Nexus War 2.0

April 26, 2008 2:32 PM

The Straylight release of Nexus War, a browser based PvP MMO in the vein of Urban Dead (thought significantly more complex) and Kingdom of Loathing (thought significantly more serious in tone), occurred today. It brings with it a host of changes, new skills, upgrades, and expansions, shaking things up for the old player base and making it an ideal time for new players to join, both because the status quo is being rewritten and because of a vastly expanded in game help menu.

I love Nexus War, and since I found it because of a comment in the Blue when I was bored one day, I figured that other MMO addicts looking for something more casual than WoW might appreciate the notice. Also, the more people playing the game, the more fun for all of us. Previously.

posted by Caduceus (22 comments total)

As in the Villa Straylight? sexy.
posted by mek at 2:54 PM on April 26

Babylon come, mon.
posted by loquacious at 3:22 PM on April 26

Wow, that's a lot of change. Fpr the uninitiated Nexus Wars is basically a massive nerd fight at the end of time, with angels, devils, machineguns and magic in a gloriously goofy anachronistic mix.

I'm tempted to do teardowns on my old characters and get sucked in again, though it looks like until you hit higher levels the changes don't do much.

Oh, and they added a cowboy world?
posted by Artw at 3:44 PM on April 26

a comment in the Blue

Ha ha, victory!
posted by Artw at 3:45 PM on April 26

Yeah, a huge cowboy world, which is also a world of the dead.

One of the changes that affects low level characters is that high level characters don't spawn in the main mortal plane anymore, which means less being murdered randomly by people who gain no benefit from it.
posted by Caduceus at 4:40 PM on April 26

I don't understand what i'm supposed to be doing here.
posted by empath at 5:21 PM on April 26

Um, is Urban Dead fun? Because on first blush it looks like the video game I play in my brain.
posted by Bookhouse at 5:21 PM on April 26

This sounded neat to me, but when I tried it, it gave me a 10% chance to hit the first level 1 character I ran into. Not exactly my idea of fun to miss 9 times a row to hit a guy once.
posted by juv3nal at 5:51 PM on April 26

I tried to play for a good 2 hours when it first went up and I could not for the life of me figure out what to do. When I finally learned how to turn on a light, someone blew me up and that was the end for me.
posted by luriete at 6:07 PM on April 26

But I used to love randomly murdering people and getting no benifit from it! That's straight-up authentic evil that is!

Also Zombies + Horrid Enslavement + packed library = fun!
posted by Artw at 6:09 PM on April 26

Um, is Urban Dead fun? Because on first blush it looks like the video game I play in my brain.

Well, I've been playing since 2005, so I obviously think so. It's a pretty simple game, over all; but the true fun comes from metagaming. The balance between survivors and zombies can be quite delicate, and once things start tipping in one direction or the other the efects can get quite drastic. Right now there's a 1200-plus member zombie hoard that's ravaged the city and bringing some real excitement back to the game.
posted by lekvar at 10:30 PM on April 26

The closed game with no revives they did for Diary of the Dead sounds theoretically interesting.
posted by Artw at 11:08 PM on April 26

Wow, thanks for the heads-up, Caduceus.

And this reminds me, I really gotta get back into Urban Dead.

Makes me long for Planetarion. When it was free, that is.
posted by cosmonik at 6:25 AM on April 27

Yeah, Urban Dead is well worth trying, because

1: There's no serious initial investment. It's just a browser game, and you don't need to read a 3000-word FAQ in order to figure out how to play your level 1 survivor or zombie.

(If you start as a survivor, be prepared to find yourself zombified in the pretty near future. Don't worry - it's curable! :-)

2: As lekvar says, there's (still) a lot of community involvement.

On top of all of the forums, you can, for instance, see where you are in the city on this map, and there's a browser extension that lets you see what the status of other parts of the city was when the last person running the same extension went there.

There is of course also a wiki, here.

If you want to make a big deal out of UD then you can run multiple characters (though having them near each other is a rule violation); if you want to play it as a properly casual game, though, you can just run one character. That's what I've been doing, for about as long as lekvar, which could explain why I have thirty thousand spare experience points :-).
posted by dansdata at 8:50 AM on April 27

Does Nexus War become fun? Like juv3nal I found that 10% hit rate makes for an awful starting experience, so I rerolled Smash Crush with melee combat. Then I could kill things, but nothing fought back and my only reward for clicking the "attack" button over and over was arbitrarily assigned experience points. Then I used up all my action points and can't play for awhile.

The ubermap looks kind of cool.
posted by Nelson at 8:54 AM on April 27

Artw, the Monroeville map was great. All of the cherished conventions of UD were thrown out the window. I started as a zombie, and my crew and I caused some heavy damage until Headshot was altered to cause permadeath for zombies. Having a hardcore map brought back a lot of excitement, and was a great experiment. It also revealed some of the underlying problems with the game. Apparently approx. 70% of the characters created for Monroeville were survivors, so the game started out unbalanced. Plus, many survivors who got killed simply didn't stand up again as zombies. So the zombies start out from a severely weakened position and get few recruits.

We rampaged well, but it was ultimately futile.

I'm still hoping for more new maps though.
posted by lekvar at 10:24 AM on April 27

I'd never heard of this game before, thanks! I started a character and I really like it so far (though waiting for action points makes me really impatient). I feel touches of Dhalgren, Stephen King's Gunslinger books, American Gods, Silent Hill, and a lot of other things I just can't put my finger on. Great stuff!
posted by OverlappingElvis at 7:18 PM on April 27

OK, I love it and I'm playing it. Anyone who gets into it (and yes, level 1 is boring, but the decisions you make will have big effects on future development) please MefiMail me and we can work together. Angels, devils, neutrals, all good.
posted by imperium at 10:20 AM on April 29

Top tip for level 1: Searching is a good skill, as you'll need it for any future character class. Go to a library and search for books, or to a hospital and search for first aid kits (to heal other players) and you'll level up fairly quickly. Attacking other players is futile until you get some more skills and equipment. Repar Item can also work well, and is useful later, unlike something like Engineering which will let you level up quite quickly repairing doors but is a bit of a wasted skill slot later on.
posted by Artw at 10:28 AM on April 29

Top tip for evil level 1s: Just get hand to hand and hit people, sicne a lot of your evil powers will need HtH. don't both with searching for weapons at first,or preserving your life in any way, they're just wasted AP.
posted by Artw at 10:30 AM on April 29

OK, so I'm really interested in playing NW, but it looks hugely complex, like a 2d WoW. Any current players want to weigh in on the game? Is it worth the time investment? Can a player actually accomplish anything?
posted by lekvar at 10:54 AM on April 29

I broke it.
posted by IronLizard at 7:26 PM on April 29