Undead Labs' MMOZ Draws Closer
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Why do you use (online world game) now instead of (MMO)?
We feel that (MMO) has become highly associated with a specific game design template, and we don't want people to assume that's the kind of game we are making.
If you think of an MMO as a game that allows thousands of gamers to play together in a persistent online world that evolves and reacts over time to player actions, then we're still making that game. If you think of an MMO as an online fantasy RPG with elves and dragons and EPIC QUESTS involving gremlin ears and dudes standing around town with bobbing exclamation marks over their heads, then we're not and never have been making that game.
Don't get me wrong: I truly love fantasy RPGs, and many of us here at the Lab have been making them for a long time. The problem is that (MMO) no longer conveys a set of design tools or technologies that enable play in an online world; instead it conveys (a game like World of Warcraft.) I'm sure that's great if you're Blizzard, but if you're trying to make a truly innovative MMO experience you wind up spending more time explaining what your game is not, rather than what it is.
We are still creating the game we set out to create: an awesome zombie-survival online world game for console gamers. But rather than describing it as an MMO and having to explain all the ways that it's not really like the typical boilerplate MMO we now describe it simply as an online world game, which says just what we want to say, and no more.
What's the difference between Class3 and Class4?
'˜Class3'² is the codename for the ambitious zombie-survival open world game currently under development at Undead Labs for release as an Xbox LIVE Arcade title. '˜Class4'² is the codename for the subsequent zombie-survival online world game that we will develop by building on the Class3 platform. In other words, Class3 runs on your Xbox 360 and supports 1-2 players via Xbox LIVE or on the same screen, while Class4 will provide a much larger server-hosted world for thousands of simultaneous players.
