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Reader Comments (29)

Posted: Apr 20th 2011 8:19AM Addfwyn said

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Goldshire kids were one of the first things that really creeped me out, most MMOs don't have the kind of atmosphere that really creeps me out though (like say your Fatal Frames or Amnesia or Dead Space). Maybe ifs ome darker MMOs come along in the future

Posted: Apr 20th 2011 8:31AM OmegaDestroyer said

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"L-l-look at you, hacker. A p-p-pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you r-run through my corridors-s. H-h-how can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?"

Posted: Apr 20th 2011 12:53PM StClair said

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@OmegaDestroyer
ohhhh hell yes.
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Posted: Apr 20th 2011 1:15PM (Unverified) said

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@OmegaDestroyer

System Shock, man that brings me back. Awesome.

For the record nothing in an MMO has unsettled me Just seems that's not really the target, more along the world of pillows type of deal with swishy swords and behind the scenes gruesomeness told via text.

Now things like Amnesia, Pnumbra, the Shock series, Dead Space, first time playing Doom being 13 years old in 1993. ....
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Posted: Apr 20th 2011 8:36AM Lenn said

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Angmar in LotRO creeped me out the first few times I went there. The sound effects there are genuinely eerie. There are low, heavy thumps and occasional sighs you can hear (it sounds like a woman exhaling sharply), on top of a perpetual "white noise" that's hard to describe and the very effective and creepy score.

Posted: Apr 20th 2011 8:48AM Grumms said

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Ugh, I hate World of Warcraft and hate talking about it, but when I first started playing, the Night Elf ambiance freaked me out for some reason.

Posted: Apr 20th 2011 9:18AM Arkanaloth said

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in MMO's, no.. nothing.

however when I first bought Eternal Darkness... Setup: I game on my consoles on a projector, screen size is about 9 feet diagonally... very immersive.

Now then, anybody that's played Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem knows the game likes to screw around with the player when the sanity meter dips below a certain point. So it's VERY late one night and I'm playing and mildly sleepy and the sanity meter has the entire time been hovering dangerously low and it finally takes that last dip....

I was already a bit tired then the screen starts bleeding, remember my screen size, so it looks like my *ENTIRE WALL IS BLEEDING*.

Oh HELL no... it was time to stop! turned it off and called it a night!

Posted: Apr 20th 2011 9:29AM Aganazer said

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The boy getting killed in Vindictus was pretty gruesome, but not much is creepy in MMOG's.

Posted: Apr 20th 2011 9:43AM Dumac said

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Seeing naked characters and corpses in Mortal Online, no censorship... Im a big boy, i have nothing against nudity, but that was the first time i ever saw something like that in a video game, and hell it was weird and creepy.

There's always the Realm of Torment in Guild Wars, generally a creepy place, lots of dark and tentacly stuff going on, but the best part is, and i can't exactly find the reference for this now, the tentacles are Abaddon's hair.

Posted: Apr 20th 2011 9:46AM Mirsath said

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Nothing in an MMO as such has creeped me out, except perhaps the first time I entered the Old forest in LOTRO and had the sound turned up a bit high, the music gets a bit evil at that point, it was night time and there was a big spider, enough said....

In terms of other games, I used to have a lot of fun scaring myself stupid playing Silent Hill 2 on the ps2, I would shut the curtains, turn the light off and whack the sound up so the radio crackle would make me jump, when something was lurking in the shadows of that creepy old hotel.

Fun times......

Posted: Apr 20th 2011 10:46AM Rayko said

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First time I saw an Olthoi in Asheron's call. I went through the portal wrong and missed the ledge where people would perch and landed right in front of three large insect looking creatures that walked on two legs and had stabbing appendages that came up from behind their backs and made these horrible click hiss type noise...almost pissed myself.

