Line #67 VideoGame/NexusWar


1	->''The universe - all that we know, all that exists - is ''dying''. It is time for a new universe to be born. In a faraway place and time, souls do battle to determine which ethos will dominate the new creation. This place is known by many names but those there refer to it as The Nexus.''
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3	-> ''Every action is measured in the scales of creation to determine what changes each new Breath will bring.''
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5	''Nexus War'' is a series of free browser-based {{MMORPG}}s that revolves around a cosmic struggle between the forces of good, evil and free will over the destiny of a constantly [[EternalRecurrence reincarnating]] universe. It is similar in style to ''VideoGame/UrbanDead'', and there is considerable overlap between the player base of both games.
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7	The original ''[[http://www.nexuswar.com Nexus War]]'' was created and administrated by Brandon Harris (aka Jorm) and ran from early 2007 to late 2009. The game was set on the fictitious Caribbean archipelago of St. Germaine, which was ripped from the face of the Earth in a massive hurricane. St. Germaine became the eternal battleground of Valhalla, and war between the [[PowersThatBe Elder Powers]] of good, evil, and free will raged across the islands and the extra-dimensional planes connected to them.
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9	In late 2009, Jorm announced that he was unable to keep up with the cost of running the servers and was preparing to shut down the game. However, he ended the game with a bang -- the war escalated into a GrandFinale that saw epic battles, dramatic changes in the landscape, and avatars of the Elder Powers walking among mortals. The planes of existence closed off one by one until the game reached its final conclusion in mid-October of 2009.
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11	The series was soon UnCanceled by [[http://www.nexusclash.com/ Nexus Clash]], a SpiritualSuccessor created by one of the site staff of the first game. Nexus Clash retains most of the original format, with a number of twists - most notably, the regular deaths and rebirths (or "Breaths") of the universe described in the backstory are now a direct feature of the game in the form of occasional wiping and redesigning of the game world. Other new features include new character classes such as {{Fallen Angel}}s and [[AscendedDemon Redeemed Demons]], new planes to explore, and more clearly defined character roles.
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13	Has a [[Characters/NexusWar character sheet]] for each class.
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15	------
16	!!This game provides examples of:
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18	* AbsurdlySpaciousSewer: Not only is it Absurdly Spacious, it literally warps space.
19	* ActionBomb: Explosive Murder, which despite its [[AwesomeButImpractical inefficiency]] is one of the most popular skills for its class. In general, players like blowing themselves up.
20	** The devs love it too. One version had the Explosive Murder button in the same panel as normal attacks, leading a lot of people to accidentally click it. Jorm flatly refused to change this, because people exploding by accident is amusing.
21	* AnAdventurerIsYou: ''Nexus Clash'' has explicitly defined role divisions. Each alignment has two Tier 2 classes that break out into six Tier Three classes filling the following six roles:
22	** Tank: Mostly reliant on passive skills and ChargedAttack. All have some form of innate armor and skills that raise the maximum HP cap, and two of three have defensive auras that damage those who attack them. Hard-hitting, but often not very accurate. (Seraph, Eternal Soldier, Infernal Behemoth)
23	** Hunter: High mobility, high accuracy, high single-target damage, but often fragile. Can learn some means of tracking and finding enemies. (Divine Herald, Revenant, Void Walker)
24	** Arcane Trickster: The MagicKnight class, capable of learning spells. Has some form of innate armor, but not as tough as Tank classes. The most MP-dependent of the combat T3 classes, as most of their abilities are active rather than passive. (Holy Champion, Nexus Champion, Doom Howler)
25	** Support Caster: Centered on [[StatusBuff Status Buffs]], StatusEffects, and UtilityMagic, with less in terms of direct offense than other caster classes. (Advocate, Conduit, Dark Oppressor)
26	** Offensive Caster: Spell damage, and lots of it. Also focuses on spell-enhanced weapon attacks. (Archon, Wizard, Corrupter)
27	** Petmaster: Summoning-focused classes. Other classes can summon pets, but these are the best at it . (Lightspeaker, Lich, Wyrm Master)
28	** Lastly, the [[FallenAngel Fallen]] and [[AscendedDemon Redeemed]] are special cases that don't really fit into any of the above roles.
