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| Urban Dead | |
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| Developer(s) | Kevan Davis |
| Designer(s) | Kevan Davis |
| Released | July 3, 2005 |
| Genre | Survival horror MMORPG |
| Mode(s) | Multiplayer |
| Platform(s) | Web browser |
Urban Dead is an HTML/text-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game created by Kevan Davis. Set in a quarantined region of the fictional city of Malton, it deals with the aftermath of a zombie outbreak. Players enter the game either as a human survivor or a zombie, each with different abilities and limitations. Humans become zombies when they are killed, while zombies can be "revivified" with appropriate technology, becoming human. There are no non-player characters in the game: all humans and zombies are controlled by players. Urban Dead went live in July 2005, and had over 800,000 registered players by March 2007, of which over 40,000 remain active. The game is in open beta, with new features being added every few months.
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Character classes
New players begin the game as one of three human classes (Military, Science, and Civilian) or as a Zombie. Each side in the human-zombie struggle has its own advantages. Humans move twice as fast as low-level zombies. They are also able to employ various weapons and tools, communicate with each other in-game via speech, radio broadcasting, and text messaging, and barricade building entrances, which can help keep the swarms of zombies out. Zombies (often called "zeds"), while initially slow-moving and able to inflict less damage per attack upon their victims, are able to easily spring back to action when killed, making them effectively immortal. The classes are as follows. Military: Private, Medic, Scout Science: Doctor, Lab assistant Civilian: Policeman, Fireman, Shopper Zombies: Corpse It is possible to switch sides in the conflict: a human character that is killed will rise up as a zombie, and zombie characters may be re-animated as living humans by a survivor who has the relevant skill and item.
Gameplay
Characters receive a steady trickle of "Action Points" (APs), which are used up any time they move, fight, or undertake any other sort of activity. They receive one AP every half-hour, up to a maximum of fifty points. When a character's AP total drops to or below zero, that character is unable to do anything and "sleeps" until their total AP is positive again. Should a human be so unlucky as to run out of AP hits while in an unsecured area, they are at great risk of attack by zombies while asleep. Players must make sure that their human characters are in a safe place before logging out, encouraging quick raids from fortified safe houses. The use of Action Points as a realtime limit on character actions is similar to the systems of several other freeware MMORPGs such as Kingdom of Loathing. As players damage their opponents or perform certain other actions, their experience points increase. While humans can also gain experience from performing a variety of actions, such as healing other players or repairing damage to buildings, zombies can only gain experience points by attacking other player characters or objects in the game world. As soon as a player gains enough experience points, he can exchange them for a new skill. Only humans can buy human skills, and only zombies can buy zombie skills; although skills of one type are not lost if the character dies or is revived, most human skills cannot be used by zombies, and vice versa. Human characters can effectively learn the skills of all human classes, not just the class they begin with, though skills outside of their chosen class can be more expensive. Gameplay tends to revolve around human characters making raids on the zombies from various player-run safe houses, while the zombies scour the streets looking for prey, occasionally mobbing together in "hordes" to attack a safe house. These safe houses tend to be located in or near buildings where useful items can be easily found, such as shopping malls, police stations, hospitals, and the laboratories of the zombie-related NecroTech corporation (similar to Resident Evil's Umbrella Corporation). Cooperation between players, however, isn't strictly enforced. Internal fighting between survivors, as well as zombies, is allowed, and is a frequent occurrence. Humans who die and return as zombies do not have to switch sides. Zombies that were once humans usually gather at designated "revive points" scattered through out the city where they wait for humans with the relevant skills and equipment to revive them. Revive points are considered neutral ground and survivors are generally discouraged from killing zombies found there. Some players and groups on both sides have also set their own distinct goals, many of which are set for purely role-playing purposes. Urban Dead has no economy. Human characters can loot supplies from abandoned buildings indefinitely, but cannot trade, sell, or give them to other players. Urban Dead is not limited to purely survivor vs. zombie combat. There are plenty of groups within UD that combat survivors as survivors. It can be better described as PKing or ganking. Within the game, this is viewed as an act of murder. Individuals that engage in this behavior are often tracked by bounty hunters, PKer PKers, in UD. Some zombie groups utilize human characters as spies and saboteurs, usually during or in preparation for a major attack on a safe house. These collaborators are often referred to as "zombie spies" or "death cultists".
Related sites
The site includes the Urban Dead Wiki, containing information on all the game's items, skills and areas, as well as pages for player groups, historic game events, and an extensive suggestions system. The wiki also includes browser expansions and a fan-written backstory of the game.
