Today Zombies are more popular then ever and after yesterdays announcement of a Zombie MMO from Undead Labs, it got me thinking just how would a Zombie MMO work?
I immediately threw out the idea of making a World of Warcraft type MMO as that would be nothing but ridiculous. The problem is that zombie movies and games have always been pretty much the opposite of what a MMO is. Normally it’s a few people or a few groups of people trying to survive the zombie apocalypse, not hundreds or thousands of players as an the first “M” in MMO suggests. I then decided that if the game was going to work as a MMO, the player would have to have the ability to join the zombie side.
A zombie MMO would have to be completely different from anything that we’ve seen so far in MMOs. My idea would be to create a truly unique survival MMO, where the main goal of the game would be not to die. That’s it, just don’t die. Now you might be thinking that kinda sounds stupid and boring to play, but allow me to explain further.
First questing and leveling, normally found in MMOs, would have to be tossed out. If this is supposed to be a real-world zombie scenario, leveling and questing would just make no sense. The game would also have to be a MMOFPS or in 3rd person as the GTA series.
Death is an important part of all MMOs and although each game has its own rules and laws, the one thing that is always constant is that you don’t really die, there is always a way to be resurrected, cloned or revived. My idea would be to create a survival MMO where death is permanent, sort of. Being a zombie MMO, instead of dying you would turn into a zombie and start playing for the other team.
The twist here is that the game is not a continuous world, it would be based on a time limit (rounds), lets say one month long. This could easily be integrated into the storyline, where after one month the government is able to send in a rescue team to save any survivors. Of course there would have be multiple servers so that no matter when you buy the game a new round would always be starting. This would also be beneficial for gamers that don’t want to play as zombies, they can just start over on another server.
Ok, so far we have a MMO with no quest, no levels and your only goal is to survive for one month. Now lets get into the actual game play.
My Zombie MMO would have to take place in a very large city where there would be maybe 2 – 3 safe zones which would also act as starting locations. Now being a survival MMO, we don’t want people just staying in these safe zones, so we have to give them reason to leave. One way, and really the only way I could think of, was to give the player a hunger bar. Hey, even during a zombie apocalypse people still need to eat. Once a player enters a safe zone you are given a small ration of food that lasts about 5-10 mins, once that runs out your hunger bar starts to fall and if it gets empty you die. This way people are forced to leave the safe zones to look for food.
Now that you are out of the safe zone you have a few goals. The most important goal is to find food, but you also don’t want to die from a zombie attack so you want to find some armor and weapons. Weapons can range from kitchen knives, to bats, crowbars, pistols, machine guns and of course the ever popular chainsaw. Really anything that you can find to use as a weapon.
Another aspect of the game would be a survival score. All players would receive a score and rank based on how many zombies they’ve killed and how much time they’ve spent outside of the major safe zones. This would act as further motivation for gamers to stay out of safe zones and at the end of the month you’d be able to see who survived and who had the best score.
While there are safe zones in the game, players would also be able to build their own fortified defenses. For instance if you find a supermarket that has a ton of food, a dozen of so people can group together to fortify the location so they can have a large supply of food. However player built safe zones could be taken over by zombie attacks, which would just add further excitement to the game.
Switching to the zombie side, once a player is killed, they become a zombie and it becomes your job to kill as many people as you can. Gamers that want to jump right into being a zombie can have that option and zombies would have a scoring/ranking system similar to humans. This would also make the game much harder as the month goes on since there would be more and more player controlled zombies later on in the month then in the beginning.
As a zombie when you die, you don’t permanently die, so you can get up after a short penalty period. There would also be many different zombie types, something similar to the Left 4 Dead series, this way being a zombie wouldn’t get boring as players would have many classes to choose from. Perhaps zombies can even level up somewhat to become stronger.
The game in essence would have to be PvP, since fighting computer zombies would eventually get boring as it does if you ever played L4D single player. And since the game reset each month, you can have a randomly generated city so that each month its a completely new layout.
I don’t know about you, but the more I write the more I’m liking my ideas. Let me know what you think of my Zombie MMO.
very good ideas.
I’ve seen a few games use the campaign/time based maps (Pirates of the Burning sea, World War 2 online) quite effectively and it would make sense in a zombie MMO.
One thing that is going to worry me, you say no quests (and i agree) but i have seen quests shoved into some of the most stupid situations and scenarios. I would not be surprised if there were quests and/or levels in this new Zombie game.
Love it. Id play for the first month at least, and if it was not a rush job, it seems like a lot of fun.
One problem I see is that groups of friends (guilds) would get split apart when one dies and becomes a zombie. Which would get old after the novelty wears off. It really would have to be 2 separate factions.