29	* AfterTheEnd: It's a war at the end of the universe, so it's more like During the End. However, it is definitely a ScavengerWorld, as society and industry have broken down.
30	* AlienGeometries: The original Nexus War was won by Marquai, the Elder Power of time, order and engineering. As his victory loomed, everything became more angular - the moon was now octagonal, clouds were square or triangular, etc. Nexus Clash's Kaleidoscopia probably counts too.
31	* AllThereInTheManual: The game includes a huge [[http://wiki.nexuscla.sh/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page wiki]] that contains all of the {{Canon}} backstory articles as well as everything about the game.
32	* AnotherDimension: Several of these, usually including at least one plane for each alignment. Some Breaths have had [[BlueAndOrangeMorality different]] options.
33	* AntiPoopSocking: Much like in ''VideoGame/UrbanDead'', there's a pretty limited number of character actions that any player can do in a day.
34	* {{Arcadia}}: The plane of Elysium/Paradise. One version of this plane also had a FluffyCloudHeaven floating in the sky above it, with clouds solid enough to support lakes, forests and castles.
35	* ArchaicWeaponForAnAdvancedAge: Swords and bows are seen alongside firearms and grenades, and are just as effective, but Valhalla itself is always a modern city.
36	* ArmCannon: No longer technically in play, but [[FallenAngel Fallen]] have the power to produce ''ammunition'' this way.
37	* BackStab: Attacks from hiding. Again and again, sometimes. Occasionally attacking with an ''ambulance''. [[EveryCarIsAPinto Which explodes]].
38	* BlackMagic: Most demonic skills, which focus on either a) doing a lot of damage or b) nastily debuffing the other guy.
39	* BloodyMurder: The Wyrm Master skill Acid Blood. ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin.
40	* BodyHorror: Tends to happen to demons in general.
41	** Members of the Sires of Retribution, when killed, have their corpses mutated into a monster that attacks whoever kills them.
42	** Thanks to a setting containing both [[OurZombiesAreDifferent plague]] and [[OurZombiesAreDifferent necromantic]] zombies, it's [[GoodBadBugs possible]] for a character's body to get ripped in half with each half reanimated as each kind of zombie. Which then fight each other.
43	* BottomlessPit: The Pit of Azazel. Several planes consist mostly of this.
44	* BreakableWeapons: The caveat if the UnbreakableWeapons let you down...which they inevitably will.
45	* BribingYourWayToVictory: Entirely averted. The items that can be purchased with donations have no in-game effect and just make your character look more unique. You can donate to get more characters than the initial three, but those characters still can't help each other.
46	* CarFu: A number of different classes have access to SuperStrength that lets them pick up a variety of heavy things to use as weapons, including vehicles, trees, streetlights, and statues. Much has been written about the irony of getting flattened by an ambulance.
47	* CastFromHitPoints: {{Fallen Angel}}s can reload their weapons from hit points. Their Good counterpart, the [[AscendedDemon Redeemed]], can cast from ''morality'' points, putting their Redemption at risk in exchange for awesome combat abilities. The exact mechanisms vary from Breath to Breath, but in general, if it comes in points there's a way to cast from it.
48	* ChainsawGood: [[MemeticMutation RRRRRRRNNGGGGGG DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH.]]
49	** As a chainsaw powered by goodness, the Clockwork Blade takes this trope literally.
50	* CharacterAlignment: Set in concrete by a convenient KarmaMeter. [[invoked]]
51	* ChargedAttack: Several. All add extra damage and change the damage type.
52	* CharlesAtlasSuperpower: Myrmidons and Eternal Soldiers don't draw upon any kind of magic but their own badassery, which still pushes their abilities well beyond human limits and gives them limited access to arcane power.
53	* ChurchMilitant: Eleven of them, one for each Elder Power, one for those who want to RageAgainstTheHeavens, and another as a prize for the winner of the last Breath. Given the [[GodIsFlawed nature]] of the Elder Powers, players have spent much of the game trying to figure out what exactly causes advancement in the church, though killing followers of Powers your patron dislikes is usually a good start.
54	* ClassAndLevelSystem, PointBuildSystem: Every character starts out as a Mortal. At level 10, they can take a second-tier class based on their alignment. A third-tier class can be added at level 20, determined by the character's second-tier class.
55	* ClownCarGrave: There's an entire [[AnotherDimension plane of existence]] for this trope.
