Mortal Online Preview
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.