Sociolotron Review
Wildefire, 2006-01-18

Getting Into Character

20-Year-Old Virgins

Death on the Installment Plan

When killed by an NPC or a player who's not intent on ridding London of you forever, you are simply knocked out ("KO'ed"). You automatically resurrect in a room adjacent to where you met your fate, a fair amount lighter as you're missing most of your belongings. You'll only be left with a few weak health potions, the basic tools of your primary professions, and enough clothing to cover your genitals. The rest of your things are left in a so-called "death box" which can and will be snatched up by other players if you're not quick enough in retrieving it. Losing all your stuff is not as bad in Sociolotron as it would be for, say a decked-out high level player in World of Warcraft. You never lose any money when you're KO'ed, and you can re-buy all your favorite weapons, armor, and accessories during a quick tour of your favorite player-run shops.

When your character does die permanently, the default result is condemnation as a demon in a playable Hell. Hell is a no-holds-barred area with its own social ranking system and economy. If Hell isn't for you though, you can prepare for the future by naming an heir. To do this, a female player needs to get pregnant and bear a child. A month in Sociolotron is the same as a day in the real world, so player pregnancy lasts nine days. Once the offspring is born, it (supposedly) becomes a playable character accessible by either parent, although until the character is activated as an heir, you can't do too much with it. If one of the parents dies and has named one of its offspring as an heir, that heir will replace the dead character and inherit all of his or her belongings and property, in addition to 75% of the character's financial wealth. Note that female avatars need to be careful how many babies they successfully deliver, as each one changes her anatomy in such a way as to potentially affect her arousal in future sexual situations. Also, frequent abortions can be detrimental as well, so the best course of action for most female avatars is to monitor their ovulation and take birth control when they're not planning to bear children.

The Streets of London

One of the cooler benefits of being a full PC-status character is that you can own private residences or public businesses. All taverns in the game are player-run, and are the hub of most day-to-day activity. Both homes and taverns serve as hubs of commerce, for players can set up vending machines on their own property where they can sell items they've produced and even buy materials and items from other players. There is no uber-elite phat lewt in Sociolotron; most, if not all, in-game items can be crafted by any player with the appropriate skills and materials, and it is actually quite easy to equip yourself with good weapons and armor early on in the game by just visiting people's apartments and checking out their vending machines.

Most Honorable Professions

Like most MMORPGs, the game offers harvesting professions and crafting professions, in addition to weapon proficiencies. Skills have a maximum level of 4, and higher skill levels generally imply that you're more efficient in what you do, and in the case of crafting, the higher your skill the more items you know how to produce. Learning up to level 3 in most skills can be done by simply visiting the correct instructor NPC (assuming you have the XP and money to spend), but the achieving level 4 typically requires that you complete a special quest which, upon completion, will give you access to a high level trainer.

Sex in the City

For one thing, as the game's manual explains, the sex system mostly follows common sense. For example, a man cannot penetrate his partner until he is sufficiently physically aroused. He can reach this state himself by obvious means, but it's easier and quicker for his partner to help him out. Additionally, in penetration situations, both the size of the intruding object and that of the receiving orifice play an important part... if the inserted item is too small, arousal for both partners will drop. On the other hand, if it's too large, this increases the amount of pain that both partners experience, which is again generally bad for arousal (unless your character is a masochist, in which case pain actually helps). Some players have monogamous relationships, most players have many regular partners, and some players actually have a prostitution skill and will sleep with just about anyone for the money. As detailed as it is, the sex system isn't as comprehensive as it could be. For example, multi-partner penetration isn't supported, and not all body parts are officially accessible. This is not a hindrance to the seasoned role-players of London, however- they tend to fill in the gaps with their own descriptions.

Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash

Forbidden Quests

In Graphic Detail

New players frequently think they're experiencing technical difficulties when they discover they can't hear anything when they play Sociolotron, when in fact there simply is no music or sound. The lone exception is that there are various 'instruments' located around the game world, which are really more like tape players. You occasionally find musical recordings which you can then play on these instruments. The songs are all public domain MIDI files, so don't expect Jeremy Soule.

Sociolotron also features a somewhat bizarre and unconventional interface. Instead of being full-screen, the game always runs in a regular window (which is important because you'll frequently need to refer to official web pages and the manual for information), and you can resize the window to fit your screen. The game window is divided into seven areas: Your current view into the game world (the graphics), a chat and system message area, a context-sensitive tabbed menu, a scrollable character stats panel, some buttons for inventory management, the "paper doll" window which displays either you or the currently selected player (you use this to equip or unequip avatars), and your inventory. There's also a menu bar across the top where you can access various settings, and the all-important Help menu which has links to all necessary external information pages as well as the game's manual. Sociolotron really benefits from high screen resolutions; while it doesn't improve the game's appearance, the higher the resolution the more 'real estate' you can see in the actual game world. 1024x768 is just barely acceptable (when you're in bars you're only able to see people sitting right next to you). I prefer to play at my notebook's native resolution, which is 1600x1200.

