Dead Frontier

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

A Zombie Apocalypse, Flash-based (and now in 3D) MMORPG, available here. Still currently (as of October 2010) in beta stage, with a tentative "full" release date "sometime 2011". The developer, Neil Yates ("AdminPwn") is not known for his estimation skills, however. A Unity3D version was released in August of 2010; the final game will use this same format.

In 2016, the pharmaceutical company Secronom began testing the cancer-fighting "healing virus" Nerotonin-3 on 109 "volunteer" subjects in a French lab. On June 28, the French Gendarmerie raid the facility and release the subjects. Hilarity ensues. When the dust and body parts settle (i.e., when the intro finishes), you begin your (mis)adventures in Nastya's Outpost, one of the last known bastions of humanity in Fairview, before venturing into the mutant-infested Inner City to hunt and peck for anything of use.

Tropes used in Dead Frontier include:
  • Absurdly High Level Cap: Of two hundred. Have fun Level Grinding!
  • AKA-47 - Most weapons were changed from their real-world names to this halfway through the beta.
  • Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Played with, since every item is sold by other players. But some prices are higher than kites mostly because : a) they're n00b-traps b) the player doesn't want to pay to store his items and uses the market as a bank c) the players are dicks. 1000$ for a hot can of tuna.
    • Prices often increase for medications during outpost attacks, usually by higher-level players who can increase market values as they please by owning a monopoly.
  • Allegedly Free Game: Ostensibly averted, but with each update to the game loot rates for free members have become lower and lower, to the point that a paying member will find far more stuff than a free member in less time, and it will always be of better quality than anything a free player can find.
    • Most new 'updates' as of late 2010-2011 have revolved around new (buyable) items that are impossible to loot in-game and only available to paying players.
    • While they have added in the option to buy credits with in-game currency, it is so ludicrously expensive as to be impossible to achieve without the artificially increased paying-member loot rates or literally hundreds of hours of grinding.
  • Always Night: Unless you turn the quality to its lowest setting in Flash, which is a weird twilight/dusk.
    • Averted, With the new update there is now an odd yellow colored day, a semi dark dusk/dawn, the usual night and even weather effects. Including a rather annoying mist.
  • An Entrepreneur Is You: There are no less than five character classes designed with this in mind, but even among the more combat/scouting-oriented classes it's fairly easy to make ludicrous amounts of money by buying items where they're cheap and reselling them where they're expensive, or even watching the market for people selling items extremely cheaply, snapping them up, and immediately reselling them at significant markup.
  • And Your Reward Is Clothes: With the update of character models, clothes are now lootable in Fairview. They only have a visual effect, but Yates said that in the future, they will give bonuses. That doesn't stop some people to run around wearing only their boxers and a Kevlar vest, but if you're lucky (or rich or ready to spend a few bucks), you can easily look like Bill, a Blackwatch soldier or John Marston.
  • An Axe to Grind: Several, with a battle axe being the most powerful melee weapon in the "edged blunt" category.
  • Antidote Effect: Averted with your healing items, since anything less than a syringe of Nerotonin-2 stops being effective past level 50.
  • BFG: The best machine gun is a frickin' GAU-19 machine gun. It requires max level in strength and machine guns skill to use it. It got taken out of the game for being extremely gamebreaking.
  • Boss in Mook Clothing: The various forms of Green zombies. Each "tier" of zombies has their own associated set of Greens, all of which have higher health and damage, as well as increased aggro compared to the other mooks, and speed up as they take damage. Unless you can kill them fast, you will more then likely have a full horde chasing you while trying to gun, chop, or detonate the glowing bastard down, then get your five seconds of safety to pull whatever (hopefully) precious loot off of the corpse.
    • In the 3D version, there are several of them: the Titan (Behemoth 2.0), the Brute (a really strong fat guy), the Bone (the lite version of the Titan), the Leaper (The Smoker's and The Licker's hidden brother, as well as a one-hit kill), the Reaper (a man with a HUGE blade for a right arm), the Spider (a six-armed man that runs really fast), the Giant Spider (the super-versionof the Spider mentioned previously), the Siren (a two-headed girl that screams on top of her lungs to attract other zombies), the Mother (a pregnant woman that farts and vomits all over the place), the Tendril ( woman with piercing tentacles for arms), the Bloater (The Spitter's hidden sister) and the Wraith (a Super-Tendril woman described as 'The nightmare of many viewers of Japanese anime').
