Urban Dead: This older massive has been around since the July of 2005. In which you play the part of either a post-zombocolypse Human or Zombie Corpse. This game has a decidely non-graphical approach which is closer to MUDs of yore. The only graphics provided by default are the city map and the logo. Various extensions for browsers exist to add graphics for those who are, shall we say, imagimpaired, or simply desire something else. At start, the human players can choose from a variety of classes in addition to the races mentioned above. These effect the initial abilities of the players, which can later be modified (regardless of race) with skills. Even the choice of race is a transitory one; at any point Zombies can — with varying degrees of difficulty depending on skills of both humans and the target zombie — be revived and turned into productive members of the living society. Even then this opportunity to live can be aborted by player-killers, other zombies, and the free will to jump from any building.
Ikariam: While Urban Dead seems to exist mostly to harvest the joy of the game from a player and doesn’t attempt to charge for any gameplay elements, Ikariam‘s three-tiered overworld exists to generate revenue for the developers. Though it also happens to be a fun civ/populous-style omnipotent hand-of-god game wherin you build little colonies to collect resources on islands and venture for war or peace with others in alliances. In another stark contrast to Urban Dead, Ikariam’s interface is graphically rich and even the sliders you use to choose what amount of goods to send to another colony is customized. This makes up for the fact that you’re just twiddling numbers to provide for your colonies and that your interactions with other players can be limited at first.
PMOG: Contrary to the onomonopiedic title, pmog has nothing to do with pogs. Instead it stands for Passively Multiplayer Online Game. Which is disappointing as you might wish for an online Pog trading simulation. It also consists of user-generated content more than any other web-massive I’ve played. The user interface consists largely of a stripped-down toolbar for you to utilize at any time while you’re browsing the internet. Ah-ha, now you see, that is the passive part. This game has character classes, but you don’t choose them. Instead they are provided to you by the system based on your actions. What are these actions? Well you can make missions, kind of mini-webrings, linking sites together. These consume the “lamp post” resource which you can refill at the in-game shoppe. Though you still can’t buy pogs, hm. You can also drop mines (which are defended with armor) , or attack those who drop mines with St. Nicks. Of course you can also put out one way portals between sites. For example, I just put one down from souceforge.net to icculus.org. That portal was named: “Perhaps you’d like a little bit more soul.”
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