What is Mortal Online? Mortal Online is a niche, first person, player controlled, “sandbox” MMORPG, for mature audiences on PC, inspired by Ultima Online. Mortal Online features a free world with minimum rules where players can choose their own paths and destinies. If you’re interested in a game with all PVP, no levels, no experience points, no quests, no 3rd person view, no global chat, no minimap, no instances and no dragons that drop swords; keep reading.

What DOES it have then?

There will be 9 playable races, and not your typical elf, dwarf, and human.

 Half Orc: “Thieves, traitors, beasts. The fear of the half orcs has brought them many undesirable names. As sons and daughters of the unspeakable crimes committed in the wake of a war, the half orcs’ life stories are often stained by tragedies. The majority of the half orcs are doomed to roam aimlessly in a world where the full blood orcs look upon them as weaklings and the civilized world despise them as witless barbarians and fear their orcish heritage. However, few surpass them in strength and stamina, on the battlefield or in the arena, and the non-human heritage in their blood and mind make even veteran soldiers cautious.”

Tindremenes: “The Tindremenes are renowned for their history as conquerors. Before the Conflux the Tindremic Empire dominated large parts of the known world, with outposts in each and every corner of the realm. Those days of glory are over, but the Tindremenes still regard themselves as the finest and most advanced civilization in the world.”

  Khurite: “Life on the Myrland steppe also affects its human children, the Khurites. The Khurites are among the best riders in the world, and the horse and mammoth play important roles in their culture and society. The Khurites don’t regard themselves as one people instead the difference between the various tribes and one’s ancestry is important. They all live on or in connection to the steppe, however the steppe has no set of firm borders.”

Details have yet to be revealed on races:

Veela
Sidoian
Kallard
Sheevra
Sarducaan
Blainn

The Mortal Online world, Nave, will start out as a barren land. It will populate over time as players build houses, which will grow into communities and villages. Housing evolves with the game, too. Players can turn them into shops by adding a vendor, guild housing, and space permitting; a castle.

Skills will be of utmost importance to Mortal Online characters. In Mortal Online, skills are what define a character, not classes or levels. This allows for complete customization of every character. Players will not start out with specific classes, but may choose presets to help become them. Classes are more like professions, careers or pursuits. These “classes” are managed by special NPC Guilds where players will have to apply and get accepted to obtain a “Class-title”. If players choose a class they will be subject to its prerequisites of skills, attributes and sometimes things like reputation, social status, or wealth. Players that do choose a class will gain class-bonuses as long as they stay true to the class, but lose the fully customized aspect of their character.

A character will have different types of attributes:
Basic Attributes are mostly permanent characteristics such as name, sex, race.
Primary Attributes are core attributes such as strength, dexterity, intelligence, etc. These are the starting point for building skills. Primary attribute points are capped, and do not have to be balanced. One can decrease stats in one attribute to boost another.
Secondary Attributes are attributes calculated from other attributes like Health, Mana, Stamina, etc. Skills can also affect these secondary attributes.

There are Primary and Secondary skills. Primary skills include basic skills and have caps like attributes. Primary skills will not take a long time to master (about a week for most players). Secondary skills are often dependent on primary skills, or other secondary skills. One is not forced to train from an NPC to learn skills.  Secondary skills are discovered and learned from books, tutoring, and sometimes by magic or achievements. Skills are either action skills, learning skills or Deva skills.

Deva is a “shared soul” in the game. This allows players to create more than one character, and each character will grow in power as the Deva does.

Solo activities include gathering, refining, crafting and building. Any weapon will be able to be made and weapon crafting has over 142 million possible combinations of grips, handles, blades, heads and materials (not counting bows or shields). Armor crafting has even more options.

One must actively hunt animals as they tend to flee, and at the same time be cautious of hitting other players in the vicinity. Animals do not drop gold or items, but their value is in the meat, skin, teeth/beak and bone, for those with the skills to process them. Many creatures will act in groups and use different tactics for fighting and fleeing.

NPC vendors will sell basic items and very few creatures will drop crafted items. The crafting economy is player-driven and trade will be highly important to the game. Specializing in crafting and other skills also lets players see greater information on certain items. A player trained in botany would see a common “red flower” with its real name and its properties.

