of those very specific types of storytelling that is completely incompatible with the MMO format for the reason I've already stated. If you don't believe me, wait and see. The "kick-ass WOW-beating zombie MMORPG" will not be made within our lifetimes.

Make one that is finite then, in each server its a different story, some servers may be winning while others are loosing, when one of them ends he will restart, the players can play from the start or go to another server. The transation could be the player arriving to a new city that is still infected. While the city is still infected they cant leave. Each server is a city, and each character are forced to switch server (city) when they die and they can choose to switch when the city is clear.

Which would work beautifully. But then you're not playing an MMO. See my point?

 

[Yokai]

MMO...yes.
MMORPG...no.
If it was a sort of levelless action-survival game I could see it working, but in order to be properly paced and actually interesting there couldn't be any grinding or other sort of fourth-wall-breaking elements. If a developer could break away from the traditional MMO mold, it would have a good chance at being awesome.

 

[kevin_kaya]

Interested in more people's opinions!

 

[AkJay]

there is one its called dead frontier

I think OP meant a good zombie MMORPG

 

[Totenkopf]

Make Killing Floor an good working MMO with connected areas and more types of enemies and weapons, and done, you've got the perfect Zombie-MMO.

 

[Wolfram23]

Here's a fun idea for how it could work:

You always start as a human. You can do quests and such to level up, you earn cash of some sort to buy and upgrade weapons. You have a safe haven where you can store you stuff.

If, at anytime in your gameplay, you get killed by zombies, you will respawn as a zombie until you get an "antidote". This would require perhaps converting at least 5 humans into zombies and possibly some not too hard side quest. You can then turn back into a human, but you are at level 1 and have access to whatever equipment you left in your stash. You can also stay as a zombie longer to aquire more kills and do harder quests, so that you can return to human form at higher and higher levels (but not higher than you were able to achieve before dying).

The game could work as a 3rd person shooter and melee. NPC zombies will be a bit of a joke and slow, but PC zombies can level up themselves and become faster, have a bit more hp etc. There could be areas of NPC only zombies - ie: PVE zones and then PC zombie areas ie: PVP zones. Any questing and kills acheived in the PVP zones would be far more worthwhile because you stand to lose a lot more.

Zombie players, if killed, will be reduced in their zombie level and respawn at some central graveyard - reason being that it takes some of their power to return to un-life.

 

[kevin_kaya]

Here's a fun idea for how it could work:

You always start as a human. You can do quests and such to level up, you earn cash of some sort to buy and upgrade weapons. You have a safe haven where you can store you stuff.

If, at anytime in your gameplay, you get killed by zombies, you will respawn as a zombie until you get an "antidote". This would require perhaps converting at least 5 humans into zombies and possibly some not too hard side quest. You can then turn back into a human, but you are at level 1 and have access to whatever equipment you left in your stash. You can also stay as a zombie longer to aquire more kills and do harder quests, so that you can return to human form at higher and higher levels (but not higher than you were able to achieve before dying).

The game could work as a 3rd person shooter and melee. NPC zombies will be a bit of a joke and slow, but PC zombies can level up themselves and become faster, have a bit more hp etc. There could be areas of NPC only zombies - ie: PVE zones and then PC zombie areas ie: PVP zones. Any questing and kills acheived in the PVP zones would be far more worthwhile because you stand to lose a lot more.

Zombie players, if killed, will be reduced in their zombie level and respawn at some central graveyard - reason being that it takes some of their power to return to un-life.

Whilst in theory it's a 'funky' idea, I don't really see it working.. but then I don't see anything working apart from my own ideas so what do I know..