56	* CompetitiveBalance: The methods of killing stuff are mostly balanced against each other. For example, rifles do much more damage per AP than bare fists, but the player also has to spend AP repairing the guns and searching for ammunition. The Divine Champion class can dish out more damage than a Seraph under the right circumstances but requires more management and is completely MP-dependent, while a Seraph's skills are mostly passive.
57	%%* CriticalExistenceFailure
58	* {{Crossover}}: Quite apart from the inherent nature of the Worlds, everything from Balrogs to Weepings Angels are running around.
59	* DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist: It becomes less of one as your character advances. Folks who rely on a lot of BreakableWeapons might see it as worse than one.
60	* DeathOfAThousandCuts: Being hit always deals at least 1 point of damage, unless you are immune to that damage type.
61	* DragonsAreDivine: The ''Nexus Clash'' backstory has three Great Dragons that occasionally intervened at pivotal points to shake up the wars between the PowersThatBe.
62	* ElementalRockPaperScissors: The Elementalist class had this in spades. Learning an elemental skill increases resistance to that element... and vulnerability to the others.
63	* EnemyScan: Several basic skills do this. They all scan something different, though, so most folks pick up all of them eventually.
64	* EternalEquinox: Day and night last exactly one hour each regardless of the season. The in-universe explanation is that the cities that become Valhalla aren't really attached to their planets anymore and the day and night cycle are being faked by the PowersThatBe. The real game-mechanics reason for this is that playing a [[OurVampiresAreDifferent Revenant]] usually depends on tracking the cycle to avoid the day and go out at night, and it'd be annoying if Revenant players had to keep track of a bunch of extra mechanics.
65	* EternalRecurrence: In the Nexus world, the ''entire universe'' works this way. It's now a direct feature of the game, and the death and rebirth of the universe usually comes [[PerpetualBeta packaged]] with new features and balance improvements.
66	* EyeBeams: The Eye of Judgment and its upgrades.
67	* FictionalConstellations: In the backstory, the four-pointed symbol of the Nexal death god [[DontFearTheReaper Hashaa]] is said to be one of the few constellations visible in the plane of Purgatorio. It's fitting since Hashaa's symbol represents the application of entropy and decay to all things, while Purgatorio is a cosmic-scale junkyard filled with faded, crumbling mementos of past worlds.
68	* GlassCannon: Casters in general and Void Walkers. Divine Heralds and Revenants to a lesser extent.
69	* GrandFinale: When the first game ended, the outer planes shut down one by one, Valhalla was sucked into the void, and the gods walked the earth. Later ''Nexus Clash'' Breaths have made this a more regular occurrence, albeit with less fanfare.
70	* FireAndBrimstoneHell: The plane of Gehenna/Stygia flipflops between this and EvilIsDeathlyCold.
71	* FloatingContinent: The island plane of Purgatorio is floating in endless void. If you lose your footing, it really ''is'' [[NotTheFallThatKillsYou the fall that kills you]].
72	* FourIsDeath: The fourth Elder Power of each alignment is dead/missing.
73	* GameMod: There's a wide selection of player-created [[http://www.nexusclash.com/wiki/index.php/Extensions extensions]] that enhance the interface. Lately the development team have been [[HireTheCritic mining]] them for improvements to the base game's interface.
74	* HandCannon: The Small Cannon, wrenched from the deck of [[WoodenShipsAndIronMen Age of Sail]] ships and turned on one's enemies to lethal effect. It took a while to reload, though. The original game was less literal but followed this trope closely enough with the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walker_Colt Walker Colt revolver]].
75	* HarmfulHealing: Demons have their basic healing item in the Stygian Bone Leech, a vicious demonic symbiote that gnaws its way into exposed flesh, sanitizing wounds, repairing bones and muscles, and eating infected tissue as it goes. [[https://wiki.nexuscla.sh/wiki/images/5/56/Boneleech.jpeg Here is a picture of one.]] Sweet dreams! Despite being hideous and painful, it does actually heal its 'patients', curing poisons and performing other medical miracles as it eats you. Angels get more benign [[HealingHerb Healing Herbs]] instead.
76	* HealThyself: First Aid kits and other healing items can be used on oneself, and apparently heal everything.
