Salem - ¿Über-Hardcore MMO en camino?

SALEM

Set in a mytho-historical version of Colonial America, Salem offers players the chance to shape their world, literally. Running in the same vein as Wurm Online and A Tale in the Desert, Salem promises a crafting-centric experience for players who are tired of the traditional “theme park” approach to MMOs. This is free-form gameplay at its finest; in addition to quintessential professions such as smithing and farming, players will be able to terraform their surroundings in a “persistent and mutable” world.

While the art style may appear lighthearted and cartoonish, the mood and atmosphere I experienced while watching the gameplay was dark and foreboding. This is certainly an intimidating, gothic setting, and the open PvP and permanent death only serve to further that notion. During my time at the Salem table, I only witnessed a few aggressive deer, but the guys at Seatribe promise such creatures as “squonks”, “hidebehinds” and witches. (We’ll get into witches later.)

On the aesthetic front, the character avatar looks like something out of Animal Crossing. Granted, Salem is still in its pre-alpha phase, so I assume that they will continue to work on the model and refine its appearance. Despite this, character movement is fluid, and emotes are funny.

Speaking of fluids, Seatribe has come up with a unique, albeit disconcerting, approach to player health in Salem. Instead of your typical health bar, players are presented with a multicolored diamond that resides at the top of the screen. The top corner represents “blood”, and – get this – the other three corners represent phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. Each attribute is associated with a certain activity; getting attacked will drain blood, while participating in strenuous tasks may drain your phlegm. You’ll have to eat food on a regular basis to restore and improve the balance of your bodily fluids.

Similar to Darkfall, players will have access to skills for any type of activity. For example, a character with a high mountaineering skill will be able to reach higher elevations than those with low or no skill. Gathering and crafting skills such as farming, building, smithing, fishing, cooking, exploring and hunting (to name a few) will have subsets of skills that are relevant to the task at hand. Interestingly, there is even a tracking skill that can be used to hunt down other players. This is instrumental in Salem’s open PvP policing strategy.

Since characters will be permanently erased from the server when they die, the idea of free-for-all PvP is unsettling, to say the least. Seatribe hopes to foster a cooperative community, but there will always be a division of the player population that desires nothing more than a good gankfest. With this in mind, the devs have implemented a search-and-destroy mechanic that allows players to avenge the death of others by following a “scent” left by the evildoer. Anyone who happens upon this scent will interpret it as a token and those with a sufficient tracking skill will be able to follow a visible trail to the perpetrator’s current location. If said suspect is offline at the time the tracking occurs, their avatar can be systematically summoned and executed. How’s that for a good night’s sleep?

However, the scent doesn’t last forever and certain crimes carry scents of varying potency. The scent of murder (which is also a skill) for example, will last considerably longer than those of theft or vandalism. Ideally, players will band together and protect each other in times of crisis, but this contingency plan is unique and provides an organic take on law & order in MMOs.

The benefits of developing a certain area into a working community are widespread and numerous. The more “civilized” an area becomes, the more utility it brings to the population; crops have higher yields, build times are reduced, crafted goods are more valuable, etc. Bjorn Johannessen, game designer at Seatribe, warns us about the deep wilderness, “The further you get into the wilderness, the more dark and foreboding it may become. We call unexplored areas Mordor.”

“One does not simply walk into Mordor,” said Bjorn’s grinning associate, Fredrick Tolf.

Let’s get back to the witches. This game is called Salem, isn’t it? Drumroll… Players can be witches. (Gasp!) Since there is no class system in Salem, players define their characters by the skills they choose to learn. Certain skills are considered quite taboo. If you happen upon a book of witchcraft, learning what it has to teach is frowned upon. Using those teachings is a crime, which carries special consequences. Witch burnings are a very legitimate possibility in Salem, though neither Johannessen or Tolf revealed any details on the subject.

The depth of crafting was nearly impossible for Seatribe to describe to me during our time this week. Unlike World of Warcraft or Everquest 2, baking bread is not a one-step process. Would you like some bread? Well, get working on that dough first. When the dough is prepared, you must use an oven to bake the bread (better hope someone built an oven.) Don’t get too distracted while the bread is baking because it can easily burn if you leave it in the oven for too long (and no one likes a burnt loaf.) Upon finishing a wheel of cheese, the player must let it sit days, or even weeks. Because of the extensive work that goes into commodities such as these, the going price in silver (the game’s currency) can be astronomical. In Salem, one can easily imagine a living, breathing society of specialized workers who capitalize on their respective lines of work for the good of the community as a whole. Again, I am reminded of A Tale in the Desert.