Rant 079 / Stone-Age, Bronze-Age, Iron-Age, Pwn-Age

A few days back I started playing this browser-based MMORPG Urban Dead, which is pretty low-tech, not time-consuming, but interesting. Being low-tech, it is a rare online game which my shitty dorm bandwidth can support. It is designed such that you cannot spend much time on it, making it ideal for muggers like me. It is interesting, since it is the only MMORPG I know of that has no NPCs. And the zombie-infested-city theme is also makes it more unique.

http://www.urbandead.com/map.cgi?logout

What is it about? The background story is that the city of Malton suddenly becomes filled with zombies. Before all residents can successfully evacuate, a quarantine was placed on the city. Meanwhile, researchers of the company, NecroTech, were ordered to stay within the city to study the zombies.

Players can choose to play as the humans or the zombies. As humans, there are 3 classes to choose from, with many sub-classes: military(Private, Medic and Scout), civilians(Cop, Firefighter and Consumer) and scientists(Doctor and NecroTech assistant).

Most of the sub-classes are pretty obvious, but some of them are rather unique. As a Consumer, you can find loots in malls more easily. As a NecroTech assistant, you can "tag" zombies and allow other players to spot them more easily.

But if you feel evil and want to try the zombie, there is only 1 class of zombies - Zombie.

Zombies seem quite easy to use, since you cannot die(you simply rise again by spending Action Points). Other than that, you also have a whole range of skills to choose from, like Scent of Fear and Infectious Bite.

The game doesn't have good graphics, and is turn-based. This means even if you lag, consequences are not as bad as if you are playing a real-time game. It uses a system of Action Points, in which you gain 1 AP per half-hours, or 48AP everyday. Every action you take(eg walking from one building to another, attacking or talking through the radio) consumes 1 AP.

There is no economy in the city of Malton. Makes sense, who'd want to trade while struggling to survive in a city of zombies? This is ensured by the game designers refusing to implement the trade/give function. Therefore, what you find(btw, "searching the area" takes 1AP) is always yours until you drop it, at which point it disappears.

The "search area" function gives you a chance of finding items, and your location affects what you can find. In police stations you can find guns, and in NecroTech offices you can find revival syringes(for turning zombies into people).

But the lack of AP really bugs me sometimes. Everyday, I get about 48 APs, and just walking to a building and entering takes 2 AP. Everytime I have to stop doing whatever I was doing and find a safe building to rest in before my AP runs out. Yes, you have to find a barricaded building to rest before logging off or you may get killed by zombies that sees you.

And as for barricaded buildings, barricades can be removed by zombies when they attack them enough times, but also can be rebuilt by anyone who has the right skills and enough APs.