Otherland was presented at the next-g event in Hamburg on March 27th, 2012. Johannes Bickle from RealU and Patrick Streppel from gamigo presented a live playthrough of the game. The event was live-blogged on the @OtherlandMMOG Twitter feed. After debuting the brand new gameplay trailer, a ton of information was shared about many of Otherland’s features!


Story: Streppel and Bickle discussed how the Otherland universe is the perfect backbone for a game. It offers players the freedom to be whoever and whatever they wish, with the ability to represent that desire in-game. The Otherland MMO ties directly into the books, taking place just after the events of Tad William’s novels.

Graphics: The Unreal Engine is stretched to provide a very unique look for Otherland. Beautiful environments reveal themselves to be digital simulations the closer you look. The artists have done an incredible job in creating intriguing visual glitches, artifacting, and wireframe models that quickly get skinned before the player’s eyes. The simulations in Otherland are slowly breaking apart, and the graphics find many unique ways of displaying this.

Character Customization: The initial choices of character customization were shown off in the live demonstration: Human, Simuloid, and Alien, with male and female versions of both. eDNA, which can be harvested from creatures and the environment, can be used to further customize your character in completely unique ways. Shops throughout Lambda Mall sell all types of equipment and a huge variety of dress wear, as well as new emotes for the player’s simulation to learn.

Gameplay: Otherland utilizes “non-targeting gameplay”. This was further defined by displaying console-like fast paced action. Gameplay is fast and hands-on, unlike traditional skill spamming RPGs. The first enemy they encountered in 8Squared was pulled in with a gun. The player then quickly switched to a sword to finish it off in melee battle. They then went on to harvest the creature’s eDNA for use on their character and personal space later.

Unique AI: NPCs are to have their own unique lifecycle. They will not function on predictable looped scripts. For example: an NPC may be a fisherman going down to the river each day, then going to the bar at night. The NPC may stay too late at the bar, resulting in him waking up late the next day and missing his fishing, then going to the bar and talking about such results.

Crafting: All items are made from a material called Soma, and can be crafted and upgraded at SomaForge locations in Otherland.

Lambda Mall as a Central Location: Lambda Mall is Tad Williams vision of the internet of the future; no clicking, just shopping, browsing, playing and hanging out with friends. Most of Lambda Mall is a safe area for players, but there is a dark underbelly filled with threats and challenges. Travel between simulations is done via portals.

Social Areas in Lambda Mall: There are many bars and clubs in Lambda Mall, some with their own special criteria for gaining access. Mister J’s requires players to learn a secret handshake before gaining access. Bars also offer drinks, which act as buffs.

Mini-Games: Streppel and Bickle showed off some of the mini-games that can be found within Lambda Mall's social areas. The mini-games available for the press to play were a UFO game with the goal of flying around rural areas and collecting cows. The second was a plane based game with ship to ship dogfighting.

That’s all the information we have from the event for now. We will update with more screenshots and information at a later point! We'd like to here what announcements you enjoyed the most, so please share your thoughts in this thread!

Check out this awesome picture of the Lambda Mall inspired bar at the next-g event!

Ahem... guess today I'll leak just a drop more information for you guys, since you're all so nice ;)
1. Yes
2. We'll talk more about that later