Right now its still off to a pretty rocky start. I havent decided if I'm going to renew after the prepaid month. Leaning toward "no."
The gameplay is kinda fun. The crafting system is great. There just isn't anything to DO really... They added a kind of artificial grind at the start just to get books to get useful skills, which means you have to kill lots of monsters to get money for said books. It's kinda grindy when the game before they changed that wasn't that way.
The real problem I have with this is on day 1 all the books costed 10 silver, and now they all cost WAY more, some being as much as 10000 silver - and a lot of folks who got in early wound up buying these books at 10 silver (some even apparently had knowledge of the change and bought a bunch of the real pricey ones, I've seen people selling them for half the price the npcs charge since they stocked them up early on). It basically gave those people a free pass while everyone else has a month of mind numbing grind to get these books.
Then we come to the area of what you actually fight to get money...
Pigs (domestic), Rabbits, Weasels - all newbie stuff that very weak players can kill. Cheap loot.
Gazelles (called Springboks) and spiders - slightly better, still cheap loot. Spiders are pretty decent.
Buffalo (called Wisents) - little bit harder, way way way better loot
Wolves, Bears, Cougars, Dire Wolves, Razorbacks (big wild boar) - Much tougher than the buffalo, absolutely shit loot that isn't worth a damn. Loot on these used to be worth a lot, now its nerfed to the point of being worthless for no apparent reason.
Then theres some exotic animals in the jungle place that drop some special crafting body parts that people gather. They don't sell for much, but their teeth (Incisium) makes omgwtfsuperarmor thats almost as good as metal but way way way lighter and everyone with any sense wants to wear it. It also makes decent weapons (Apparently these magic teeth can be melted down and molded into platemail and greatswords). Some of these are super weak (lizards), while others are a bit stronger (lizard men, turtles, terror birds aka jungle ostriches).
And then the top tier are Risars (Orcs) which drop extracted metal and rare minerals (which kinda devalues the whole extractor profession, since its 100x easier to get this stuff just killing orcs - what are they doing carrying around rocks and metal ingots anyway?). Theres also apparently a risar dungeon with a guy that drops refined steel ingots (which normally takes a whole lot of time to make, but hey why beat on rocks for hours when you can mine orcs and skip the whole extractor and refiner professions?).
So basically there are three things to do if you want a decent benefit from it. Hunt weak ass buffalo for gold (something any newbie can do after minimal char building), hunt the lizards and turtles and crap for the superomgarmorteeth, or hunt orcs for lots of metal. That about makes up the entire PvE experience in MO. Oh, and lets not forget that most of the npcs are so bugged that you can just sit back and plonk arrows into them till they die. Woo.
Then theres the pvp side. The orc camps are few enough that you're pretty much guaranteed some pvp to hunt them. The actual pvp experience isn't that grand though in my opinion. The magic is a bit overpowered - you can ride a horse straight ahead while precasting, stop for half a sec and hit. A good mage can kite you easy without any pesky targeting problems, since they are trivial to hit with (just have to be looking at your target, no projectile). Bows are pretty good - you have to aim them (although its a bit simplified, since you don't have to lead targets - it just hits where you aim at the second you release the shot, just have to take the bow's arc into account) and the damage is a bit weak vs armor, but they are great for dehorsing people (fairly ok counter to a mage kiting you). Melee is just run up and swing away, no special moves whatsoever. Some skill is involved with trying to strafe and dodge people, but it usually just ends up being two people stabbing eachother in the face with a fast short range weapon like a thrusting blade or short spear since the other weapons are buggy ever since patch before last when they somehow screwed them up and never undid it (they "stick" and never fully swing right unless you hold down the mouse button and prep the swing for several seconds, eating stamina all the way). Or 2v1 with 1 guy repeatedly knocking the guy down with his horse (ride up and knockdown, lasts a few seconds, do it again, repeat 3 or 4 times) while the other stabs him in the face. Bandages don't work at all, although im not sure if thats good or bad since its kind of nice to not have people healing up quickly.
Theres a really annoying trade window bug where you can take the money or items out of the trade after either party has clicked to accept it, and scammers are making full use of it to steal all sorts of things (trying to sell weapons is a bit tough when the other party is like "Click accept first! I don't wanna be scammed again!" and you're like "No, you click accept first, *I* don't wanna be scammed again!"). Even though this is exploiting a known glitch, the gms don't do anything about it. People can also block bank doors using some kind of exploit that makes them unpushable (can't push em out of the way) with no way for players to do anything about it (trapping people inside and outside unable to access the bank), which is just poor design. In this case the gms move them away and give them a line about not doing it again, which means they'll stop for a few hours and do it again when the gm is offline (which means the US prime time in most cases, although they might have one on if you're lucky). You also get stuck just about anywhere - fall through the floor of the bank, fall through the floor of a platform above the ground, fall through a big stairway going up and die because its off the ground. All of these cases means you have to call a GM (which often means a 2+ hour response time if the times I've been stuck are an example, if you're even lucky enough for a GM to be on at all to fix you).
On the plus side, they finally got looting players to work (Yep, they launched a full loot game with loot bugged where you couldn't actually loot anything, even dieing yourself meant you lost your loot even if you could get back to the corpse). They also got the server crashing down to about once every two hours or so, whereas it was about twice an hour on some days. They also got it rebooting most of the times when it crashes, which will hopefully mean they won't have any more 6 hour downtimes during prime north american play time.
Wow, this turned into a long post quick. Anyway, long story short: It has potential and I would kinda hate to see another game like this fail (I really like these full loot pvp games), but right now I would steer clear until they get this stuff sorted. I'm already regretting my preorder. Well, technically my friend is regretting his gifting the preorder, since he too sees how crappy it is lol.
Speaking of preorder, I just have to say it... I got the boxed edition. They shipped it to me months before the game was released. It contained a CD with an old beta client with absolutely no use (didn't even install correctly, actually installing it bugged you where you had to completely uninstall and I think even edit a registry to undo it and get the regular game installed) and no documentation whatsoever. Not even a little card with the standard controls. WTF is the point of buying a boxed edition if you have to download the 10 gig game anyway? I am on a wireless connection, I got the boxed edition so I could INSTALL IT FROM A DISK. I did not want to spend a week downloading the damned thing. Patches after the disk is shipped? OK, but at least give me the majority of the game on a disk that actually serves a function. I had to download the whole client and then a bunch of patches that were out before the beta was even over. Plus, not that it really matters, but they described it as an "embossed metal box" when it actually was a plastic low quality disk case with a flat (not embossed) bit of tin wrapped around it with the mortal online logo printed on it (which has started to rub off after using it as a coaster, lol) that was too bent up to actually stay closed and kept popping open. Anyway, /rant.
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Topic: Mortal online (Read 8282 times)