Play Style

Play Style

In Urban Dead, Play Style refers to the actions and intentions of groups and individuals. These actions generally place groups or individuals into one or more generalized categories of play style.

Common Play Styles

Pro-Survivor

Main Article: Survivor

A survivor (or human) is any character that is not a zombie. Survivors include civilians trapped in the city, military forces sent to enforce the evacuation, and scientists studying or supporting the effort. Not all survivors or groups composed of survivors are "Pro-Survivor", however.

Pro-Survivors in this context are individuals or groups whose in-game objective is to keep survivors and suburbs safe from zombie attacks. This is accomplished through repairing and barricading buildings, healing and revivifying other survivors, and combating zombies with firearms, melee weapons or revive syringes.

• See Also: Category:Survivor Groups - A category of survivor groups, past and present.

Pro-Zombie

Main Article: Zombie

Zombies (known in zamgrh as zambahz) are the walking dead. Zombies include players who start the game as zombies (corpses) as well as former survivors who have been killed. Not all zombies or even zombie-groups are "Pro-Zombie", however.

Pro-Zombies in this context are groups and individuals whose in-game objective is to kill survivors and ruin suburbs. This is accomplished through their natural weapons claw, bite, feeding drag and ransack and through in-game coordination features such as groan, bellow, flailing gesture and death rattle.

Metagame coordination via forums and IRC is very common in Zombie groups and is pivotal to large horde coordination. Feral zombies - those that do not associate with any horde and generally don't use metagaming - can still thrive using only in game features to aid in the zombie style of play.

• See Also: Category:Zombie Groups - A category of zombie groups, past and present.

Player Killer

Main Article: Player Killer

PKer (a contraction of Player Killer) is a term borrowed from other MMORPGs, typically ones where the monsters are NPCs, and refers to players attacking other players.

In the context of Urban Dead, where both humans and zombies are controlled by players, a PKer is a human character who kills other human characters (the zombie equivalent is ZKer).

PKers often represent a "third" side in Malton, in addition to the Pro-Survivor or Pro-Zombie sides.

• See Also:
  • Category:PKer Groups - A category of PKer groups, past and present.
  • Category:PKer - A category of individual PKers.

Other Play Styles

Dual Nature

Main Article: Dual Nature Policy

Dual Nature groups and individuals alternate their style of play based on their current alive/dead status. Alive DN players will typically role-play as survivors. Dead DN players typically role-play as zombies. As a result, DN groups and individuals are neither pro-survivor nor pro-zombie. They are both.

Supporters of Dual Nature Policy claim that this is the most natural style of play.

Death Cultist

Main Article: Death Cultist

Death Cultist groups and individuals are characters who assist the zombie cause even while alive as survivors. Most death cultists don't care if they become a zombie, and are similar to zombie spies; however, they usually take a much more active role in disrupting survivor activities than your "classic" zombie spy.

Zombie Killer/Life Cultist

Main Articles: ZKer and Life Cultist

ZKer is short for "Zombie Killer," a term used to describe zombies who kill other zombies. It is the equivalent of survivors PKing.

Many low level zombies resort to ZKing to gain XP, as they cannot open doors and lack the mobility to search for humans trapped outside the barricades. Some zombies will frequently ZK at revive points and ZKing frequently takes place by survivors which have been killed and have not yet been revived. There are rare groups and individuals that practice ZKing as their regular play style, however mostly for the reasons above. These groups are often called Life Cultists.

A life cultist is a character that plays as a zombie but works to achieve survivor ends. Typically they play by knocking the HP of other zombie characters down to the point where a single hit from a shotgun or pistol from a survivor will kill a zombie. This aids in survivor efforts to clear buildings of zombies. Life cultists also help to clean up revive points by getting information about brain rotters clogging revive points and killing them.

• See Also: Category:ZKer Groups - A list of groups whose policy include ZKing.

Noise Abatement

Main Article: Category:Noise Abatement Societies

Noise Abatement is a term coined to describe zombies or groups of zombies whose in-game objective is to keep a single building in ruins, making it unsafe for survivors.

This style of play differs from pro-zombie because the objective is solely that of creating a building which is a permanent danger spot for survivors rather than being generally anti-survivor. Noise Abatement zombies will generally ignore other buildings and survivors that don't interfere with the ruin-state of their target building.

• See Also Category:Noise Abatement Societies - A list of noise abatement groups past and present.

Bounty Hunter

Main Article: Bounty Hunters

Bounty Hunters are a variant of PKers that endeavor to only attack other PKers. Unlike those players who might PK directly revenge against someone who killed them, Bounty Hunters will often attack players with whom they have had no previous interaction, based on well-documented proof that the individual PKed someone else.

Zerg Hunter

Zerg Hunting is a variation of PKing in which players hunt and destroy zergs (alt abusers). This category of killer is not typically frowned upon by members of the community since zerging is considered one of the biggest problems in the game's community. Zerg hunters nearly always require substantial evidence of zerging before they engage in killing.

• See Also: Category:ZergKer Groups - A category of groups that hunt and destroy zerg.

Special Groups

There exists in the Urban Dead community groups that transcend typical classification. They push the envelope in play style or thrive in the obscure.

Megahordes

Megahordes are very large, and usually highly organized groups of zombies. These hordes are at times the result of a particular zombie group becoming extremely popular or can be spurred by a popular in-game event. Megahordes sweep through entire swaths of the city and completely decimate any building or survivor in its path.

• See Also: Horde

Organizations

Organizations are groups that don't act necessarily as groups of individuals but rather serve to organize multiple groups with common goals and principals. Survivor organizations are much more common than zombie and PKer organizations, but the latter do exist.

• See Also: Category:Organizations

Zombie-Human Alliances

Zombie-Human Alliances are groups and individuals which hold aliances between both zombie and survivors. Much like organizations, zombie-human alliances bring groups with common goals together.

• See Also: Category:Zombie-Human Alliances

Entertainment Groups

Entertainment Groups aim to provide entertainment value to other players in the form of in-game performances such as acting, singing and comedy. Entertainment groups tend to be nomadic and will often go on "tour", bringing their entertainment value to specific buildings or types of buildings.

• See also: Category:Entertainment Groups

Wiki Groups

Groups of Urban Dead players that deal solely with the Urban Dead wiki community. These groups typically do not exist in any real sense within the game proper, and have goals that impact the running of the Urban Dead wiki.

• See Also: Category:Wiki Groups