Mortal Online presentation puts all you want to know in one place

by William Dobson May 11th 2009 at 3:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, New titles, Mortal Online

The Mortal Online team decided to create a PowerPoint presentation (available here -- the .rar file is 100mbs and includes some videos) to explain to the world what their game is. As it turns out, the presentation begins with a list of what their game isn't. The short version is that they're trying to make a very different MMO experience. Of course, if you've been following the game you're well aware of that fact, and it's probably what has you interested. The PowerPoint serves its purpose of bringing all the information together in one place, but if you can't be bothered downloading it and want a quick way to learn what's up with Mortal Online, we've summarized the biggest points from the presentation after the jump.

As an introduction, here is what the Mortal Online team says their game is not: "There are no levels, no experience points, no starting classes, no quests, no 3rd person view, no NPCs with big exclamation marks over their heads, no global chat channels, no flashing numbers when you hit something, no respawning bosses, no instances, no pocketable mounts, no virtual restrictions for where you can go or not, no auto-loot, no predestined player path where it turns out you're The Chosen One, no automated auction house, no auto-respawn, no NPCs you "can't attack", no bears that drop gold coins or dragons that drop swords, and no loot bags impossible for other players to open." I think they've made their point.
The combat features no targeting and requires you to aim your melee slashes, ranged projectiles and shield blocks manually. Enemies have hitboxes over different parts of their bodies, and attacking certain areas can have an additional effect (e.g. hitting an arm might make them drop their weapon). The view is first-person.
Full loot PvP. If you kill someone you can take all their stuff. If you steal, or kill a player that is flagged as innocent (an idea that is not elaborated on in the presentation) you may be flagged as a murderer and hunted by city guards.
Although there's no leveling, skills can be improved through repeated use. However, skills that are used in PvP have a cap on them so that it is mostly about skill and not playing time.
There are primary skills, like Swordmanship, and secondary skills which are a subset of the primaries. Only primary skills will have much of an impact on PvP.
Every item in the game can be crafted. If you find an item, you can "reverse-engineer" it to work out how it would be crafted, and then do so.
Player Housing will be similar to Star Wars Galaxies, in that the world is empty to begin with and will fill with houses as people create them. In other words, a building is unique, and is only there because someone built it; they are not reusable instance portals that any number of people use as their home.
You can mix your race within your species. For example, just as people in our world could have a Chinese father and a German mother, your Mortal Online character can combine any two races and these choices will affect appearance as well as attributes.
Mounts can not simply be unsummoned. They can wander off or be stolen if you don't watch them, and they can also be used in combat.
Seamless continents with no zoning. Navigation won't be easy at first, as there is no radar and mapmaking is actually a craft to be mastered.
Bosses won't respawn, and members of the Mortal Online team can assume the role of any important NPC to provide unique events.

We'd love to find that Mortal Online launches with all of these things working as intended, but even the PowerPoint presentation has a "Big Fat Disclaimer" right at the start that says that there will probably be things left out at first and implemented later. At the very least, this is an interesting set of features and an ambitious design that we hope translates to a solid game in the future.

[Via Keen and Graev's Gaming Blog]

Tags: first-person, full-loot-pvp, mortal-online, player-housing, player-versus-player, pvp

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

CaesarsGhost said on 3:15PM 5-11-2009

What if there's little to no PvE game? like Darkfall?

mikejl said on 3:28PM 5-11-2009

Yea. If this they put out a PvE server I'm in.

freakinsyco said on 3:31PM 5-11-2009

Sweet. So its like Eve Online without the space part. I'm down for it. I hope they even do perma-death.

OrganiClockwork said on 3:45PM 5-11-2009

They won't do permadeath.

But death will carry heavy penalties, I'm sure.

bartillo said on 3:47PM 5-11-2009

will be no pve server but there will be pve..
there will be epic one time bosses that when they die there good for good and will change the world and there will be plenty of extremely intelligent AI to deal with that can pick you up and throw you.
only one server type. and thats full loot PVP.

watch the powerpoint.

bartillo said on 3:50PM 5-11-2009

thats gone for good*
this game will also have the most indepth crafting system ever created.
and
and plenty of non instinced dungeons. no instinces in the entire game.
All housing is free placed in the world as well as guild keeps.. guilds can build cities.
Also theres no global chat all trading and group finding must be done in person. You are forced to interact.
Which is amazing.. chat channels ruin games.