Maybe having the zombie faction inteded more as a temporary charchter/novelty instead of full blown charchter with levels, etc.
No turning factions, just let players play as a zombie randomly. You could think “i just want to play for 15-30 minutes.” An intelligent system could immediately place you into the body of an NPC mob that is near a PC, and you could see how long you would survive (not too long in theory).
Zombie’s would have no communication to Humans, nor could they see any PC names, etc. It would also break up the monotony of PvE content when, at any time, one of the mobs you’re about to pull might actually be intelligent.
No matter what they do, this will be interesting (in a few years) when this game finally hits.
Left for dead the sandbox version?
I like some of your ideas. The game would defiantly need to be FPS based. I also think it should be based upon the Max Brooks books “A Zombie Survival Guide” and “World War Z”. The only way to “kill” a zombie is a “headshot” or removal of brain from body.
*I think you should start out in house or apartment. Your food is running out, so you make the decision, you need to leave your safe haven and find food. I think the point to a zombie game is the isolation and loneliness (I know, doesnt really play into a MMO does it) so there should be no global only local and private chat. Think of it like talking to someone on a walkie-talkie…you have to be within range and only to a limited number of people. At this point you can set out on your own, or team up with another person to form a group. Be warned tho, the larger the group, the more likely you would attract a large number of zombies, maybe too large for your group to handle. Think of it as a stealth action game, ala Splinter Cell, or Metal Gear. You should be limited in weapons, both Melee (baseball bats, machetes, chainsaws [gas dependent]) and Ranged (crossbows, shotguns, pistols, hunting rifles [no automatic rifles or submachinguns]) and limited ammo to start, although you should be able to find a gun shop, sporting goods shop, or military base [here you could find automatic weapons] easy enough.
*Goals: Survival. During gameplay your character recieves mysterious reports of a Human colony, where they are trying to take back the world. You can make your way there or survive on your own. If you go to the settlement, you eventually make pushes out into the Zombie territory and try to reclaim the lands.
*Gameplay: Mostly PvE (I dont mind PvP games, but I do not want it to be a strictly PvP game) where PvP comes into play is after you reach the settlement. PVP (Humans vs Zombies) for control of land. Humans have limited numbers while zombies have superior numbers but lack weaponry. Should the humans push to a certain point, they have to defend this point for a certain amount of time. All the zombies have to do is push back the humans into their settlement or, infect them.
You sound like you are describing Urban Dead (http://www.urbandead.com/).
Allow humans to level up too. It will be weird to just level up as a zombie, but not do so when you are in your human alter ego. Everyone would want to be zombie to level up.
As humans however, when you level up, you don’t get stats boost or ‘evolve’ (as opposed to you idea that zombies may change ranks into better zombies, maybe boomer?)
Maybe there can be access to better weapons.
It would also be fun if there is a zombie foretress that humans may feel like attacking. It can also serve as a semi-safe house for the zombies. This balances out human players who acquired IMBA weapons.
I agree with Jeff D on the idea that it should be based off of max brook’s Zombie Survival Guide. That would make it seem pretty realistic. And i think that you could somehow incorporate some quests, but not too much like WoW… just little tidbits here and there for little things that can help (i.e. food, water, weapons, armor, etc), and all purchases are done strictly through trading. And while i agree with maybe having a settlement, i think that you could have simple PvP before that. I used to play WoW, and the biggest turn off was the fact that it took so long to get to a point that you could actually fight PvP. I like the GTA style idea, and maybe almost fable/fallout-ish wherein you can be good or bad about things around you (taking advantage of people, stealing, looting, helping, training, sharing, grouping up, using innocents as a meat shield).. which brings up another point. If you die/get turned, and somebody puts a bullet in your head, do you still turn into a zombie, or can you have a choice? It’s a great idea, but there’s a lot to think about to make it really good.
another thing i thought about though- fortification and defense. Could it be completely customizable kinda like garry’s mod only without the gravity gun? like could you move anything the way you need it, and physics be good enough to last accordingly? could you fortify a car into a zombie-mashing machine? because that would attract even more people into playing, if they could defend themselves however they want.
this is an excellent idea, you should really do this i think it will be an excellent game i will definatly buy this. And i love the ideas.
I’ve thought about this as well and all my ideas essentially turned out like this. With my ideas, however, one can modify vehicles and that adds a new aspect of finding supplies such as fuel and say chicken wire.
also, I think I may have a different way a game like this could work. The game could be based in a huge world like WoW. The zombies are all computerized, but there is PVP damage. The game is really more about killing other players and their gangs than it is about zombies. However, zombies would come into play when it comes to gathering supplies and there could be a way to gain experience by killing zombies. There could be a zombie boss that gains you extra exp.
