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