77	* HeavenAbove: The Angelic plane of Paradise/Elysium is usually an {{Arcadia}} environment, but one season of it took it one step further with an even holier FluffyCloudHeaven floating in the skies above that.
78	* HellholePrison: Literally, with the Black Prison. The Elysian version isn't very nice either, though; it's the idealized form of Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, where the warden can constantly watch all the prisoners all the time, and they have Holy Books available to aid in their rehabilitation...or, more likely, kill them.
79	* HolyHandGrenade: And ''how''. Demons have dirty tricks, but Angels have all the big guns.
80	* HyperactiveMetabolism: Both used and averted. Food and drink items heal you, but only a small amount and all types restore the same amount of HP.
81	* ImAHumanitarian: Defilers who desecrate corpses can get "a chunk of salted meat" to consume.
82	* ImprovisedWeapon: Characters can use a variety of odd melee weapons, including sledgehammers, chainsaws, whips, and shivs. They're not very effective, but they are [[UnbreakableWeapons Unbreakable]].
83	* InvulnerableKnuckles: No damage from punching a person (or even a barricade, door, or magic ward).
84	* KnightTemplar: Angels can learn the Hand of Zealotry skill, which allows them to kill Neutral characters without moral consequence. Some are even nastier than that; angels with HolierThanThou can freely injure (but not kill, that costs a couple of morality points) ''anyone who is less moral than them''.
85	* LifeDrain: Any Pariah can learn to use Blood Taste, an ability that compensates for [[NoCureForEvil demons' inability to heal other demons]].
86	* MagicKnight:
87	** The Nexus Champion, Holy Champion and Doom Howler classes can learn to cast spells and are very effective combatants.
88	** The Archon, Wizard and Corruptor all have abilities that lend them either to being pure spellcasters, or combine their magic with a favored weapon.
89	** Any "mage" class can learn to use combat skills, and all of them can use magic to aid them in combat. Some are more effective than others.
90	* {{Magitek}}: Wizards can use their guns to shoot magic.
91	* ManaDrain: This happens a lot. The Defiler class uses it as their signature move, although it's also a danger when fighting Revenants.
92	* NoCommunitiesWereHarmed: [[ShiningCity Laurentia]], the current earthlike Valhalla city, was deliberately mapped and written as its world's counterpart to [[spoiler:UsefulNotes/{{Vancouver}}]].
93	* NoCureForEvil: Demonic characters cannot be healed by others. As a result, they have several means of self-healing.
94	* OurMonstersAreDifferent
95	** Angels: Seraphs (and Lightspeakers to a lesser extent) are mechanical representations of order. Holy Champions are Old Testament-style messengers of the Word, who can turn into fire or mist or steel. Advocates are closest to the pop-culture version.
96	** Demons: Dark Oppressors are SuccubiAndIncubi or Faustian tempters. Infernal Behemoths are more like [[Literature/TheLordOfTheRings Balrogs]] than anything else, while Wyrm Masters, Doom Howlers, and Void Walkers are different flavors of [[Creator/HPLovecraft Lovecraftian horror.]]
97	** Vampires and werewolves: Revenants are burned by acting in sunlight and take double damage from tarnished (silver) swords. They can learn to turn into either wolves or bats.
98	* PermanentlyMissableContent: One of the main goals of the development team is to make the entire game into this so as to never become PerpetuallyStatic, accomplished by playing out the regular reboots of the world described in the lore. That said, enough time passes (usually real-life years) between each cycle to easily level your characters many times over and explore the entire world.
99	* PerpetualBeta: The series has been in open beta for years. This is entirely deliberate on the part of the development team, who want to keep the game from ever being PerpetuallyStatic.
100	* PlayerVersusPlayer, PVPBalanced: Almost all combat is player vs. player. The few wandering monsters that exist require dozens of characters to bring down.
101	** Partially subverted by the [[OurZombiesAreDifferent Shambling Zombie]] plague in ''Clash'', which required [[GameplayDerailment player manipulation]] to spread to new planes but quickly took on a life of its own once established.
102	* PointBuildSystem: Characters get Character Points from leveling (and a few [[StatGrinding other sources]]) and spend them on skills. There are only so many Character Points any one character can get and lots and lots of possible things to spend them on, which requires players to make choices between many possible builds.
