The more I learn about Mortal Online the more excited I get about this game. It seems like someone read my mind about how to create a MMORPG then went and made Mortal Online. For those of you who are not familiar with this game let me fill you in. It’s a first person fantasy MMORPG with an open player-controlled world being developed by Swedish video game company Star Vault. Mortal Online promises a true sandbox experience.
Character Class – MO borrows many features from the Elder Scroll series, most notably the class system. When you create your character you’re not selecting any specific class. As you play through the game you can join a guild such as Thief Guild, Black-Smith Guild or Mage Guild then learn skills based off that guild. You can at any time quit the guild and switch to another class type, however you will lose any bonuses that guild provided you.
Leveling/Skills – There are no levels in MO. However there are skill levels of sort, again similar to Elder Scrolls. There are two types, Action Skills and Learned Skills. Action skills increase the more you use them, while Learned skills will increase passively over time.
There is a third type called Deva Skills, which is a skill that links all your created players. For instance, if you learned “Poison Making” and made this your Deva skill, any future characters you create will automatically have this skill so you don’t need to retrain them. It does not mean they will have it from the start, however once you meet the prerequisites, it will become available at what ever level you trained it to.
Combat – Combat will be real-time, no click and watch fighting here. You can swing or aim your weapon where ever you want and that’s where it’ll go.
Legendary Monsters/Quests -There are bosses and quests that do NOT repeat once completed or killed. These are supposed to be historical battles that will change the game. The items or rewards that are won from these are also unique and will not be repeated. I absolutely love this idea.
Looting – Full looting! The fact there are going to be 100% unique items, this makes looting even more fun. Imagine killing a player that had an ultra rare item from a Legendary quest or monster. Very cool indeed. However looting will tag you as a criminal temporarily, so you’ll have to be careful.
Free World – The game will have a minimum amount of rules which really gives the players control of what happens. You can become a fighter, explorer, crafter and have that become your main gameplay element. A cool thing about exploring is that when you discover a new area you get to name it. Can we say hello to “Bunghole Cave”?
Graphics – The graphics also look amazing and they should as it runs on the Unreal 3 engine with Grome, Speedtree.
Honestly everything about this game sounds awesome. I just signed up to the Mortal Online Beta, which hopefully I’ll get in to. The game is slated to be released in the summer of 2009 which is just around the corner. :)
First off….
It seems like someone read my mind about how to create a MMORPG then went and made Mortal Online
Yea, I though this about LOTRO, WAR, AOC…yet, they keep disappointing.
Anyways, as to the 2009 release date. Do you honestly think an independent nobody with this being their first game AND an MMO will release this year?
I smell Darkfall here.
Everything here sounds a lot like classic Asheron’s Call, more than anything else.
All is well and good. I think I’m really liking the direction that the game is going..except it probably won’t be in English now, will it?
Wow. Very Darkfall-esque… but hopefully better run.
I honestly don’t expect this game to launch well if at all, at least not in a state where it’ll offer players with a gaming experience worth while.
Honestly, I’m quite surprised how most game developers have such lacking skills.
openedge1, you do realize that Star Vault has been developing the game since 2005 (2002 even, if you consider writing down the ideas and setting everything up as development as well).
Now, I’m not saying the game will not get delayed with 100% certainty, but thus far, they are on schedule and have reached every goal they set for themselves on time.
As for “smelling Darkfall”, the only thing MO has similar with DF is that it’s a sandbox MMO. Everything else, from their game engine and network code to their business plan is completely different and personally I’d say a lot better than that of DF.
Inform yourself before posting your baseless claims.
Of course it will be in english!
Check out the website http://www.mortalonline.com and get a feel for it. It looks very promising to me and it has a very active community.
Most of the star vault team were there making the original MO and were on the team so their hardly nobodies, assumptions being made already before beta? jeeze.
dis game will fail
Why do people think independents can’t make games?
Merdian 59, awesome game, independent
UO, awesome game independent
EQ, Awesome game, independent
AC, awesome game, independent
eq2, semi awesome not independent anymore
ac2, shitty game, not independent anymore
vanguard, not independent shitty game
aoc, warhammer, not independent shitty game.
darkfall, independent, but semi okay game
MO, probably going to be better than darkfall because better dev team, INDEPENDENT.
seems like all the independent games, were AWESOME. Because they were made by people with a vision. The only good game that came from a developer with a LOT of funding was world of warcraft… You’re an idiot. Go play wow
I can’t believe how much ignorance the players posses. Of course this game is in English! All the promotions and forums are all in English. Devs communicate in English etc!!! O.o
Well, they maybe inexperienced but experienced dev aren’t creating extremely promissing products now are they? I think SV’s enthusiasim and smart move like working with Unreal 3 engine is giving me confidence that this product will see day light. Even Darkfall came out. Sure, DF is broken and ridiculous but even at the beta state MO seems to be working better than DF!
Well, time will tell how this will go but I am keeping my eye on it!
