- Aug 19, 2005
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It’s official now, “Face of Mankind” is going to be resurrected, with a "free account" option!
http://www.fomportal.com
For me and some other people this is a very exciting piece of news because “Face of Mankind” is very different from anything else in the MMO genre. The graphics are really good compared to many other MMORPG games, and you can play the game either in third-person or first person mode. The game is actually a hybrid of a massively multiplayer RPG and a first person shooter game. The most unique feature of the game is that it is truly player-driven. According to the yesterday announcement, the game will be somewhat different when it relaunches but it seems that many core features might remain unchanged.
For those who have no clue what type of game it is, I can provide a description of the game from the days when I was playing it a lot (in 2005-2006). During the character creation you joined one of the eight factions: Law Enforcement Department (= police forces), Freedom Defence Corps (= military forces), Mercenaries of the Blood (= mercenary organisation), Brotherhood of Shadows (= criminal syndicate), Guardians of Mankind (= pacifist clan?), Eurocore (= corporation #1), Vortex Inc (= corporation #2), Colonisation and Mining Guild (= corporation #3). Each faction was either allied, neutral or hostile with other factions. The relations changed according to factions’ agendas. Agendas were decided by the highest ranking player characters in the faction (i.e., army general, police commissioner, chief executive officer of the corporation etc.). The most organised factions had regular meetings of high-ranking members to decide their agendas. The realisation of the agendas in daily game-play was the responsibility of player characters who were on the middle steps of their faction’s hierarchy (i.e. police detectives, captains, lieutenants, vice presidents etc.). They had enough access rights to their faction’s database to be able to set up missions for lower ranking faction members (patrol cops, enforcers, sergeants, soldiers, miners, workers, supervisors etc.). Setting up a mission involved determining when mission starts and ends, what are the primary and secondary objectives, where it takes place, what money rewards are granted from faction funds for participating in the mission etc. People who created missions could also write a short text describing the missions and some special conditions or things that had to be taken into account. In the old version of the game players could also review missions after it was completed or failed (apparently so that higher ranking players could later monitor or evaluate the performance if they wanted).
There were no real NPCs or monsters in the game because it was mainly based on the interactions between players and factions. It was therefore possible to play the game in many different ways. Many people played it simply as a first person shooter game and didn’t care much about anything else, while there were also many who played it is an economics/politics game or a role-playing game. It might be the only massively multiplayer game where the game mechanics allowed you through your game-play to role-play a police officer spontaneusly without actually “role-playing” it. For example, the daily game-play of low rank cops consisted of patrolling streets and malls with other cops or alone, scanning bypassers for drugs, stunning and arresting player characters with “criminal points” (sending them to prison planet), guarding the prison planet so that criminals wouldn’t escape from there etc. Of course, there were always some corrupt cops who took risks and bought and used drugs themselves (“Brotherhood of Shadows” was the only faction who could manufacture drugs) or who prefered to kill criminals instead of stunning and arresting them, spied on their department and its agendas in favor of other factions, etc. If you preferred to work for the "government" but not in police forces, you could join the army ("Freedom Defense Corps"). Their game-play was different. Sergeants and corporals would take new soldiers to a shooting range or order them to stand in lines and different formations during exercise missions on board their starship, the GDC Yukon, and they’d even fine people for disobedience (remove some exp or game credits from character via faction database). For many new players joining the "FDC" this was sometimes the only way to get experience points and credits, so most people were quite obedient. One of the role-playing purposes for the army was to co-operate with police forces if the chief of police would declare martial law. This actually did happen occasionally. For example, some clan decided to take over a mall at Brooklyn in New York on Earth once and the police chief declared martial law. All police officers were ordered to retreat to another planet and army forces entered the area. Space marines were also known to participate in the defense of planets far away from Earth against some alien invasions and they took part in some corporation wars.
Anyway, you can probably get the picture what kind of game it is and why I am excited about this announcement.
Meanwhile, there's a video trailer from 2006. Unfortunately, the video doesn't have a sound for some reason, but it gives a nice overview of some elements of the game. The beginning of the video shows the different factions and some game-play on Earth. Then at 2:22 it skips to a colony outside our solar system and from 3:56 to the end it shows a deep space colony under a small scale alien invasion.
Watch Trailer
Originally the game failed for a few obvious reasons. It wasn't advertised much and it was released from beta into retail in April 2006 in a somewhat unfinished state. The game's community decreased dramatically because many players didn't want to pay for it, but the unique concept of the game requires a lot of active players to make the game interesting. Unfortunately, people who were completely unfamiliar with the game didn't get any free trail options to try it out before buying it. The game struggled for half a year in such a state and then died off because the player population kept decreasing and the game's distributor backed off from the deal. Yesterday, after almost one year break, the game developer has announced that the game will be resurrected in cooperation with another company with a new "free account"/"premium account" system.
http://www.fomportal.com
For me and some other people this is a very exciting piece of news because “Face of Mankind” is very different from anything else in the MMO genre. The graphics are really good compared to many other MMORPG games, and you can play the game either in third-person or first person mode. The game is actually a hybrid of a massively multiplayer RPG and a first person shooter game. The most unique feature of the game is that it is truly player-driven. According to the yesterday announcement, the game will be somewhat different when it relaunches but it seems that many core features might remain unchanged.