Sorry man, I didn’t like your ideas. You see, ok health bar for the living, what about the zombies? Isn’t it a bit unfair, for the living? The same goes for the hunger, zombies might enjoy “BRAINZZZ!” but they do not really need them.
Perhaps there could be some undead NPC that can think, so that the zombie players can get their quests. As for the living it will be easy, the generals in the safe bases and others can give quests, like “Gather me this supply, or temporarily clear this area”.
I know that ressuracting as a zombie if you’re killed might sound more logical, but this would just piss off most players, so I doubt it. + it woukd be unfair for the undead, since they can’r stay dead for too long.
PVP, oh well that’s obvious, open fight zombies vs. humans.
As for leveling and powering up, well it’s easy for humans, you get faster, you can perhaps unlock door, gain access to places to ehich lower lvl players can’t etc… As fot the zombies, perhaps the more humans they kill (not nessecairly player, NPCs are ok) they can lvl up. While they cannot develop skills similar to humans’, they can grow tenctacles and stuff, unlocking new skills. Ever played resident evil 5? You’ll understand what I mean with the tenctacles.
Oh well, I look forward to playing it, sure sound fun, even if they haven’t even bothered giving us the slightest bit of details.
i love that peaple like me is comeing out to stand up for what games we like. i love your idea and i would stand be side you all the way to make the best zombie game of the centry. if we could chat more i would like it please mail me back at obvil29k@gmail.com
ok now that i have read the other coments i need to say all. i think all of you know fall out 3 right well i think it should be like that but it need to be worked on all like for ones the devoloper should make a massive world and have buildings that you can go in to. when i say that im saying all of them. then you should have the right to get supplies and have a backpack that can hold just the amount of stuff a real backpack should hold. so if you get a big thing like 2 by 4’s you should have to carry them in you hand be its stupied that you can put a 2 by4 in a backpack and i mean a real one not a small one you can shove in you pocket and it fits in and the other hafe is sticking out no i mean a 6foot or so 4 by 4. then you have to have a hammer and some nails to make a brricad (sorry can not spell good lol) then you need a saw to cut the wood with if you need to. ok so we got this done now lets talk about the basic food bar he was talking about that is very good idea but do you realy need a bar to get in the way no. the avatar can just make a big sound to tell the player that hay my guy needs to be feed. no lets get on to the safe house deal, i have a defrent idea. let the avatar have about a 4 day time limit to get what he wonts then he can have is own house but if he likes he could change and carry stuff at times to a better locaton. for some reson he dose not like it. and there is no safe zones, i think i speak for us all when i say when need a realistk game its the 21st centry we need a good game for ones that is in the zombie catogory. now im not saying there is not good games at all but trust me we can do alot better that dead rising and urban zombie. and the idea of levels made dead rising very bad becouse every one whas worred about leveling up then haveing fun. and well multi player would be very good becouse i cant thing of one good zombie game that is multi player. l4d (left 4 daed) is bad becouse there are to good of zombies im talking abut normal dead zombies here not super mutans ok. now i would realy love to tralk some more so please any one of you, mail me at obvil29k@gmail.com please i would love to here you thouts
Howdy Mike, and others who may read this.
First I would like to say “kick @$$” for this idea finally coming to someone who can do something…like make it. I have put my application in at “Undead Labs”, and wait anxiously. Until then I have had plans for a similar game, and since many of the others have decided to share ideas please let me do the same.
My plan was to infect 3 cities in the US, New York area, Texas area, and California. All of these have a coast to help limit the borders. Realistically the second 2 would be expansions or something.
The game starts with either a quick character or you can build your own through a series of questions about the players themselves. Basics at first, how old?, sex?,race?,height?,weight? Then more personal questions like music you enjoy, job, recreational activities.
Answers to these questions would allow the program of the game to build a character, and the character would end up having very similar characteristics to the player. Every starting stat, from shooting a gun to growing vegetables will be governed by these questions. Want to learn a new skill in-game?, spend a good deal of time with someone who already has that skill. The higher their skill is the faster you will learn.
I agree with the multi-server thing so u can start a character anytime.
I agree with realistic carrying weight.