I love internet anonymity. People who truly are dumbasses will display their point of views, since the fear of linking their face to their stupidity is clearly eliminated. This was specially focused on the post above me.
should have mentioned that Intel supports their hardware, while Epic helps them make the U3 code for sandbox MMO.
so yes Star Vault is independent but they have a major “back” to support them.
also SV are not declaring features that will be implemented on launch if it hasn’t been done yet. most new mmos fail because they promise something on release and then doesn’t include it at the actual launch.
one last thing that SV is different then others is the fact that the development are in constant contact with its community, if its by forums or in live chat on IRC.
Sorry raven that was intended for Lool, not you :). They were slow in validating my post
Finally a game for me! This game looks really promising! And it´s not even closed beta yet.
What a nice and exciting athmosphere in that game. I can´t wait start playing this game.
I certainly hope I get into the beta.
Btw, thanks for the review!
List of predictions based on this review –
No character class or levels – good direction but not nothing new. Reason they put levels in games because its easier to balance skills/abilities instead of cherry picking the best ones and there are always best ones.
Combat – looks like fast twitch, fine if that is what they are going for.
Legendary monsters/quests – non repeatable means about 99% of you will never see these ever.
Full looting – nothing new, they did that in the first mmo. Fine if equipment is easy to resupply and only a fool will carry around ultra rare equipment, which means most of that stuff will sit in a bank somewhere, unless you can rob that too. People love getting ripped off when they’re not even online.
Free World ‘minimum amount of rules which really gives the players control of what happens’ …if you are a griefer, otherwise expect no control over what happens. Again, fine if that’s what they are going for and sounds like guild (aka gank gangs) will be the norm. Also about first time explorations – that will last for less than the first month after everything is named Bunghole Cave.
Graphics – always a plus, I bet they forget about day/night and weather like most every other mmo.
Predict an okay game, but for a very small niche and without a large base exploits are slow to report and patch – one or more of the points in the review sound good, but will sour to the average gamer that pays to play. Doesn’t sound like causals need apply anyway. The longer rez times for red character sounds interesting (permadeath would be more interesting), since that is the problem with dealing with jerkwads in mmos they just keep popping back.
The odds are certainly stacked against this game. Even if what they promise comes to fruition, the sheer immersion of it might turn off so many casual gamers, ala Planetside.
Actually I kind of hope it does fail, because if it doesn’t and it’s anything like they say it will be, I’ll have some major RL issues as a result of playing it 24/7.
It certainly sounds like Darkfall. Running may be a good idea before dreams take over your fragile gamer mind.
The game is based off of mainly UO so get your facts straight and go play a free shard of UO pre AOS so you can actually be an informed reviewer.
So far the game sounds like its much more on track then Dark Fall was but I think their release date of Q4 might be optimistic. mid to late Q1 2010 sounds better.
Have been in beta and still am in beta. Do not buy this game unless you really like throwing money away. The graphics stink and customer support is almost not even there.
I ordered this game quite awhile ago and have been watching the devs post for when we should have gotten our copy. Since when you purchase your allowed access to the beta, the box edition they send you they claim will be the most recent build. So far ive still not gotten my box in over a month and they took the money from my bank account. Even over charged my card and will not reply to emails or PM’s.
Trust me this game isnt worth the $57.00 they stole from me.
Dont let it happen to you, but if you do then good luck because this games hacked all to crap.
I’ve been so excited about the game.. up until I finally got in to the games open beta (which was a feat in itself, the patcher and downloader is a nightmare to get working)
The game world looks awesome but that’s where it ends for the awesome looks, the character models are truly horrible, the UI looks more dated than any MMO out there, the combat feels slow and clunky. Crafting means standing at the same lump of rock hitting the same button forever. There’s no party options at all, the world feels empty, these last couple of things can easily be changed before final release.
It seems to have taken all the ideas people like me (an ex UO player) wanted in an MMO and mashed them up in one big bowl but forgot to add the flavouring to make something tasty out of all these different ingredients.
Some might find this game fun but try and get in the open beta before you shell out for this. I know plenty will say it’s beta and to expect issues but this is more like an alpha than a beta, plus most of the issues I have would require a good year or two to put right. I might check it out again in a year if it’s still going then.
@Tobs, you said it all! I downloaded the beta about 2 days ago, and well it was absolutely ridiculous. The world was empty, dead. Characters, both npcs and players, were just ugly, their textures seemed to be mud instead of cloth., even the cityguards armor seemed to be seamless, i couldnt tell where his gloves ended nor where his Helm startet, he even had no peephole in his Helm…Graphics are not even near the state they showed in their betatrailers. But the most disgusting thing was, that after downloading the client, i was asked to pay for an abonnement, hmmm i thought it was for free…I sure didnt subscribe and started without a full verification of my accountdata and the hell i didnt regret it! @ Tobs, yes it is in an alpha state, and a bad one too!
What a jip! This game is such a let down – those ingame screen shots are nothing like um, well in game graphics…
They have copied other games verbatum *cough* UO and still after a year of public beta testing have a program that you sure as shit could not sell off the shelves!
Bethesda please tear these guys a new one and realese your shit for MMO??