Salem

In an article I wrote for MMOsite I explored the impact of social aspects in Salem Online and ultimately asked the question of how will this effect the community?

Check out what I had to say here! http://my.mmosite.com/3502136/blog/item/the_social_impact_of_salem_online_good_vs_evil.html

First of all, nice article! Glad to see people writing about Salem!

Some minor things though. Firstly the game is simply "Salem", not Salem Online. It is also not the predecessor of H&H, even if many consider it the spiritual one.

The servers will also have a traveling system for you to use to go between them, this means even though the worlds will be different - they can still affect each other.

Hope to see more from you!

Thanks for the response!

I call it Salem Online because every time I search for Salem on google it keeps giving me the real location, so I've just gotten accustomed to calling it Salem Online. Sorry if that's at all offensive, it's just my little quirk :p

That's also really cool that there will be a teleportation system between servers. I also only said it was related to H&H because in my previous article many people mentioned that the same persons who made H&H were hired to create Salem and that it's mostly the same community. Hence the part where I spoke about the H&H community having an impact on Salem, because many comments were about how negative their experience was with the H&H community.

Also thanks for the positive feedback, the subject means a lot to me so I had to write about it. As I said in the article I can't wait to see how Salem plays out, socially.

serious antagonism doesnt bring you clear "good vs evil" nor "peace vs war" unless one side intentionally roleplays hard. sorry about negative feedback, but if what youre looking for is a social apect, you should think about that a bit more.

Try "Salem the game" or "Salem the crafting MMO" or just "Salem MMO". You should get better hits on those, but far from perfect. Reading now. I've seen a lot of great articles the last couple of months.

Why does everyone say that Salem is not a sequel of sorts to haven? Many *Many* of the design concepts were tested out in haven and have been brought to Salem. Others that weren't working in Haven have been trashed and new ideas are being tested with them as we speak.

Sevenless wrote:Why does everyone say that Salem is not a sequel of sorts to haven? Many *Many* of the design concepts were tested out in haven and have been brought to Salem. Others that weren't working in Haven have been trashed and new ideas are being tested with them as we speak.

So as to keep those without knowledge of the distinction between the two from blaming Paradox for something that happens in Haven & Hearth. that would be my guess anyway.

painhertz wrote:

Sevenless wrote:Why does everyone say that Salem is not a sequel of sorts to haven? Many *Many* of the design concepts were tested out in haven and have been brought to Salem. Others that weren't working in Haven have been trashed and new ideas are being tested with them as we speak.

So as to keep those without knowledge of the distinction between the two from blaming Paradox for something that happens in Haven & Hearth. that would be my guess anyway.

Wouldn't that be akin to blaming Microsoft for things in Empire Earth? (Same developer as Age of Empires, but published by a different company.) Look at how similar the two games play, and yet each has their own design decisions and community. There's a lot of overlap, but they are most definitely distinct games with EE being a clear successor of AoE.

Anyway, there's nothing wrong (in my opinion) with saying that Salem is the spiritual successor. As Sevenless and many others have pointed out, many of the core concepts were developed there. However, as the design of Salem has progressed, there have been some quite divergent mechanics come out of it. Gaming (and art in general) are full of these lines of succession. It's not hard to spot them. Just like in typical gallery art, appreciate where the artist is coming from and where they have been; look at their works as stages of growth and progression.

MagicManICT wrote:Wouldn't that be akin to blaming Microsoft for things in Empire Earth? (Same developer as Age of Empires, but published by a different company.) Look at how similar the two games play, and yet each has their own design decisions and community. There's a lot of overlap, but they are most definitely distinct games with EE being a clear successor of AoE.

Anyway, there's nothing wrong (in my opinion) with saying that Salem is the spiritual successor. As Sevenless and many others have pointed out, many of the core concepts were developed there. However, as the design of Salem has progressed, there have been some quite divergent mechanics come out of it. Gaming (and art in general) are full of these lines of succession. It's not hard to spot them. Just like in typical gallery art, appreciate where the artist is coming from and where they have been; look at their works as stages of growth and progression.

I'll be content if we all start calling it a spiritual successor. Salem is Haven evolved past the need to keep certain mechanics just because they've been in that game for X years. That's very healthy in my opinion.

As for the write up. It's very nicely written, but it shows what most Vets of SeaTribe games would probably call naivety towards how the gameworld is set up. It's not to say it can't work the way you envision it, it's just hellishly unlikely to (hell, because us older players are around guarantees it won't ).

Suggesting that criminals can be hunted down and killed is "justice" for example. While that is one way to look at it, a murder IS a murder in this game, and that crime leaves a summonable scent leading straight to your killer's claim. That is not a valient act, it is merely a justified crime in its own right. Avenging petty theft starts wars. Avenging murders leads to genocides. The enemy town doesn't care if their member stole from you, they care about their dead comrade 9 times out of 10. And your justice seekers are almost always bored "criminals" looking for an arrow to their next target.

Trying to slot things nicely into Justice and Crime isn't going to work. Salem is a game of shades, not black and white.

Sevenless wrote:Salem is a game of shades, not black and white.

Imma quote you on this, I like it a lot.