I've always loved the idea of 'survival' in a game. I wonder, would it be marketable? It would obviously have to be a multiplayer game but it doesn't have to branch out in to an all out MMORPG. I'm thinking of a game where players would have different social functions and by coordinating their jobs they could accomplish a common goal... Heck I always thought a player ran community would be awesome especially if it was necessary to survive. For example: Airplane crashes on an island and players have to find food, build shelter, find means to get off the island. I remember there was a game like this on the gameboy and I thought it was wicked but it was aimed for a much younger audience so it didn't really click with me.

It might be interesting to entirely eliminate the idea of 'towns'(especially as the typical non-pvp 'safe' areas) and instead force everything to come from the wilderness (be it edible plants or the weapons of monsters) and players (through a craft system and possibly magic summoning). If you added in PvP only and could convince some players to act as guards, you could have quite an interesting game. Players would have to pick random areas to group together and form market places and otherwise form a society on their own.

I might play an MMO like that if it had a good combat system(something interactive instead of just clicking a single button every 5-10 minutes) and good PvP (for ex, don't have a trade system but allow players to give other players items, so you could just take somebodys item without paying, but you also have to hope they aren't stronger because they could kill you and take everything you have). It would force players to police themselves, and could make for an interesting dynamic.

Throw in a basic food-requirement system to force people to hunt and gather as wel as fight monsters and you have a winner.

They only fear I'd have for a no safe zone would be griefers.

Although I did think of a zombie-like idea where you had to keep moving in an urban environment to survive. Imagine having a scarce amount of weapons and you have to move from safe house to safe house.

This might be a little different since everyone would be on the same side, avoid the undead, and there would still be a need for social functions since you need to find water and food in order to survive.


Random ideas:

-finding a source of fresh water pops up the question of whether you should stay and build a small settlement or just refill and keep travelling in hopes of finding something.
-reusing everything you can. You eat an animal but you can use the fur for clothing, bones for tools etc...

Personally, I think that players will police themselves, as long as you get some good players early enough. Especially if PvP allowed complete looting, there would be a good point to killing a griefer that goes around killing and taking people's stuff.

Also, you could maybe have a crash site be a single small safe zone, but personally I'd prefer to avoid that as it'd become a metropolitan area solely because of the safety and I'd prefer fewer admin-imposed modifications to what would naturally form. If you're going to make a wilderness game, make it a real wilderness where it is better to travel in groups or risk death, and you can really be scared about losing something when you die unless your friends manage to pick up what you lost.

Thing is I'm not sure this would work too well as an MMORPG... I think it would have to be a small sized game played out in sessions.

I mean you can't stop griefers, even if people gang up together and kill him a few times he wouldn't "learn his lesson". So that's why I think a survival type game would be a good type of genre for an amount gravitating around 8 players.

This is just to keep the feeling of the small community for people who need to work together.

I think it's important to note that I haven't worked out game mechanics so I have no idea how'd you insure that the players play together at the same time but I think MMO wise it would be hard to play around with (unless you had no pvp)

There are a number of survival muds that have worked out very well. If your set on researching this type of game I'd search The Mud Connector for post apocalyptic enforced role playing muds. Even if you don't like to play text based games, I'd at least check their websites out to observe the player made communities and extensive features lists.

I think basing a mmorpg around surviving is an excellent way to deviate from the current line of mmorpg's. Rather than players focusing on where to go to kill x monster, the player will be focused on finding food/water/shelter and avoiding enemies until they are in a group strong enough or it's a matter of life or death. Invariably, this leads to needing perma-death or other form of sever punishment for not trying to survive. Why try to survive if you can die, come back and keep killing stuff whether you try to get food or water?

Instead of a zombie setting, think perhaps Stone Age, where you have to find food and shelter just to survive. You can get bones, fur andmeat from animals, defeat neighbouring tribes, keep borders, find a furnish caves and all the other stuff that stone age humans did. This wouldn't work well into an MMORPG setting as stone gae tribes had little friendly contact with each other.

Just a though.

Wow, stone age is a pretty good idea seeing how there were no concrete settlements.

Heck you could even incorporate a few "skills" like research where you discovered how to make a club or even how to light fire :D

If you have a clan you have to make sure to keep your alpha status or else risk being killed by fellow tribesmen if there are any.

I wouldn't want a massive multiplayer with this type of game, but playing this casually with a few players would have a nice feel to it.