My Latest Gaming Obsession: Face Of Mankind
By mikemcn 11 Comments
A PC gamer article pointed out the diamond in the rough that is Face of Mankind (FOM) to me. Its an free to play MMO (Although obviously, people who pay gets some nice benefits, i am a free player though.) It is not a normal game in that the game mechanics are not the focus, this game is all about the players themselves and the chaos/awesomeness that ensues when you let the community itself decide the rules. I could write pages upon pages about all the little parts of this game that make it so unique. But..... im not that good at writing and this post will be long enough without that. Here are the basics.
There are multiple factions, one of those factions is called the Law Enforcement Department (LED), its the one I am part of, they arrest people who gank or do other shady stuff like smuggle drugs or try to free people who have been arrested. They also guard the jail, Demorgan's Castle
The crime fighting elements of this MMO are some of it's most interesting aspects, wars break out between player factions because an officer arrests someone with alot of influence in his or her's faction's community, and out of anger, that person rallys his comrades to get revenge. The LED are the one's who keep the game safe for the no aggressive factions, often this doesn't work, its not hard for some bored player to buy a few grenades and start bombing the hell out of New York City (One of the game's locations.) but the LED almost always keeps such incidents to a minimum.
Becoming an LED is not easy, your first rank is achieved via xp, but in order to pass beyond that first rank, you need to take a player run class about how to enforce the law and why shooting first is a bad idea. This is run by the LED's Dominion Police Institute department. After taking it, you can get rank 2. But beyond that, its all up to your own ability as an officer, if you can attract the attention of a higher up you can be promoted. The highest rank is the faction commissioner, there are 2 (Although recently the 2nd commissioner resigned, so its sorta up in the air whether or not a new one will take his place.), they work directly with the other faction heads, and the player run government (The Dominion Senate.)
I need to keep myself from trying to explain every detail of this game, but to sum it up, I am loving this game because the community interaction is so deep and you can become involved in so many crazy events. A month ago, a coup de' etat occured when the Freedom Defense corps (FDC), a military faction devoted to protecting the Senate, (It is considered the iron fist of the senate with the LED being law enforcement) locked the senators in the senate hall after calling an emergency meeting, and slaughtered them. A civil war raged in the game for the next week and a half. (The LED won and the FDC's high command had all their ranks removed) Today, a group of peace loving players charged the entrance to Demorgan's castle and did a sit in. Then a group of player's from the game's anarchist mercenary group used it as an opportunity to stage an assault, most of the protestors died.
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