My fellow gamer, have you ever wanted to be a survivor in a massively multiplayer online game based on the player vs millions of death dealing zombies? It can be thought of as Left 4 Dead but with thousands of survivors per server that need to ban together to survive, build death vehicles to get around and fortified cities that can be populated. The vehicles can be made to fit multiple persons while the cities can be all guild run, and the only way to make a city is to start a guild. But of course if a small guild exists with a small city it will be a lot harder to defend against the zombie horde that just keeps coming (Since the cities will actually be destroyed if left undefended). But the larger guilds with the cities will run like a well oiled machine, with all goods and services run by either players or having the ability to hire CPU merchants for there town that will try to get regular goods, but with the help of player gathering and hunting convoys they can get a hell of a lot more.

It would seem that guild/city life would be the very aspect of the game that brings people in, but what would make people stay? That is something that would need some thought. Like what is the end game? What is the pvp? I was thinking that pvp could possibly be guild vs guild fights, declaring war on another city for resources that the city possibly holds that a rival guild would want. City defense then would be very important, and also access to cities would be limited to guild members of certain guilds, with the oppurtunity to have visitor passes to enter other guilds cities, so politics will have a heavy say in this title.

Of course for the lone wolf player, or the lone survivor there will be lots of gameplay for them as well, like first off becoming a mercenary for other players to higher and use as guns for certain situations. And the other would be the capabilities to set up small housing for there own uses, like a bank. But they would make good mercs, merchants, and companions. An endgame of this vision is still in thought, but please comment on here because I would like to see peoples thoughts and ideas, and perhaps this could come to fruition one day!

***I have started this discussion to further develop my dream of a Zombie MMORPG and I would love to have other peoples input onto this idea so it can really become something viable for the future of MMO's. After more ideas are added and this thread gets larger (I hope) I will start to summarize al ideas into an updated posting so we can all see what our minds have created! So let the discussion begin!

[QUOTE="Xsan3"]

I'm in Brutha ! Killin Zombies is my Life. I completely get everything ur talkin about! I hope the Zombie Swarms are aggressive and plentiful. So yeah, I'm in. I'll even invest cold hard cash and credit to get the platform up and running !

Sign me up !!

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I really like your excitement! You have got to have some ideas to post?

Xsan I love your eagerness and passion for this idea! This is the kind of minds I need on this thread to get this idea moving and really form a great plan.

I really like your upgradeable gun idea, of course this game could have the standard weapons, but upgrading guns (Fallout 3 style) would be a very key aspect. I mean you go around the world and find different day to day items that would assist in making a gun better, or if you have the right connections and level of skill you can use military grade equipment to upgrade your weapons and armor.

Regarding where this game should take place, the world would be way to much. I think it would have to take place within either an individual state of the Americas or perhaps and Island like England. Being to large would be bad, but say it took place in the state of New Jersey (Because I am from here) then it could be a self contained conflict where a barricade has been set up all around the state with no one allowed in and no one allowed out due to the quarantine set up within the state. This would allow a very large area to explore but still have limits on where a player cannot go with blockades that are set up. And if anyone is seen to close to the blockade or trying to leave the area that person will be killed onsight.

There is still alot more ideas and balancing that must be done, but thats why this is here. Of course there is the question how do we make deatha feasale aspect of this game. Should there be these paramedics that drag the downed out and revive them at the closest heavily armed med station. And of course where and how can a guild set up a city. Are they going to be limited areas, age of conan style. Or should it be anywhere a person sees fit (which would be technically hard to keep that fare and balanced.

Now you have some real good ideas brewing good sir! I like the death idea, it would really make the player want to do anything to survive, which could in turn make for some great internal politics and back stabbing. But to make this game balanced there would need to be some rules in line here. Every character (non xombie) can create a home, there own personalized area be it in a city or as a merc survivor our in the woods, where no one can enter unless invited and it allows the player to store their equipment. The act of storing equipment will keep certain items safe while out on deadly missions or resource runs that a player can fall to the Zombie horde (losing all equipment associated with that character at the time. But the items at the safe house lock box will be protected until that player is able to become human again via the cure. This cure should be very hard to obtain and it will take a whole zombie level economy and barter system to make these rare items. This is where the Zombie draw comes in. As a Zombie, you can still get money and work in a different but important economy that when you are cured you can carry al assets found as a zombie back to your human character, so the incentive of still working hard for currency and items will be there.

