Salem

[Dog Pants]

Salem is a funny fish. It looks to me to be some sort of crazy hybrid of Wurm Online and Farmville. It's an in dev MMONG centred around life in colonial America, with the player trying to eke out an existance by building and farming. There's not a huge amount of information on it (although there's the interview at RPS which inspired this), but I get the sniff of the crafting part of Minecraft but extrapolated. Sounds a bit dull the way I describe it, but the mention of player villages based on your own gaming group (like a guild), strange and creepy monsters lurking in the darkness (partly inspired by Lovecraft) and an open PvP world regulated by an interesting justice system has my interest piqued. Maybe I think there's some good bits of Shartak in there too. Either way, I've got my beady eye on it.

And for those who are bored and looking for something different, the game's predecessor, the wittily named Haven and Hearth, is available (for free I think) here

[Joose]

Thats....i dont know what that is, but my beady eye will also be resting upon it. It could be quite interesting. Could be shit. Could be awesome.

[HereComesPete]

Thats....i dont know what that is, but my beady eye will also be resting upon it. It could be quite interesting. Could be shit. Could be awesome.

This.

[Dog Pants]

They're now registering for betas. If a couple of people sign up from this link I get a guaranteed place apparently (so I can report back!). Still looks terribly interesting, with perma-death (stuff being passed on to your descendant), and a crime and punishment system to stop people getting ganked because of it. Most interesting though are the rumours of the setting being strongly influenced by Lovecraft's Massachusetts.

Sign up here: http://beta.salemthegame.com/?ref=c16bbd7bbfd

EDIT: I got my three, replaced link with Bits's.

[Thompy]

sign up from this link

Done.

It does sound interesting but the videos I've seen make it look a bit shonky. We'll see.

[HereComesPete]

Done.

It best be filled with weird monsters and witches and shit.

[shot2bits]

i remember being intruiged by the idea of this when it was announced, signed up with your link so if you have enough for your spot and people dont mind could you possibly use my link now http://beta.salemthegame.com/?ref=c16bbd7bbfd

[Dog Pants]

I could have sworn I read that this was in beta by now, but I can't for the life of me find any date for it now.

[HereComesPete]

Paradox seems to state end of summer/start of autumn.

[Dog Pants]

Rah!

For having recruited three fellow charter colonists for the advancement of, and future settlement in, The King's colonies in the New World, you are yourself hereby granted privileged passage to the New World upon company ships set to depart for New-England-o'er-the-Seas in this late April, barring accidents of weather, navigation and pirates. Further instructions will be provided to you per e-mail as the date of departure approaches.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

http://beta.salemthegame.com/?ref=e9abde00f08

once everyone above is done

[Joose]

woo, got my invite too! :D

[Joose]

Zomg, I am in game. I have no idea what im doing. I think I shall go tutorialise.

[Joose]

Ive tutorialised. I still dont know what im doing, as the actual game seems to be missing an important bit of the tutorial. Confus.




I need an adult.

[Dog Pants]

My access isn't here yet

[Dog Pants]

I now have it. Rah!

[Dog Pants]

My word, this game is obtuse. I'm making very slow headway, now hindered by the fact I'm utterly lost in the wilds of Massachusetts. I started out naked on European shores, I'm now in the new world looking like a witch. I have managed to train myself in survival, foraging, and nuts and berries, have (eventually) built a small, smoking pile of sticks. I see other people with small farms on my travels, and I know I need a few chestnuts and leaves to progress, but can I find the bastards? I'm probably missing something, but in this very early beta stage there's very little in the way of tutorials or help. Still, looking like it could be interesting.

[Dog Pants]

I'm starting to pick up momentum in this game now. Leaves were my sticking point, but it turns out they're a finite resource on every tree, meaning I had to walk for half an hour or so before I found trees still with leaves on them. Some sort of visual representation of this would be handy in the future. Anyway, now I have an axe which I made from flint and a branch.

An explanation of skill progression would be appropriate at this point. In order to craft, build, fight, or do pretty much anything you need the skill. These are bought by filling up the bars on various proficiencies, which is in turn done by studying. So in order to progress you need to find or make the stuff to study, which lets you then get more skills, which then lets you create more things to study. And so on. It's quite a lengthy process, and it seems to be the best way to do it is by getting lost in the wilderness and finding stuff on the ground. Despite how it sounds, it's an oddly satisfying progression.

[Dog Pants]

I've not played this for a few weeks now, so it might have had some updates which have addressed some of my issues, but my main problem with the game is a deal-breaker. That is other people. See, the idea is open world PvP enabled play, but people are discouraged from killing other players via a justice system. Except that justice system is currently missing, and progress is painstakingly slow. It's a bad combination - in order to progress you need to find world items to combine so that you can learn more skills and build things. The things you need to pick up are finite though, and even at this early closed beta stage you have to walk for a very long way to find anything. Then you have to walk back to Boston to sell any saleables you do find, without a map. That does give you a fair sense of achievement when you do actually progress, which is good, but rumours of PKers wandering the wilderness putting you right back to square one is enough to make me not want to play. Simply put, it renders the game pointless because unless you're part of a large community it's only a matter of time until you get ganked. You can't even defend yourself unless you buy a hard-gotten skill. So it still has potential, but as it stands it's simply ganker heaven.

[friznit]

Sounds like Eve without the (relatively) safe haven of high sec. Though in the end I preferred nullsec simply because you could see the bad guys coming and weren't surrounded by idiots.