  • Bribing Your Way to Victory: Effectively required to stay competitive at higher levels - the stuff available to paying members is ludicrously powerful compared to the stuff you can loot or trade for, and a paying player will always be better than a free player of equivalent level.
  • Cap: Level 200. Hope you have a lot of time on your hands.
  • Charles Atlas Superpower: While it is stated that players have developed experience over time, it is questionable as to how even an extremely experienced human can fire an anti-materiel rifle/minigun while outrunning a horde of flesh-eating mongrels.
  • Cut and Paste Environments: It gets pretty bad after a while.
    • The 3D mode goes a long way towards averting this, but of course textures and such are still reused. Certainly an improvement, however.
  • Critical Existence Failure: Averted with fury. Drop below 50% health and your stats take a sharp downturn. Fall under 25% and it gets worse.
  • Chainsaw Good: Only used by the strong and confident/suicidal; the noise tends to annoy the hell out of any nearby zombies. Its only upside is that you don't move any slower and that the better chainsaws deal massive damage over time, the Grinder's DPS only surpassed by the GAU-19.
    • It's also extremely useful as part of a team when doing a mission to kill X number of zombies - one guy with a chainsaw constantly running to draw the zombies in, one to four others to kill them.
  • Class and Level System: Used with Point Build System; your class determines your starting stats, equipment, and abilites (if any), but the levels give you stat and skill points to spend as you see fit.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The zombies, and the areas they infest, use colors to distinguish difficulty; Zones themselves use grey, purple, and red, while the zombies use those as well as green. Note that the in-game map does not make the distinctions between the neighborhoods, but the player-made map on the wiki does.
  • Dangerous Windows: While nothing ever comes through them for now, larger ones still need to be boarded up if you want to make a Personal Outpost in a building.
  • Death Is a Slap on The Wrist: NO, IT IS NOT. It takes away all cash you had, takes most of your experience gained since leaving an outpost, and dumps you in the outpost, mortally wounded. If you're not a Gold member, you will suffer.
    • Don't forget a wait time based on your level.
    • What's that? You didn't know about the penalty? Too bad! You just got crippled and lost the cash you needed to buy bandages!
  • Deconstruction: Word of God has stated that it's meant to be a completely realistic Zombie Apocalypse scenario, and it shows.
    • The stuff you get in the Elite Shop is kind of insane though, like prototype indestructable armour built out of whatever scrap could be scavenged by survivor technicians and a 20-round .50 caliber automatic revolver.
  • Do Not Run with a Gun: Some players have had issues with not being able to attack while moving at a full sprint. There may be a reason.
  • Easy Logistics: Averted, as food is important. Keep your nutrition topped off, you get an experience gain boost. Let it drop, and Wizard Needs Food Badly.
  • Empty Room Psych: Most rooms have at least something from which to scavenge. The key word is "most".
  • Everything Fades: Unless you can loot it, or are on a mission to get blood samples.
  • Freak Lab Accident: Nerotonin-3 was a refinement of Nerotonin-2, both viruses created to cure cancer. The N-2 strain boosted cellular regrowth for all of the patient's native cells. The N-3 strain actually killed cancerous cells... along with all the healthy ones. Then brought them back with an extra limb or two.
    • The "zombie virus" is Nerotonin-4, believed to be a mutant strain of N-3.
  • Gatling Good: The most powerful weapon in the game is a heavily modified GAU-19 minigun, which has had its rate of fire reduced to 'only' 700 rounds per minute so a human being can use it - and even then it requires a strength of 100, which is literally superhuman.
  • Garrisonable Structures: Any building you can get into, you can barricade and turn into a temporary outpost, allowing you to store your cash, access the market, and a few other options, at least until the zombies come knocking.
  • Griefer: Occasionally a problem. One popular tactic is to deliberately generate massive amounts of aggro and then lead the resulting pissed-off horde of zombies straight into other players.
  • Hand Cannon: The SW500 and Alpha Bull. Then you get to the Dusk Enforcer, which fires .50 ammo, and has a twenty-round capacity. And infinite ammo.
  • Hide Your Children: Averted right out of the gate. They're the weakest zombies you find.
    • Yet in another way played completely straight, as there are no child corpses to be found in the inner city.
    • Also, you find no child zombies in the 3D beta.