But being a zombie should be a situation where you die you have to start as a new character instead you get shot down as a zombie in the game you will be pulled into the ground healed by a special area of the infection that mutates the ground to sustain and heal these zombies (thus there are so many of them, and they keep coming back). So a zombie in this came would never die, but when you gather the materials for the cure you can become your human self again, but this time you will look different becoming vastly scarred on the body, and kinda repulsive at first glance. But of course this would bring in another aspect of PVP, the zombies being able to strike human guild built fortresses to gather supplies in order to make a cure for themselves. So they will be fighting the players that they will once again walk among in a short amount of time. Also a zombie guild should be fully ppossible because this could lead to vast wealth as well, and the only areas zombies can create guild structures is in underground area, since it is dark damp and there bodies will become stronger in this type of environment where as sun will slow a zombie down a noticable amount, so at night zombies would have there power against the humans and a minor edge. This would make player zombies ver prominent at night for strong strike forces where as during the day the humans will be more powerful. Some how there will be a good balance here, this is just prelminary.

Another good aspect for the humans would be the ability to loot a human corpse if it is on the ground, say because a zombie turned that player. But what happens when that player loots that corpse a notification goes out to the dead player say who stole there goods and what they stole which will be saved in a seperate area allowing that player the ability to enact revenge once back in the human form, they can initiate a stand off with this person if something was stolen the option will be allowed and it will not be able to be disengaged by the corpse pillager. This would be a revenge system, and that item will be bound to the corpse raider that allows the dead player the ability to hunt them down and get back what is theres. But they can only get back what is theres if the other player is alive. And that player will not know whos items they have, so it brings another aspect of tension, since they can easily just not pick up the item.

Wooooo there is a lot to say about this. Here take this and digest this aspect. We dont want the players to get angry at the game, so the reverting someone back to noob status would be a unsafe idea. But how cool does this all sound!

As for location of game, in order for that to occur in a place that makes sense, it would have to be a new planet that offers terrain like that, and it would allow the game to take place in a fictional world. It would be much better than real world location becasue the developer can have free range of design with out having to worry abotu accuracy and licensing! I think that would be best, a world colonized by humans but lying deep within a virus that converts its victims into flesh eating monsters that the actual planet will revive when a creature is killed by pulling the corpse through the crust and into a central spawn area that can send NPC and Human (Zombie)players all around the world.

Does that sound kinda cool and semi logical for science fiction?

[QUOTE="Xsan3"]

Oh yeah- I think its really getting somewhere..! A couple good days of brainstorming and we could have a real game ! ! So are u trying to contact a corporate? Besides story and gameplay ideas, what more do u need from me??

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I am not trying to get anything corporate as of now, just want to get the idea going and get some buzz generated, see what we can really come up with. I wouldnt mind getting some hard core MMO players on this threwad to give there cents as well. Maybe after something is concrete I can create a website/blog about it. As from you, give me all ya got! And I will add my cents and we can mix cents and perhaps make something really sound good here.

I am really impressed with the ideas that you have come up with. I think the area of where this game takes place could be our least of concerns at this moment, but I do see where you are going, we could just have a fictional Earth setting, and have different environments around the areas. I like the aspect of having artifacts in different areas that would take intense research and skill leveling to find, gives another sense of reason.

And there are a lot of different ideas that we need to mess with, like your lights idea that would be good. And also I was thinking about what the starting area should be like, and of course an NPC town must be what it is to give a sense of what to expect and give a tutorial on how to play the game, with its crafting system and what the game will be like! Woot! I am really liking where this is going, but alas I am tired and will give more insight either tomorrow or the following day, but keep posting!