For those who have no clue what type of game it is, I can provide a description of the game from the days when I was playing it a lot (in 2005-2006). During the character creation you joined one of the eight factions: Law Enforcement Department (= police forces), Freedom Defence Corps (= military forces), Mercenaries of the Blood (= mercenary organisation), Brotherhood of Shadows (= criminal syndicate), Guardians of Mankind (= pacifist clan?), Eurocore (= corporation #1), Vortex Inc (= corporation #2), Colonisation and Mining Guild (= corporation #3). Each faction was either allied, neutral or hostile with other factions. The relations changed according to factions’ agendas. Agendas were decided by the highest ranking player characters in the faction (i.e., army general, police commissioner, chief executive officer of the corporation etc.). The most organised factions had regular meetings of high-ranking members to decide their agendas. The realisation of the agendas in daily game-play was the responsibility of player characters who were on the middle steps of their faction’s hierarchy (i.e. police detectives, captains, lieutenants, vice presidents etc.). They had enough access rights to their faction’s database to be able to set up missions for lower ranking faction members (patrol cops, enforcers, sergeants, soldiers, miners, workers, supervisors etc.). Setting up a mission involved determining when mission starts and ends, what are the primary and secondary objectives, where it takes place, what money rewards are granted from faction funds for participating in the mission etc. People who created missions could also write a short text describing the missions and some special conditions or things that had to be taken into account. In the old version of the game players could also review missions after it was completed or failed (apparently so that higher ranking players could later monitor or evaluate the performance if they wanted).
There were no real NPCs or monsters in the game because it was mainly based on the interactions between players and factions. It was therefore possible to play the game in many different ways. Many people played it simply as a first person shooter game and didn’t care much about anything else, while there were also many who played it is an economics/politics game or a role-playing game. It might be the only massively multiplayer game where the game mechanics allowed you through your game-play to role-play a police officer spontaneusly without actually “role-playing” it. For example, the daily game-play of low rank cops consisted of patrolling streets and malls with other cops or alone, scanning bypassers for drugs, stunning and arresting player characters with “criminal points” (sending them to prison planet), guarding the prison planet so that criminals wouldn’t escape from there etc. Of course, there were always some corrupt cops who took risks and bought and used drugs themselves (“Brotherhood of Shadows” was the only faction who could manufacture drugs) or who prefered to kill criminals instead of stunning and arresting them, spied on their department and its agendas in favor of other factions, etc. If you preferred to work for the "government" but not in police forces, you could join the army ("Freedom Defense Corps"). Their game-play was different. Sergeants and corporals would take new soldiers to a shooting range or order them to stand in lines and different formations during exercise missions on board their starship, the GDC Yukon, and they’d even fine people for disobedience (remove some exp or game credits from character via faction database). For many new players joining the "FDC" this was sometimes the only way to get experience points and credits, so most people were quite obedient. One of the role-playing purposes for the army was to co-operate with police forces if the chief of police would declare martial law. This actually did happen occasionally. For example, some clan decided to take over a mall at Brooklyn in New York on Earth once and the police chief declared martial law. All police officers were ordered to retreat to another planet and army forces entered the area. Space marines were also known to participate in the defense of planets far away from Earth against some alien invasions and they took part in some corporation wars.
Anyway, you can probably get the picture what kind of game it is and why I am excited about this announcement.
Meanwhile, there's a video trailer from 2006. Unfortunately, the video doesn't have a sound for some reason, but it gives a nice overview of some elements of the game. The beginning of the video shows the different factions and some game-play on Earth. Then at 2:22 it skips to a colony outside our solar system and from 3:56 to the end it shows a deep space colony under a small scale alien invasion.
Watch Trailer
Originally the game failed for a few obvious reasons. It wasn't advertised much and it was released from beta into retail in April 2006 in a somewhat unfinished state. The game's community decreased dramatically because many players didn't want to pay for it, but the unique concept of the game requires a lot of active players to make the game interesting. Unfortunately, people who were completely unfamiliar with the game didn't get any free trail options to try it out before buying it. The game struggled for half a year in such a state and then died off because the player population kept decreasing and the game's distributor backed off from the deal. Yesterday, after almost one year break, the game developer has announced that the game will be resurrected in cooperation with another company with a new "free account"/"premium account" system.
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