Building a helicopter in Lego Universe.
Creativity
One of the things that really sets Lego Universe apart from other MMOs (and even from the console games like Lego Star Wars) is the emphasis on creativity. While the console games are fun and provide challenging problem-solving, you don’t really get to create anything of your own. And while most MMOs are great for the way the let you interact with other players in a vast world, you don’t necessarily get to create things.
Lego Universe has that covered, with several stages of building. The first is QuickBuild, which is akin to the console games — you approach a little pile of bouncing Lego bricks, hold a key, and your minifig automatically throws together the object. Next up is ModularBuild: you collect sections of a model and have limited customization of, say, a three-part rocket ship. You can swap out the engine, the nose, and the cockpit, based on the pieces you’ve collected. The final level is FreeBuild. Each player gets their own piece of property (actually, one in each world) where you can take all the bricks you’ve collected from doing missions and actually piece things together brick by brick. You can also build or collect modules yourself.
Imagination is the currency of the game: you collect Imagination tokens as you explore (smashing crates and things, just like in the console games), and then it literally costs you Imagination to build things. There are also other tokens you can collect which are tied to the different Factions, allowing you to upgrade equipment that gives you special abilities.
On top of all this is a simplified programming language called Behaviors. Just like Lego bricks, behavior modules are small chunks that can be linked together to make a model behave a certain way: If another model is nearby, then break apart, then wait 5 seconds, then reassemble. You collect behavior modules as you play through the game, and you can make fairly complex scenes with them, even making your own mini-games within the game.
Each player’s property will be tagged with a number that indicates the level of complexity of what’s on their property—number of bricks, behaviors used, etc. The more complex the property, the higher the computing power you need to really appreciate it. While there isn’t a scale yet for how to apply the raw numbers to processing power, it does give you a rough, relative look at the difference between properties before you decide to visit. It is also sort of a status symbol: since the only way you get bricks and behavior modules is by playing the game and completing missions, a really complex property shows that you’ve done a lot in the game.
Of course, none of the building would be nearly as much fun if you couldn’t share it, so Lego Universe allows you to invite your friends to play on your property with you, and you can also trade models and parts with each other.