Gameplay and Combat

The world is map-less, and there are no quests. There will be events, special places, artifacts, rare creatures and beings that can be discovered. Gameplay is in first person view only. This allows players to steal, sneak and ambush other players. It also allows players to be their character, instead of directing a little person on their screen. The game is built around the view, from aiming in combat, first-person footsteps synched to movement, double-vision when one is exhausted, and blood and sweat in the characters eyes. Players may even get tunnel vision from traveling at high speeds. Because of the first person view and the ability to attack anyone, tactical maneuvers and training in groups becomes highly recommended to avoid friendly fire.

Combat is initiated by drawing a weapon and entering combat mode. One assumes a combat stance in combat mode where characters will be slightly more protected, but at the cost of movement speed and stamina drain when moving quickly. Mounted combat works the same as on-foot combat. Mounts can be trained, equipped, hurt, killed and even stolen. (No pocket mounts in this game)

There is no targeting system in Mortal Online; combat is aim-based. Each character has “hit boxes” for the different parts of their bodies. Hit boxes allow for more intelligent combat. Each hit box has its own armor part. There is no generic defense or armor class value. For example, if one’s opponent lacks protection on their left arm it may be a good area to aim for. Likewise, you may choose to use more flexible armor on your right arm to increase the speed of your strikes, but at the cost of protection. Hit boxes also allow for more true to life damage. Strikes to an opponents head have a chance of doing more damage; strikes to an opponents arm give a chance to disarm them. Weapons and shields have their own hit boxes, allowing players to aim weapons and shields against enemy blows. Characters have general collision as well allowing them to block their opponent’s path and push them. The first person point of view also allows players to take advantage of the environment.

Archery uses trajectories, making it possible to shoot over walls, or even straight up in the air (with the risk of hitting yourself). Aiming for spells is dependent on the type of spell. Some have straight lines and use trajectory, some have a cone or sphere affect area, others are projected and even some are homing.

The game uses full loot. If a player dies, all of their items and equipment are up for grabs. Fighting can happen anywhere, anytime to anyone, but with consequences. The game utilizes a flagging system which keeps track of people’s actions and sets the “flag” accordingly. If one steals from or kills someone that’s innocent, they will be flagged as a criminal or murderer. Guards in guard zones will attack with people flagged as such, and some NPCs may not interact with people who have been negatively flagged. Guilds that are at war with one another will not be affected by the flagging system when fighting each other.

Guilds can be formed when a player owns a large enough house or building and acquires and activates a Guild Stone. These act as a central point for the guild where players are accepted, promoted and titled. War is declared with the guild stone, and guild stones may also be upgraded with abilities. Many attributes of guilds will not be included in the launch.

Mortal Online is currently in the beta testing stage with 10,000 accounts and has an estimated release of Q4 2009 (Oct-Dec). It is currently rated M (18+). Pre-order for digital download only is 39.95 EUR which includes access to Beta, free future digital updates and expansions, and one month’s game time. The boxed version at 54.95 EUR contains a hard copy of the game in an embossed metal box, all pre-launch updates freely shipped on DVD, digital download, free access to the Beta, free future digital updates and expansions, one month’s game time and free shipping. Monthly subscriptions (which are subject to change) will cost 14.25 EUR and $14.25 for everybody else. The beta server is located in Stockholm, Sweden which is accessible from all countries. Additional game servers in other countries are being considered for the near future.

Visit http://www.mortalonline.com/files/presentation/MortalOnlinePresentation.rar  for a game overview.

Estimated system requirements include:

Minimum configuration (1024×768, detail reduced)

OS: Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista
Processor: Intel Pentium 4 3Ghz or equivalent
RAM: 1GB
Video card: ATI Radeon 9800/nVidia GeForce 6600
Video memory 256MB
Hard drive space: 5-25GB

Recommended configuration (1680×1050)

OS: Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista Service Pack 1
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz or equivalent
RAM: 2048MB Dual Channel DDR2
Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT or equivalent
Video memory: 512MB
Hard drive space: 30GB