Posted: Apr 20th 2011 10:59AM (Unverified) said

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Unrest in EverQuest was always very unsettling, especially at lower levels. The ghost was scary, and the festering hags' underground moaning was a constant warning of imminent death... but the worst for me was the eerie sound the ghouls made while they were idle, a kind of echoing sigh that was always spooky. Like anything scary, it was always worse to hear something without seeing it. Considering that nearly everything in Unrest would aggro through walls, floors, ceilings, etc., you usually didn't have to wait to long to see stuff, either.

Posted: Apr 20th 2011 11:01AM Utakata said

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Hostile NPC humanoid mobs in AoC when you've just killed them off by a fire based spell. They don't just die with last grasp of air, a brief utterance and a thud as they do in WoW and many other MMO's. They go down in a painfully spectacular fashion, screaming and flailing around as if for eternity. :(

Posted: Apr 20th 2011 11:14AM Alde123 said

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Not really an MMO Minecraft: Creepers. And Ghasts.

Posted: Apr 20th 2011 11:26AM (Unverified) said

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In warhammer online i found some desolate place, where a strange machine (kinda like a steam engine) tortured something human-shaped, still moving figure repeatedly (i think it kept slamming to an anvil or so). It was really disturbing and creepy. Also still in the same game i found that there were live goblins tied to some dwarven cannonballs, ready to launch.

Posted: Apr 20th 2011 11:28AM mysecretid said

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Star Trek Online did a horror-themed feature episode (originally for Hallowe'en) titled "What Lies Beneath".

I found it unexpectedly creepy, because the devs focused on messing with the player's mind.

It is dead-dark on the mission map, and although you are given a special Trek-tech light specifically for this mission, it barely cuts through the shadow ... and the light keeps flickering out without warning, usually at the worst possible moments.

And then there's the creepy serial-killer style singing you hear in the dark ...

I won't say more, for fear of spoilering, but the devs did a solid job of psychological horror with this one.

It wasn't explicit blood, guts, and mayhem. Instead, they got inside the player's head and tweaked some primal fears, just like the classic horror films do.

If anyone's interested, "What Lies Beneath" is the third part of the Devidian featured episode. Federation players can obtain this mission from Franklin Drake. Klingons can receive their equivalent from K'men.

Posted: Apr 20th 2011 12:47PM StClair said

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@mysecretid: That was indeed an excellent mission, perfectly suited to the time of year it first came out (Halloween). Everyone should play it at least once.
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Posted: Apr 20th 2011 12:33PM Zuljundwumn said

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In "Bloodlines", the Rpg in the world of "Vampire the mascarade", there was a haunted house...
there wasn't a single ennemy in it, but the atmosphere was insane.
Like, you're in a corridor, facing a miror, and you see a monster running in your back. You turn and... There's no one. Or you crouch under a pipe, and you see the legs of a zombie coming at you, but when you finally stand up, no one. Or when you arrive at a crossroad in the basement, you see women running and screaming from right to left but when you try to follow her... NO one.
It was really scary and well written.

Posted: Apr 21st 2011 11:47AM Jeromai said

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@Zuljundwumn

I loved that house. One of the most immersive experiences I had in any game ever - here I was, ostensibly an immortal vampire, yet seriously creeped out at encountering the inexplicable supernatural and fearful for my "unlife" and more than a little humbled/scared by accidentally bumping into an otherworldly boundary in a situation I couldn't quite control - classic World of Darkness atmosphere.

MMO-wise, the genre has a lot of catching up to say, FPSes. I haven't played Amnesia yet, descriptions of the game have me intimidated already. Considering I had a serious fright in the original FEAR, screamed out loud and nearly tumbled off the in-game ladder when Alma unexpectedly appeared, I might be reduced to a whimpering ball hiding under the bed after playing Amnesia.

The third person camera angle and visible avatar in MMOs seems to distance me from any creep-out factor. I have been intellectually fearful for times I might lose/damage my gear, or progression, or fail in some manner at significant time cost, but not creeped out.

Maybe other players. What they say across chat channels and forums, revealing how they think. That's what creeps me out in MMOs.
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Posted: Apr 20th 2011 12:41PM Valentina said

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LOTRO has some really creepy ambiance definitely. To go along with their eerie zones.

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