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Paradox Interactive announces Salem MMO

Published on 20th January 2011 by Joe Martin

Salem is a free to play MMO with permanent character death and a player-driven world.

Salem, a new free to play MMO being created by Haven and Hearth developers Seatribe, has been announced by Paradox Interactive at the Paradox Convention in New York today.

Following in similar footsteps to Seatribe's earlier MMO, Haven and Hearth, Salem will put a heavy focus on player responsibility and politics, as well as permanent character death. When you die, you have to create an entirely new character and start again.

Salem casts players as settlers in a randomly generated 'New World', then leaves them to fend for themselves. All villages, cities and items will have to be fashioned by the players themselves from basic, non-respawning resources. In other words, there's only a finite number of trees (for example) in the world, meaning a limited amount of wood too.

Everything, from currency through to buildings, will be created and maintained by players, with Seatribe claiming they will interfere with the world as little as possible.

Seatribe and Paradox have not yet announced how Salem will be financed, though more details are set to be announced in the future.

Salem impressed us an awful lot, especially as it was created by just a two-man team. There's enormous room for emergent gameplay, obviously, with charismatic players potentially able to rally others under them and change the shape of the world, for example.

Let us know your thoughts in the forums.

16 Comments

Discuss in the forums Reply

DragunovHUN 20th January 2011, 23:38

That sounds incredibly interresting, though the inevitable griefiing is going to suck.

greigaitken 20th January 2011, 23:43

instantly i think "will the resources used be less than resources gained from pilaging my neighbours village"

docodine 20th January 2011, 23:51

P4R payment model

(pay for resurrection?)

deathtaker27 21st January 2011, 00:29

sounds very very interesting

C-Sniper 21st January 2011, 01:03

Interesting idea. If it is free to play then I will definitely check it out.

metarinka 21st January 2011, 01:08

any permadeath mmo will never have a huge fanbase. Basically people want to play a "game" dick around and occasionally run into the enemy base or take on a boss they know they'll never beat. Permadeath mmo's discourage that because there's a huge time investment that can be lost at any second.

There's always gonna be hardcore people who like the thrill of living on the edge. But there will always be a lot of rage quits, when your client locks up and your toon auto runs into an enemy base, or you lag out and log on dead.

Could still be a good game, but I find permadeath annoying. One of my two biggest dislikes of eve (ship death and only mining as the player run economy activity)

hyperion 21st January 2011, 01:22

0Ftb-cj2WIs
It's probably just as well that they're going f2p.

Volund 21st January 2011, 01:29

The only thing I can think of is how pissed people will be when the inevitable greifing ensues, with people burning down other people's homes, with them inside.... mwaaahaaa

C-Sniper 21st January 2011, 02:16

Second though,

I am thinking of just hoarding resources...

Hovis 21st January 2011, 05:37

One player who matters, an army of expendable droogs dying by the dozen to gather what they need.

Not saying this isn't a very interesting concept, but I can see it turning into something akin to 28 Days Later as new characters are created merely to murder and swarm the sane.

CardJoe 21st January 2011, 05:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by greigaitken
instantly i think "will the resources used be less than resources gained from pilaging my neighbours village"

See, my first thought was; 'There's business to be made collecting dead peoples stuff and selling it back to them.'

Deadpunkdave 21st January 2011, 06:06

If nothing else, this will be great experiment into the nature of trolls hehheh. More seriously, it's popularity will ask and answer some more basic gaming questions: Do we play MMO's for enjoyment or escapism. With perma-death, is the escapism enhanced or reduced? How much do we define our characters by ourselves and ourselves by our characters?

Well, it seems interesting to me anyway, I'm sure someone can drag a thesis out of it ;)

Xir 21st January 2011, 09:19

They've got to balance it somehow, otherwise I can create an Idiot with a torch in five minutes, and burn down the house someone else built aver the course of months.
What's my incentive for building a house, or investing playtime at all?

CardJoe 21st January 2011, 12:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xir
They've got to balance it somehow, otherwise I can create an Idiot with a torch in five minutes, and burn down the house someone else built aver the course of months.
What's my incentive for building a house, or investing playtime at all?

The same can be true of Minecraft too, but people still play that.

Xir 21st January 2011, 15:07

...must have missed that part of minecraft...I was single player and bored out of my wits

Fenrisphantom 23rd January 2011, 04:22

For those who have not played HnH (Haven and Hearth) and want a idea of what type of Gameplay will be in store then i suggest you go check it out its free but i warn you if you play games only for graphics then you will bore quickly of it and should just wait for Salem (also no QQ because you got kill by a boar or bear or a random griefer kills you there no support but that of player that like the role of bounty hunts (they call them self rangers in game))

As to the perma death system this is in HnH as well and heres how it worked

In game players had something called a belief slider that effected stats, exp gain, and the such. One of the slider effected two called "Tradition" and "Change". Now there was plus and negatives no matter what slider you moved but this one effected you the most having full "Tradition" meant players one death would get somewhere around 75% of the full stats when they "ancestored" a character that died but it came at a exp while full change add around a 120% bonus to exp gain but if you died you end up with around 25% of your total stats. There was a second effect but that only effected how long before one could move there slider in one tick in a certain direction with tradition upping the time and change lowering it