103	* PoisonMushroom: Demons drinking angel tears. HilarityEnsues especially where Explosive Murder is involved.
104	* ThePowerOfHate: So strong that demons can use it to [[ActionBomb blow themselves up.]]
105	* PowersThatBe: Played as straight as possible. Nine Elder Powers, competing to be the one who guides the next iteration of the universe.
106	* PowerTattoo: The Nexus Champion class derives power from magical tattoos. All of his skills are additional tattoos, e.g. a tattoo allowing him to teleport, and one allowing him to deal more damage.
107	* RandomNumberGod: It exists, and it hates you.
108	* {{Repower}}: Since the universe periodically [[EternalRecurrence reboots]], characters start back at level one and it's entirely possible to pick a completely different skill tree.
109	* RevolversAreJustBetter: The Walker Colt from the first game was Just Better than every other firearm in the game in every way - until you had to [[ResourcesManagementGameplay reload it]]...
110	* RuleOfThree: Three Elder Powers for each of the three alignments.
111	** Each alignment had 4 deities but [[FourIsDeath one of each has been taken out of commission]] before the current breath.
112	* {{Shadowland}}: Nifleheim and later the Dead Caves.
113	* ShiningCity: [[AbsurdlyCoolCity Laurentia]] was the best place to be in its world by pretty much every conceivable metric...[[spoiler:and thus was the last place to fall apart when the rest of the world went to hell in a handbasket.]]
114	* ShotgunsAreJustBetter: In most people's hands, shotguns are somewhat AwesomeButImpractical as shotgun ammo is heavy and usually found in the form of individual shells. However, if that weakness can be bypassed or mitigated (and there are many ways to do that), it becomes even mightier than the holy weapons of the angels. In fact, [[{{Nerf}} the double-barreled shotgun was removed for being too powerful in the wrong hands]].
115	* ShoutOut: For while, characters who hid in Nexus Clash could end up in the [[Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia Wood Between the Worlds]].
116	* SprintShoes: Almost everybody gets these eventually.
117	* StatGrinding: The most common alternative way of getting [[PointBuildSystem Character Points]] once one hits the level cap. Due to the sheer number of stats to grind, no one has ''ever'' gotten HundredPercentCompletion.
118	* TheStraightAndArrowPath: A longbow is close to even with a rifle, and much easier to keep reloaded. Beyond that, the difference between the two is largely a matter of class preference; bows are favored by angels and, to a lesser extent, Transcended reality hackers (Nexus Champions and Conduits), who have skills that support this fighting style.
119	* SummonMagic: Of the "temporary ally" type. Summoned pets have their own hit points, magic points, and action points. When any of those values reaches zero, the pet vanishes.
120	* TalkingIsAFreeAction: For your first forty talking actions of the day. Except for the most hardcore of roleplayers (and usually even then) this is enough that costs for speaking never come up.
121	* TooAwesomeToUse: Magical throwing knives do huge damage, but can only be used once.
122	* UnreliableNarrator: Haldos, who gains more credibility than he deserves from the fact that he is also the ''only'' narrator.
123	* UrbanFantasy: Angels, demons, vampires, wizards, {{warrior monk}}s, and undead running around a tropical island, waging a war with as many sides as there are players.
124	* WhiteMagic: Most angelic skills, which focus on healing, buffing, and Holy-typed damage.
125	* TheWildWest: The original game had this theme for Nifleheim, the land of death.
126	* WingedHumanoid: Most high-leveled Angels and Demons have wings as their movement skill. Transcended characters, and the angels and demons who ''don't'' have wings, usually [[PortalNetwork find]] [[MyDeathIsOnlyTheBeginning other]] [[SuperSpeed ways]] of getting around.
127	* ZombieApocalypse:
128	** In Breath 3 of ''Clash'', a [[GameplayDerailment clever exploit]] unleashed Shambling Zombies from the Dead Caves across the Nexus. The administrators fixed the [[GoodBadBugs misfeature]] that caused them to proliferate like weeds, and then ran a competition to see who could kill the most zombies.
129	** In Breath 4, said apocalypse came back in a more limited form. Members of the [[ZombieAdvocate Sect of Maeval]] zombify everyone they kill, but the spread of secondary infections depends on your standing with the Sect and a bit of luck.

Context VideoGame / NexusWar