Safety zones are certainly required, 2 or 3. These zones would be a %100 safety area. This means that the military has gunners or just guns all around the outside of the safety area. Military also lines the edge of the border of the entire infected area. (no one in or out) A player can come here and log out for the morning, and know for certain that their character will be there when they wake up at noon. If you try to log off and you are not in the safe zone you will be given a “chance to make it through the night” percentage. The player could fortify an area to up the percentage. Fortifying could be as simple as stepping into a broom closet and locking the door, or as complicated as building a new safe zone. Player made safe zones, such as malls or stores could exist, but would never have a %100 safety rating, but they could get as high as 95% if the traffic was high enough. (Starwars Galaxies players could run their own city, this would be lots of players creating a small community). In game made safe zones programing dictates no one can draw a weapon, ANYWHERE else there can be player vs player kills. The drawback to this would be “KARMA” the sliding scale of good and evil that we all live on. It affects the outcomes of almost every action in the game. The more good karma you have the more likely it is for you to find things that you need when you search for them or lucky things will happen to you in times of need, like gunfights. The more bad karma you have.. even if you find the things you need they may be busted or rotten making them much less useful, just cause you’re a jerk. On the subject of being a jerk, if you just cant help but line up every poor guy in your scoped sniper rifle, and you dont mind the bad karma, get together with some other friends who are all jerks and go raid the player made safe zones. Or raid the NPC military guarded medical supply trucks that travel, once a week, between the safe zones and the outer edge. How else are you going to eat?
So potentially you could create your own safe haven with lots of friends, or start a biker gang powerful enough to keep programed safe zones from getting their supplies, this causes the zones to have less food and bullets to give out, this pisses off the good karma players and causes them to hunt the player controlled biker gang.
Players collect stuff. Its what we do. We are saving it for something or another, and when a zombie bites you out in the thick of the urban survival, that stuff should stay with you..or your corpse. So if a friend, or enemy, or your next character sees your zombiefied self walking around he can remember you raided a vending machine and you have bags of snacks in your backpack, which your zombie self is still wearing. When i say next character, if you get bitten or scratched just once by the infected, you turn. No doubt about it. Depending on the severity of the infection,(unless you get completely eaten) it may take between 1 hour of in-game time and a in-game day. You could have time to stash your things somewhere, or take them to a friend. Playing as a zombie is something i dabbled with but no decision has been made. If you were to play as a zombie, you would get very little choice on what you did. The zombie would be programmed to move as fast as possible toward the nearest human. Basically the player could only watch (for as long as they continued to be log in) as their former self try to eat their friends.
{That’s kinda what i imagine it to be like as a zombie, you can see whats going on, but can do nothing to stop your horrible actions}
There would be FPS view for your basic aiming,and a 3rd person view for sneaking like in splinter cell. Avoiding the zombies would usually be smarter than trying to kill them all the time, so sneaking would be pretty important. But not everyone is good at aiming and sneaking, it depends on the job and recreations. I’m planning for this game to have a very large amount of players per server almost WOW amount. The game itself would come with special headphones that have 3 speakers per ear. This is for characters to be able to sneak around and hear the zombies well and actually be able to tell where it might be coming from. Allowing for the sound designers to play with the idea of tricking the players with echoing sounds. It will also be used to secretly listen to other peoples conversations better or worse depending on how their own character is facing, or make it harder to hear if the wind is blowing right in your ear. A whisper button would be needed so that the actual player doesn’t actually have to whisper into a microphone.
Leveling a character may not be something I play with, if i do, it will not be something that the player could see in his stats, more just something that would happen from continual usage. For instance, most of us gamers would shoot like a stormtrooper ( if we were able to find a gun at the start of the game) but the more you used that gun the more accurate you get. Also the more you use the run button the less quickly you would get fatigued. On that note, everyone should be able to use a gun or kick in a door, but some are far more superior. If your not good at kicking in doors, hack at it with the ax or crowbar or whatever you found. Or maybe you got lucky and found a shotgun, shoot the thing open, depending on the kind of bullets in the gun, it might actually do some damage. Starting a 45 year old character they would naturally be better than a 17 year old character with the same traits, he has been using those abilities for a longer time. But he is older, and will not be able to do certain things, like run for as long or climb up onto things as easily. When the older man crouches his knees will pop adding percentage to the zombie finding him.
Zombies, however, don’t get fatigued. There will be different kinds of zombies in the aspect that some are more decayed or in less good shape than others, therefor they are slower.
