‘Persist Online’, the next title from the creators of Tibia, is an MMORPG that aims to be more than meets the eye

One of the titles that were present during the gamescom latam countdown, the presentation before the kick-off of the event in São Paulo, Brazil, was ‘Persist Online’, from the legendary studio CipSoft. After 27 years since the launch of Tibia, one of the first MMORPGs in history, the studio is ready to work on its next game. As part of our activities, we had the opportunity to speak with Stephan Vogler, one of the creators of Tibia and co-founder of the studio, and Benjamin Zuckerer, Chief Product Manager at CipSoft, who gave us a deeper look into what will be this MMORPG that is much more than meets the eye.

What is 'Persist Online'?

'Persist Online' is a zombie MMORPG title that features a world where you must survive a zombie apocalypse and face mutant bosses in a vast open world. The game aims to pit you against other players in a PvP mode, but you can also form alliances to survive in an open world that aims to be unforgiving.

'Persist Online', the origin

One of the first questions I had was how the idea for this game came about. The title had its genesis during the pandemic, as a project to create an MMO. The title was inspired by the time they played DayZ a few years ago, taking into account “the thrill of going out and meeting other people”, but also wanting to solve one of the elements they found most frustrating, dying, losing everything and having to start from scratch.

“Wouldn’t it be great to have the thrill, but when you die, you have the persistence of your progress?” This, coupled with a market analysis where they realized there was no MMO with zombies, was the perfect mix to create this game.  “It’s always fun to shoot a zombie in the head, I don’t think that’s ever going to change, right?” commented Vogler.

A vast and multi-layered open world

The game begins with the player starting from a bunker, allowing them to have a place in a safe zone, but from there “the game is a lot about freedom and exploring the world” where decisions have consequences. On the one hand, you will never lose the progress you have made, so your skills and experience points will always be with you, as well as the progress you have made with some items. On the other hand, you will lose your backpack and its contents, and it will be up to you and your skills to get your things back, unless of course someone else comes along and takes your loot.

One of the details that is also highlighted is that the team is trying to change those frustrating moments in survival games. While they believe that it is quite frustrating to have to make sure that your character sleeps, eats, or drinks water, 'Persist Online' changes this rule a bit by allowing that these actions are not mandatory, but that if you do them, you will be rewarded with some kind of buff at the end.

In addition to these details, CipSoft promises a huge world filled with factions of NPCs living on the map, with whom you will have different relationships. “They can like or hate our actions, and when they meet, they will shoot each other.” Your relationship can be neutral, or they can be your allies or your enemies, it all depends on what you want to accomplish in this world. Because it is an open world, it will be really huge. From being able to go up a mountain or enter a building, a lot of the world will be explorable with multiple paths and destinations.

For now, ‘Persist Online’ does not have a release date or even a roadmap of what is coming to the game. Part of CipSoft’s philosophy after these years of experience is to have a close relationship with the players, as they believe they are not trying to oversell the game. “Our approach is to actually just talk to the community. So with very, very active on Discord, the whole development team is on there and they answer questions from the players”.