  • Hit Points: Though presented in a typically vague manner like most Survival Horror games: The level of health shown is a percentage of your total HP, from Healthy, Injured, Serious, then Critical, with each representing a quarter of your health.
  • Hold the Line: The main outpost is usually attacked once a day; your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to keep the damn things out. The defense game that fits this the most is defending the main gate, making sure that it doesn't fall.
  • Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: Luckily, they work both ways... but still, road cones?
  • Katanas Are Just Better: The penultimate bladed weapon that you can get without paying real money for or winning first place in one of two weekly contests.
    • Forsaken Titanium Blades are twin katanas with no skill requirements to use them.
  • Kill It with Fire: Subverted. They tried doing this. It resulted in Purple Zombies
    • And the Burning zombies.
      • Which sprint at you and can take minutes of constant fire from weaker weapons like crowbars and .32 pistols.
  • Level Grinding: Boy howdy, will you have to do this.
  • Made of Plasticine: Killing critical hits will morph your target into a spray of Ludicrous Gibs.
    • Only if you have inflicted quite a lot more damage than your target's total health, that is.
    • The new 3D release uses this one too; it's not uncommon to cut off an arm or even the head of a zombie after a critical hit, but it will still hunt your ass until he's down. Even after you sliced his arms and head.
  • Min-Maxing: All but required to remain competitive at the highest levels unfortunately. You rolled a roleplay class? See you back at the character creation screen.
  • More Dakka: The GAU-19, a helicopter turret modified for human use, puts any Warhammer gun to shame. It costs 300 US dollars worth of credits, but does 4 times more damage than the runner up, and fits this trope to well that it actually uses each bullet three times.
    • Machine guns in general are expensive as hell because of their heavy rate of fire and the fact that bullets cost an arm and a leg. It's cheaper if you stick to the SMG, though.
  • Musical Spoiler: The ambiance changesjust a little when you cross the border into a more dangerous area of the city, then ramps that up a little more when you generate sufficient aggro.
  • Names to Run Away From Really Fast: The Behemoth. It's called such for a very good reason, given that it can reduce most survivors to a smear on the concrete with one punch.
    • In the 3D version it's called the "Titan."
    • Also, The mother, once it dies, the wraith(Seriously, she will kill you from off screen), and, of course, the new Brute.
  • Nintendo Hard
  • Not Using the Z Word: Most of the in-game references call them "infected," but players usually avert this.
  • Obvious Beta: The 3D version is still fairly simplistic, with most of the features gone such as missions.
    • Missions have been recently added, but they're only available to paying players.
  • One Bullet Clips: Reload time is based on your Reloading stat and the gun's own reload time, regardless of how many shots are still chambered.
  • One-Hit-Point Wonder: For a competent player, it is entirely possible to keep fighting even immediately after having been revived, even with just a bludgeon.
    • But even with full health, you're really only a 3-hit-point-wonder at best.
  • One Size Fits All: It's an MMO, can you really blame them?
  • Player Versus Player: Currently has three uses: access to the elite shop for the top P Ker that week, settling Clan disputes, and bragging rights. There's even a consequence-free PVP arena in every town for those who don't want to do it in the inner city.
  • Purely Aesthetic Gender -Possible. This troper has done tests, and it seems that women tend to find more items at lower levels, and the men seem to do a bit more damage. Still, may be utterly and completely flawed.
  • Random Event: Green zombies are Made of Iron, carry a single piece of loot more often than not, draw more aggro, get faster the more damage they accrue, and tend to jump you in buildings. Now, imagine seeing two of them on the same screen, three blocks into the City, for a level 1 character'. Thankfully, they drop usually good items upon death.
    • And then we have The Behemoth. He is also a random event.
    • Outpost Attacks are somewhat random in 3D. Suddenly there are 100s of zombies in every direction, just as you were heading home for a light snack and some armour repairs.
  • Real Is Brown: Well, it is an urban wasteland...
  • Revolvers Are Just Better: Depending on the player. Sure, they score criticals more often than semiautomatic pistols and do more damage, but most are slow to reload and only hold five or six rounds. The Dusk Enforcer, a cash-only item, however, combines both benefits into one expensive package.
  • Rickroll: Used as a joking threat in one of the various ads peddling Gold Memberships:

BUY A GOLD MEMBERSHIP
OR ADMIN WILL RICKROLL YOU AGAIN

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