http://www.pcgamer.com/previews/naked-m ... mmo-salem/During the twenty minutes that I played Salem—the upcoming free world, free-form MMO from Paradox—I stole a snail, got ditched in the wilderness by homesteaders, rode a freaky horse, and was stalked by an army of naked settlers. It’s safe to say that Salem is a weird place, but it’s not really to blame for that: it’s wide open, sandbox nature makes it a mere reflection of the players that populate it.
I started the game fresh off the boat in Boston. It’s a modest town, and happens to be the only part of the huge world that the developers actually built. Creative Lead Bjorn Johannessen leads me to the edge of the town, where grey stone streets disappear into sand, and tells me plainly, “We have almost nothing to do with what happens outside of here at all.”
This is where the game starts to get crazy. This is set in ye olde times when America is just being settled, right? So there’s no map of the area–I have no clue where I am in relation to Boston or anything else in this game. I am now alone with my trees, my shelter, and the developer that led me here. (And to be fair, I can’t even be 100% sure that this guy’s the developer’s character. You can’t see anyone else’s name: you just right-click people and name them yourself, so you have to trust they are who they say they are.)
This is the big hook of the game: much like Wurm Online or Minecraft, everything in this world can be harvested and repurposed to fit your needs. But every tree you chop down is gone for good, so you’ll need to be aware of your actions’ consequences before you find yourself deforesting your entire village without seeds left to plant new trees. I could use this wood to build a coal clamp, which will produce charcoal after three days’ time, which I can then burn as fuel or use as fertilizer to boost my crops’ growth rate.
Now this one-man show was fine and all, but I was more interested in larger player settlements where players work together to build whole towns and mini civilizations. But there was nothing civilized about the next settlement we wandered into. As it came into view, I noticed a naked man running away. “Well that’s odd,” I thought, but I carried on. By the time I reached the edge of the fenced-in town I realized that everyone was naked, wearing only weird masquerade-style masks. There were at least 30 players running around the huge, well-built town, completely nude. As soon as they saw us wandering villagers, they rushed at us and some primal instinct inside of me urged me to run away or kill myself before the 30 naked men and women descended upon me.
Johannessen must’ve had the same instinct, because he quickly applied developer-only invulnerability buffs onto myself and him, and warned me not to remove it while we were in the town. He’d heard of these guys and they weren’t what you could consider well-adjusted individuals. We sprinted as fast as we could through their town, while the frustrated pack of residents crowded in on us, swinging weapons, and leaping up and down against us uselessly. Johannessen told me as we ran that this group has been plotting on the forums to raid a nearby village, murder everyone that lives there, loot it, and burn it to the ground. This was Johannessen’s world, but it was clear from the tense tone of his voice that this was not a place he felt comfortable in–these people were crazy.
We had our special dev-immunity buffs, but I asked what normal players could do to protect themselves from crazed villagers like these. The easiest solution is obviously to avoid them, but more pro-active players will be able to track and punish law-breakers. When a player murders someone (a big deal in a game with permadeath like Salem), they will leave a scent behind them. This scent allows other players to track them and use evidence acquired at the scene where the murder took place to “summon” the guilty character, even while the player is offline. Once summoned, the vigilante sherriff is able to dispense justice and send the murderer packing to the underworld. Plenty of other activities like battery and larsony can get you busted, but won’t carry such a harsh penalty if caught.
