Curious about Mortal Online? Ask the developers your questions
by Shawn Schuster 
Dec 1st 2009 at 11:00AM
Filed under: Betas, Fantasy, Interviews, MMO industry, New titles, Mortal Online, Community Q&A
With Mortal Online's NDA lift last week, we figured this would be the best time to interview the development team before the game aims for an official launch. Following our recent tradition of gathering questions straight from the Massively readers, we want your questions! Email your Mortal Online questions to shawn AT massively DOT com before Thursday, December 3rd at 8am EST, and we'll gather up the ten best for Star Vault. Once they're answered, we'll post the complete Q&A here on the site.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Brian! said on 1:34PM 12-01-2009
Question sent! But I wanted to also ask the rest of the Massively community it too.
What I love about sandbox MMOs is that we can do so much. I love what Ultima Online tried to do. Even the PKers (player killers for you who were not around then) would gank people at the crossroads - but it was almost bearable.
In the end, people tried to band together and form player police, but not enough people could be on all the time. And besides, even when the police got the best of the few gankers, the gankers just came back.
And there is my question - How, in an open MMO world, can we implement tools to actually enforce moral justice?
Can a collection of players who form a town (some rules on what makes up a town) jail or banish a player who has caused greif to others for a set time and still make the game fun for both the townsfolk and the prisoner?
Is there a system that we can come up with that avoids rampant abuse of the power of jailing? After all, you also don't want a town run by people who jail everyone who walks by either.
I have my ideas, but I am curious to what other people think of as tools to balance Open- PvP with cause-effect systems to encourage morality.
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Yoh said on 4:50PM 12-01-2009
Well, I'll tell you what I know.
First, while I dislike it, there is the stat-loss system, which takes about 10% out of a gankers backside, so that helps as a deterrent
When near towns, the guard put you under there protection and will attack flagged individuals on sight, and can be called into action.
I don't know how useful this is tbh.
But most importantly, death is a bitch. Seriously, MO has one of the roughest death setups you can get in a game.
Not only do you lose all your stuff, but you don't respawn either.
Well, not immediately anyways.
When you die, you go into a ghost like state, right where you died.
Etherworld I think it's called.
And to respawn, someone either needs to rez you, which has a penalty if you rez a murderer. Or you need to find a priest to rez you.
Which is very difficult at the best of times. You may very well lose some priests being willing to rez you if your an asshat.
And they seem to be located around towns, which are death for a murderer.
But apparently, later there will also be nasty dangers while in the etherworld.
Which may in fact kill you again, or other nasty things. So it pays not to stay there very long.
And lastly, apparently there will be some sort of jail system, where as the NPC guards can throw you into if they catch you. Or something.
So, to me at least, this sounds like a fairly decent means of keeping ganking to a minimum.
That answer your question?
~Yoh
dantevengence said on 4:54PM 12-01-2009
If you want to talk to some of the devs/mods you should just jump into the Mortal Online Public Ventrilo here:
Hostname: vent.myrmidonguild.com
Port: 4339
Here is the thread stickied in the Community Discussion section of the forum discussing the public ventrilo:
http://www.mortalonline.com/forums/24284-public-ventrilo.html
Hope to talk to ya on vent! =)
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crisis1717 said on 4:36AM 12-02-2009
After hearing about Mortal Online I checked it out on Youtube and dug up some past articles on it, and I must say from what I've seen it has potential.
The only problems I have with it is that even though it's a looks great and it sounds interesting game, from my impression gained from what I know and the features talked about it really sounds like there could be a lack of things to do. Obviously there is the crafting, pvping and exploring but if that's it there's only so long it will hold everyones attention. It's not like Oblivion in the sense that even on those long treks you discovered things and events happened like bandit attacks.
Another problem is realism. I just watched a video on crafting and I thought it was horrific. You use you pickaxe (in this video it was an axe) and start hacking at the ground repeatedly, busting rocks until you get your resources. Honestly with the first person view it looked like a prisoner community service sim.
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Alz said on 10:59PM 12-01-2009
Is there a system in place to stop murderers from scouting areas with a naked "blue" (innocent) character? A lot of PKs in UO would place a character or at least their ghost in areas that were prime for finding someone to PK. Often in dungeons where targets would be wearing decent gear to fight monsters. The PKer could use the other character to find when targets are around and decide whether he can take them alone or with his friends all without any risk while scouting on that character.
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Yoh said on 12:43AM 12-02-2009
Idk, maybe when there are more monsters and hazards, maybe then.
But the it is also a first person game, giving a rather limited view. Esp when dead, as you can't see shit.
And if their afk, people can just steal their stuff, if they have anything.
Oh yeah, and if you and your guild own the land, they will be flagged as a trespasser and can be killed on sight. So I think you have options.
~Yoh