The Death of Urban Dead.
Yesterday, Friday 14th March 2025 at 12noon, UrbanDead.com shut down.
I started playing back in 2005, not too long after it opened up, after hearing friends at university talking about it. Since then I’d played it a lot with my first (and main) character Zombeef. I hung around with a group called Hambagar Halparz, started by Wakshaani on the rpg.net forums.
After things died down, I’d log on occasionally, do zombie stuff, then log off for a while. In the last few months of the game, I moved over to one of the Forts (Fort Perryn) since there was some human activity there.
When the closure was announced, I head on up to Caiger Mall. I’d never been there with Zombeef, though I think I had with another character once upon a time), but it seemed appropriate as Caiger Mall was the site of multiple seiges early on, and it felt like a good idea to be there at the end of days. I got there, and it was firmly in the hands of the zombies, and no real threat from the living. So I ventured to the west, not too far though, and attacked any living I could (which wasn’t much).
On the last day, about half an hour before the shutdown, I got a ping on the Urban Dead Reuinion discord about the imminant shut down. I got on the server, logged into the game and shambled back into Caiger Mall. The living had decided to try and retake it! I spent what little AP I had, doing my best to fend off the living. I kept my last Action Point just so that I had a view of the Mall as things ended.
12noon hit, and the game itself became inaccessible. You can’t log in, or make new characters. Things just….ended. While it was amazing that the game lasted as long as it did, with what little activity it had. For some reason, the RidleyBank Resistance Front Twitter/X account has been following me for years. But as I have no idea how to end this, I’ll echo the message Kevan left on the UrbanDead.com map: In death, the city rests.