Well regarding the games graphical engine and physics, this game should run on an engine similar to CSS and utilize ragdoll physics, just because I love that so much! But regarding the objects in the world, it would be hard to have everything realisticaly physics due to the fact that it would have way to much strain on the servers. The barricades and structures should have a destructive quality but it wouldnt be like Red Faction Guerrila but it would be there as preset ways of destruction, if you know what I mean. Hard to talk about technical stuff... Haha

Moving on past that I think I will need to do a new write up soon on this thread summarizing all of our ideas and everything into a great modified lay out. Just so we can keep all of our ideas organized.

Some aspects that need to be touched on our firstly, which view should this game have? If it will be a MMORPG it should have the standard third person view that all other MMO's utilize, but of course it could go the FPS route which would give it more the Left 4 Dead feel but with thousands of players... But I am thinking for this game it should be the 3rd person view, and you can either do a traditional far off view, or a more focused over the shoulder view ala RE 5 + 4. That would allow for some greater control which would now bring me into how the combat will play out. Of course in a traditional MMO the player has a hot bar which has assigned moves and abilities that allow the player to attack or buff or debuff other characters. What this game should (up for debate) utilize is a more traditional 3rd person shooter approach but with the added hot bar to do various abilities. What I mean is this.

As a human you have a gun/melee weapon equipped and from here you can click the right trigger/right mouse button and fire your weapon (with the console holding down the left trigger and firing with the right trigger, it just gives a better feel). So the game has a very intense feel to it rather than the stand and cast that is associated with the typical MMO. But what you are able to do here would be have the mapped out powers and abilities of a typical MMO still in a hot bar for computers and the d-pad for the controller. During combat you can press these hot buttons to preform different abilities (that make sense to the world, no magic and crap like that for humans, and for zombies you will get to do some very vile and agile moves) that will either hurt the enemy in sight or buff the players around you. For example an engineer classsurvivorwould have a shot gun as a primary weapon and the ability to make turrets (based on there skill and materials they have gathered) or they can throw a grenade (either crafted or bought from another player) but they mast have the granted ability to do so. Like the healer class could have there primary weapon out and have the ability to generate health kits that they can drop for other players to heal. Of course this is just examples to get peoples minds thinking about the style of game here. But that is a taste of what combat would be like for the survivors.

As for the player controlled zombies it would be a similar but different story, of course the zombies cannot use guns that would not make sense. They would have to have natural abilities such as vomit that attracts horde, a big tank, fast agile moving creatures, long tongues (yes I know left 4 dead style moves, but they have good ideas!) and other style infected abilities that would even the playing field. Since these zombies can regenerate (due to the nature of the disease and the soil) they could also throw explosive parts of themselves in order to inflict damage. And a zombie attack would be more efficient in groups of players that have complimentary abilities. And of course when the player zombie dies in a group they will be able to respawn there undead character after a set timer since they can be transported through the ground via this disease back to there squad. Which would make it a little more fair since the survivors will be more prepared for killing the undead. But when the human player goes down that would mean they become an undead character... This would bring about a tension in this game since the humans will want to stay very close while traversing the land and the zombies will become a very strong force out in the open where they can just continually swarm the survivors. But the zombies would have various abilities that would really make them a force worth fear. Of course this aspect of the game will probably be the most difficult to implement properly due to the varying balancing issues.

Besides the combat area I mentioned earlier vehicles, these vehicles should be able to be constructed within the guild city walls and only very high level characters with the proper skill sets can make such vehicles. Having a vehicle allows for greater exploration and fast travel times for the survivors between areas of interest. But it should be noted to make it fair the vehicles will degrade of time and if extensive damage is dealt to them they will be destroyed killing all inside, possibly killing those around but deffinetly inflicting damage to nearby players. Vehicles should very much be a mutliple person job, not just one person can forge one, blueprints must be found via large instanced quests and just through adventuring the deadly lands. It would be a very large advantage for a guild to obtain such things.

Woo I have said a lot lets just mull this over and see what people have to say. Please input come forth...