Lemmo said on 4:14PM 5-11-2009

You can't force players to be limited like that, however, it just won't fly. The thing is, we're all on the internet, and all it takes is a group of fed-up players to build a chat program that works in tandem with the game.

I already see it. In a year's time after this game's release, a starting player won't just download the client, they'll download the client and the handful of user wrapper/add-on programs that add in those lost functions.

Lemmo said on 4:14PM 5-11-2009

I predict a 3rd party GPS and a 3rd party global chat within the first year.

bartillo said on 5:18PM 5-11-2009

they are not going to allow anyone to use macros or 3rd party programs.
esspecially not a GPS.
there will not be any minimap ever in MO and you must have a cartopgrapher craft you a map he drew and a compass he made not a 3rd party add on.

Firebreak said on 6:42PM 5-11-2009

The way I saw it is there is chat channels but you don't automatically join any so if someone wanted to create a "general" channel then they could but no one would nesscarily be in there.

bartillo said on 6:16PM 5-11-2009

Wrong sir. the devs have said plenty of times there will be..

Say
Whisper (only people near you and can be overheard)
guild
Pigeons (long distance tells that are delayed)

Firebreak said on 6:42PM 5-11-2009

While I support their efforts I think that might be a little extreme. I mean people run IRC and other chat services on games that have fully functioning chats I imagine the same will be done here maybe only more widespread.

inferno3387 said on 3:50PM 5-11-2009

Powerpoint Compilation

http://www.mortalonline.com/forums/10622-powerpoint-compilation-5-8-09-update.html

bartillo said on 3:52PM 5-11-2009

ya when you die you lose everything and other players can loot you.

Alex said on 5:57PM 5-11-2009

How many game creators will not learn about PvP? Few PvP games make it in the subscription arena. Even the big boys have smaller PvP subscriber numbers than PvE or RvR. As long as griefers are drawn to PvP, I have no desire to even sample something like this, no matter how interesting it sounds... and frankly, it completely lost me at the lootable corpse comment. Why bother trying for better weapons and armor if you know at some point you will lose your gear? Why try to achieve anything if it all boils down to an FPS game. I think I would rather just jump in for a quick match of Battlefield or Savage. Lots cheaper and no bond to my toon.

bartillo said on 6:23PM 5-11-2009

You dont understand there is risk. this isnt a gear centric crap game like WoW where you raid all day to get the best gear is disposable hear thats why there is so many types a battle of a few hundred vs a few hundred everyone could have completely differnt armor and weapons but its all about player skill. Now they will have armor better then others such as a dragon scale from one of the few dragons that once killed cant respawn which will be a bit better then maybe chain mail.

but still everythings risk vs reward. I dont see why you guys dont want to socialize and role play.
this game is not just a pvp game.. its a RP game.
you have to talk to people in taverns and deal with guild politics and build houses and craft and tame animals.

The Claw said on 8:00PM 5-11-2009

"Why bother trying for better weapons and armor if you know at some point you will lose your gear?"

I don't know, maybe you should ask an EVE player? Shouldn't be too hard to find one, given that that game's subscriber base has been growing steadily for the last five years.

I know we've all been conditioned to believe that "you are your gear" in CRPGs and MMORPGs, but is it so impossible to take a step back and consider your character being defined by your skills rather than your sword?

Slogo said on 4:28PM 5-11-2009

A nice list of stuff but the "Some skills won't affect PvP" thing is kinda worrisome. I value player skill > time invested for MMOs but I hate seeing skills or special rules for PvP instead of PvE.

Also any word on if this MMO is going to be sharded or 1-server?

twolfer said on 4:46PM 5-11-2009

Darkfall promised alot of this and failed to deliver on most of it...

and if they actually got it in game, the execution was an epic failure.

Heres to Mortal getting it right, and learning from darkfall's mistakes.

Zensun said on 4:49PM 5-11-2009

They had me on the first bullet point.

Here's hoping their community is more mature than Darkfall, which is the main reason I'm looking forward to a replacement.

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