Wildefire insists that his lady friend sit on "that funny lookin' chair." Unfortunately for him, NPCs don't take kindly to being placed on Succubus altars.

The interface can be a real bear to manipulate because performing complex actions often requires you to flip through numerous different menu tabs while the appropriate items are selected. For example, chaining up a victim or partner requires several steps that must be performed in a number of places on the interface- things such as manufacturing keys for the chains, selecting the target character, getting a tight hold on the character, dragging the chains onto the paper doll, selecting the chains, locking them, etc. Activities like this could be drastically simplified with macros and configurable hotkeys, but there are none (and using external macroing methods is forbidden). There are a handful of useful hard-coded hotkeys for simple things like selecting yourself and standing up from a seated position, but it's just not enough. Even a more intuitive menu system (perhaps some more items in the menu bar at the top of the window) would lessen the pain of many procedures.

Combat is thankfully simple- perhaps too simple for many MMORPG vets, but that's not really the focus here. To attack someone, you just select the target avatar and either hold CTRL and double-click, or choose ATTACK from the Combat menu. As long as your mark is within range of your weapon, you will automatically fight with your opponent until only one of you is left standing. You can optionally choose to just "hurt" your target instead of fighting with full force (some players use this setting in S&M situations). It is rumored that if your avatar's masochism urge gets too high, your avatar will automatically switch itself to hurt-only mode so that the fight lasts longer. The stats of your weapons and armor make a huge difference in Sociolotron- unfortunately, no stats for any item are available within the game's interface. You must refer to the official items list web page (linked from the Help menu) for this info, and it's a cumbersome process. There are spells in the game as well- which require mana- but they're not so much "lightning bolt! lightning bolt!" as they are "bring my sex partner to climax without the necessary stimulation."

Despite the interface's lack of some critical in-game details, the regularly-updated external sites and the game's semi-private official forums should give you all the information you need that's not already in the game's manual. Oh and understand this: The manual is essential reading. I'm not kidding. This is not like most MMORPG user guides where 80% of it is useless lore that you don't read anyway. Every topic in the Sociolotron user guide explains important information that you need to know in order to play. It is fortunate then, that the documentation is well-written and admirably complete, if not always up-to-date.

Ill Communication

An important thing to note is that Sociolotron players are expected to speak in-character in all public communications (except IRC), unless explicitly speaking out-of-character using the OOC feature (which colors text green). Sociolotron staff discourages players from revealing personal information about themselves for safety reasons, but despite this, many players also use Yahoo! Messenger to keep tabs on each other. In order to preserve the integrity of in-game roleplay, the use of out-of-band methods for in-game role-played communications is frowned upon. For example, if your avatar is gagged and chained, you (quite logically) can't use your in-game cell phone to call your friends for help. You COULD use IRC or Yahoo! Messenger to alert them, but this would violate the rules of proper roleplay.

What Happens in Socio Stays in Socio

At this time there is only one game server, so when you play you have access to the entire Sociolotron community. The player population is small (generally between 60 and 180 players are logged on at any given time) but very dedicated, and a real community, with commerce, law, scandal, and history has evolved.

Is It Hot or Not?

I had to deduct a couple points for production values, interface, and lack of integrated game data (you shouldn't have to browse to an external web page to see the stats on that sword you've had your eye on). Despite these issues, the amount of thought, detail, and care that went into this game is apparent at almost every step. Keep in mind that I've said nothing of the game's crafting, cults, gangs (guilds), social ranking and legal systems, or a number of other things that distinguish Sociolotron from other online games. There is a lot to explore and learn in London.

In the case of this unique game, I feel it would be irresponsible of me to simply render a score and run off without also giving you some advice, so here goes: If the reason you play MMORPGs is to explore vast 3D territories, engage in massive guild raids, collect rare and powerful items, complete hundreds of story-based quests, or even have exciting PvP or PvE combat experiences, Sociolotron is probably not for you. I also cannot recommend Sociolotron to folks who have trouble separating their in-game identities from their real-world ones, since terrible things can happen in London and if you're not able to see Sociolotron as "just a game" it might not be a very healthy experience for you. And let us not forget that this is an adults-only game. You must be 21 or over, and players can and do act out things in the game that would not be socially acceptable or safe in the real world.

On the other hand, if you have a high tolerance for a fair amount of bizarre and generally politically incorrect in-character behavior, you're curious about novel game mechanics, or you're interested in seeing what online role-playing is REALLY all about, Sociolotron may very well be the game you've been looking for. Just be warned that you're probably going to be forever spoiled by the role-playing freedom the game affords you... well until Sociolotron 2 comes out anyway.