Undead Labs is reporting that State of Decay, available for Xbox Live Arcade and Steam Early Access, has sold over one million copies. Undead Labs is planning on developing an MMO set in the same universe, tentatively titled Class4. State of Decay was formerly known as Class3.
“Your encouragement drives us to keep working and keep improving. You got us here with your energy, your feedback, and your telling your friends about us. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts and brains.”
Undead Labs is on the MMO Fallout list of “Developers We’d Like To See Succeed,” and not just because they are promising us a zombie MMO, although that reason covers the basic essentials. Thanks to a publishing deal with Microsoft, Undead Labs is taking the Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment route by first creating a zombie game on Xbox Live Arcade, that will set up the story and structure that their zombie MMO will be built around. While Class 3 will start out as an open world third person action title, Undead Labs will be inching the IP closer to MMO territory.
Although Class 3 will be an Xbox Live Arcade exclusive title, I want to make it very plain and clear that Xbox users should not put a lot of faith in Undead Labs’ MMO similarly appearing on the system. Microsoft may be publishing this title, but the company has a long history of snuffing out MMOs from much bigger companies. Age of Conan, Champions Online, Star Trek Online, and Final Fantasy XIV are just a few of the titles that were slated for release on the 360, but pushed back into oblivion or outright canned as a result of Microsoft’s interference.
The issues with an MMO on the 360 are quite simple, once you understand Microsoft’s system for their online games. Releasing regular patches is difficult, as Microsoft has to certify every update. The MMOs take up a lot of bandwidth that would go through Xbox Live’s servers, and most of the companies expect Microsoft to open their MMOs up to silver members, because who wants to pay for internet + Xbox Live + subscription fees just to play an MMO? The Xbox360 version of Final Fantasy XI is playable on a silver account, and even Square has admitted in the past that FFXI only made it onto the console because Live was in its infancy at the time, and that the company does not expect similar results for FFXIV.
So if Undead Labs does get around to making their MMO (rather than finding Live Arcade games a more feasible form of income, which it likely is), expect it to pop up on the PC and possibly the PS3. If their MMO does appear on the 360, it won’t be an MMO in the traditional sense of a persistent world. Microsoft would never allow it, although as publisher they may at least ensure that the title does not release on the PS3.
I stand by what I said last August.
As much as I hate to play the pessimist, those who are waiting out on a 360 version of Final Fantasy XIV might as well wait in line behind those still hoping for a console edition of Champions Online, Age of Conan, and Star Trek Online, who are standing right over there with the folk waiting for Duke Nukem Forever and the rapture.
…Ignore the Duke Nukem tidbit. Good thing I’m such an optimist, right?
If this pre-release hype doesn’t have you foaming at the mouth, you are likely a long-time MMO player and have heard this drivel a thousand times over. I have a theory that the bigger the company’s mouth is prior to release, the more disappointing the game is.
Scott: I dislike you. Todd: Tell it to the cleaning lady on Monday. Scott: What Todd: Because… because you’ll be dust on Monday. Scott: Huh? Todd: Because I’ll be pulverizing you sometime over the weekend. Scott: I’m sorry… what? Todd: And the cleaning lady… cleans up… dust. She dusts. And she has weekends off, so… Monday. Right? Envy: What in the hell are you talking about, Todd?
The above quote is from Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, and is a wonderful example of trash talking gone horribly wrong. Granted, Todd beats the crap out of Scott until he has his powers removed for violating the ways of the vegan (note: neither gelato nor chicken parmesan are vegan.), but irregardless he loses in the end.
I don’t get the same glee or satisfaction that others do when a developer does bad or has to shut their game down because of a mistake in development or post release that drives their customers away. I didn’t throw Realtime Worlds into the dirt like a lot of other MMO news websites did, but at the same time I didn’t baby them. I called out the mistakes and called out the positives, voiced my opinions on the future (which were not very positive) and called it as I saw it.
So I hope Undead Labs is wearing a sturdy faceplate when the door slams open on them. Rich Foge of Undead Labs, currently working on a zombie themed console MMO, made a statement that will no doubt spark console vs pc flaming, as well as some ire from the PC MMO community:
“MMOs get breaks because of their social nature, but if you really look at them closely they’re barely even games. Mario 64 (nearly 15-years-old at this point) feels better than any MMO I’ve ever played. MMOs aren’t even close to keeping up with cutting edge videogames from a gameplay or presentation perspective.”
Foge wants an action console MMO, one where your abilities are directed by your skills with a bat, and your ability to dodge with the buttons, not by mathematics, random number generators, and skill balancing. A game with physics, and intelligent AI, and a living breathing world where objectives are done not for gear but for the betterment of the world and those that inhabit it. A game where you and a bunch of buddies can drive your armored car up to a gas station, and while one guy fills up the car and another guy protects him, two more burst into the building through the windows and start stocking up on Kraft Mac and Cheese while gunning down zombies (okay the mac and cheese was my addition). And you know what? Undead Labs are gamers and they’ll be damned if they just sit back while this game is not being developed!
If this pre-release hype doesn’t have you foaming at the mouth, you are likely a long-time MMO player and have heard this drivel a thousand times over. I have a theory that the bigger the company’s mouth is prior to release, the more disappointing the game is. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the games are bad: What I am getting at is that the hype is so much over the feasible game’s quality, that the end product is nowhere near what was promised after cutbacks and delays, and that is where the disappointment comes from.
Undead Labs wants to do a combat based shooter MMO? Alright. Will it be instanced? If so, you can take your pipe dream for a subscription and throw it into the garbage now. If not, hopefully you have a system to combat inherent lag, similar to Planetside.
Even so, I’d like to think that more people each year become attuned to the pre-release hype as the meaningless drivel that it is. For people like myself, who have to turn around and write about the hype, the talking points get old fast. In fact, I lose another thirty minutes off of my estimated lifespan whenever a company uses the term “innovative” in its advertising which, thankfully, Foge did not use even once.
So being the seemingly contradictory hopeless optimist that I am, I’m going to stay over here with the pessimists, who keep me grounded and to earth with regards to my expectations.
And if any of you think that Undead Labs’ MMO will ever make it to the Xbox 360, you are out of your mind. That is all I will say on the matter. The Xbox Live community has a better chance of Microsoft making the service free.
MMO Fallout 