November 24th, 2009 - Mortal Online Report 1
Two posts back to back. I think this one may overshadow my previous post about Kirk Cameron and his crusade (another bad thing about religion might I add….all the people that have died in the name of it. I thought they were supposed to be teaching compassion and understanding).
Anyway. The company that is developing Mortal Online, has finally lifted the NDA. We are free to post anything and everything we want. In fact, they encourage us to. A couple of my friends and I have been Beta testing this game for a while now. A few months at least. While I stayed away from the initial Beta launch as it was more like an alpha test and you couldn’t really do anything except hope you could merely walk around, I waited until they had more stability to the server and more (any really) content to the game.
Here is my explanation of the game thus far. It boasts being a ‘hardcore’ type of MMO. You can be killed anywhere, at any time, and have all your shit taken from you. Also, you can build where ever you want. Rather than being limited to PVP areas or player housing areas, the game is truly sandbox in it’s design thus far. Remember though, it’s still in beta so not everything has been implimented. Though, I do see limitations to this idea, but I feel it’s about as open as you’re going to get with our current technology. The only game that is perhaps more open than Mortal is Second Life, but you’re actually doing the programming so it can’t really compare. You are still limited by the pre-designed building plans and ‘blueprints’ of weapons and armor, but you are given a wide latitude in the materials you use to create them with. If you’re building a house, the amount of HP it has is dependent on the materials you make it with. When crafting an item, you get to decide what kind and how much of a material you make it with. This will effect it’s ability to protect you/hurt someone as well as it’s weight.
So far, the game is still very rudimentary. There isn’t a whole lot to do except harvest and craft. The did put in animal taming and horseback riding, though. Any animal you see in game can be tamed. There are no ‘mobs’ in this game like in WoW or EQ2. Also, there aren’t any levels either. I will never be a ‘level 50 paladin’ or a ‘level 28 dark knight’. I will be my character, as I want to make them. The only way to get better at doing something is by actually doing it. If you can’t tame a horse yet, find something that’s a little bit smaller and start there. Want to harvest more stone per swing of the pick? Well, go out and harvest stone, you’ll get better.
The game does limit you on what you can do. To help ensure some division of character types, you are given a set amount of ‘skill points’ the more you do something, the higher your skill, but the fewer left-over skill points you’ll have for other things. One character won’t be able to do everything of course. You’ll have your fighters, harvesters, crafters, and so on, but the shining part is that you don’t have to necessarily decide that at character creation. You do get to pick your heritage which effects your core stats like strength and intelligence, so if you want to be a mage, it’s probably better to start out with a high intelligence than strength, but that’s about all you have to decide from the beginning.
The other nice thing is that you can actually ‘move’ skill points from one ability to another. You still have to do the thing you want to get good at, but it takes the skill points from the skill you choose and puts them into the skill you want to learn. So you’re not completely boxed in once you’ve started down a path that you may not like.
Ok. That’s all I’m going to say on Mortal for now. I’m off to do other stuff. I will try to post periodic updates on the game and let you all know what I think.