Now on to the fun stuff. I would like to contact Max Brooks in order to modify his “zombie survival guide” and use it for a players handbook. Contacting people like Bruce Campbell, Tom Savini, Rob Zombie, maybe even Mr. George Romero himself and offering them specially made playable characters. Giving them special stuff or special missions to give to the players they meet(the death rule may have to be broken for special guest players. special guest players would be announced, on the website, to be playing during certain hours, but they wouldn’t be told where. Along with all the normal things you see in a games site, new, updates, screenshots, the site would also have a “myspace” style area that lets people see who the longest running character is, who has killed the most infected, the most UN-infected…. and allow them to get to journal their findings if they like as well as get to know each other and set up plans as a group. This part is very important, the “myspace” aspect alone will draw people to the game. Another very important thing is product placement, the more actual name brands we can use the more real the game will feel, and they might even give money!
Thanks for reading.
PooFler
wow dude thanks for your ideas plz i would love to talk about it to you so my email is above your comment so mail me any time k and we will trade ideas plz i am not lol ing you.
deadfrontier.com zombie mmo ;o
I got exited just reading this i hope you actually do get this to happen in the future at some point good ideas and great things that you said about the fact that you can play with different classes like the L4D game.
I really like the idea of this game and especially the random city generator. i play nazi zombies and l4d at my buds house and it gets freakin boring using the same map over and over again. good job and i hope it becomes a reality
i like the idea of your game, but i think the idea of the zombies leveling up is cool but the hummans should also level up. they should be able to lift heavier items, such as stoves,slege hammers, and other big stuff.
Sounds like Zombie Panic
I think the only way a zombie MMO would be sustainable is if the setting was on a bigger scale… something more like George Romero’s Land of The Dead, taking place years after the initial “zombie apocalypse”…
major hubs would be safe cities and settlements… multiple factions would be cool too.. all fighting for limited supplies and resources…
I’m totally thinking Fallout meets Left 4 Dead… That’s a game I’d play..
Lol at daneofdarkness.
Oh my,there’s a zombie in front of me, but fear not.For I shall beat Him with my…TRUSTY STOVE *FPWANG*
“insert silly one liner with cooking reference”
On a different note,would these zombies be typical Infection type zombies,or old style cultist risen from the dead zombies or the favorite mentioned above,the mutagenic kind?
Also I think that zombies strength should be in their numbers,if they can’t kill you on their own,more will turn up etc.,spose you could have zombified animals to even out the zombie team, maybe if zombie players wanted to become stronger or faster they would have to defeat an animal in combat and transfer their infection, there’d be dogs for faster movement and bird(possibly) for people who like to scout.I don’t know, even the occasional bear or something,there’s zoo’s.
just idea.
I love you so much…i must have this game now…
Hey dude, are you me??? Every freaking idea you’re putting in was already in my head. Hope this works out, that would be awesome.
sounds good, i like the part that the uninfecteds don’t level up, i’m probably one of the few that doesn’t like FPS though. i think guns are good for certain uses but ammo only lasts so long. as long as there are plenty of melee weapons, also i realize that melee weapons tend to break so players can’t rely solely on just one. as for the quests there could be cetain things you could do, go on rescue missions, scouting if you’re in a big party, weapon hunting, etc. oh and instead of exp. they could get fame and maybe something like the “Zombie Kill of the week” like in Zombieland where players lead zombies into traps and depending on how epic they are the more fame they get, also head shots, showboating, and rescues would bbe more fame and maybe players get something a little extra in the the next round like an awesome weapon with tons of ammo or an unbreakable melee weapon. anyway those are my suggestions,but the game sounds awesome the way it is. i will definately be a fan.
I really like the idea of supply trucks bringing ammo and rations to the safe zones every week or so. Also like the idea of humans leveling up as presented by Gravemaster.
There should probably only be a limited amount of food and ammo. This should be plentiful and in large quantities so the players don’t run out early in the game, but this will make things difficult for the surviving humans near the end. This will also make it more important either to protect the supply lines or to intercept them (depending on how you play), as these will almost become necessary for survival.
I think human players should also be allowed to attack other human players outside of the designated safezones. In a real life zombie apocalypse, few would hesitate to kill another human if it furthered their own chances for survival. Plus, it could make the game more interesting if you have the option to loot from other players or if you have to be wary of both the zombies and the other humans.
I think the most difficult issue is the factions of humans and zombies. Should human players be forced to become zombies when they die? Or should they be given a way to come back. Though it might anger people to be forced to become a zombie, I think having a way to reverse the zombification would defeat the purpose of a zombie game like the one we’re describing.
Personally, I would prefer having a few zombies to begin with, but have them spread by killing human players, as in the humans vs. zombies game seen on many college campuses today (sadly, mine is not one of them). In this scenario, the game would either end once a certain time has been reached, and the surviving humans would be declared the winners, or the game would end when every last human had been converted to a zombie. At the end of such a game, players would be rated on things such as average zombies killed per day (as a human) or average humans bitten per day (as a zombie).