All I see about MO is bad press, be it from news sites or players. 

What makes it so bad?

So many things to pick from. Let's see - 2,000 players total or less (and it's losing subscriptions). PvP 'skill' is less important than knowing which exploits to exploit to win. A variety of bugs that have never been fixed or acknowledged, including getting stuck in walls, invisible (and untouchable) enemies, giant mounts and so on.

That's all I can think of right now.

No, the game is not as bad as many on this forum would have you believe. It is a fun sandbox game with a lot of potential to grow and improve. I have personally had a great time playing it in the past.

The problem with the game is that it has a very small and inexperience staff developing it. These guys have the best of intentions, but they have a very hard time implementing new features and fixing bugs without breaking other things. The server is frequently down and many times bugs will remain present in the game for way longer than they should. Still, despite these problems, Mortal Online is a fun game and I hope that it will stay alive and continue to develop.

If you are a fan of sandbox games and haven't tried it, I suggest you give the free trial a shot. Just make sure to start in Meduli or Fabernum and make sure to read the tutorials! The game has a bit of a learning curve...

Might try the trial, downloading DCUO & Lineage 2 atm though

I had a subscription for 7 months and loved it. The realism is awesome. Cancelled my sub due to Starvault not fixing exploitable mechanics of the game (campfire jumping into palisades and then enemies log out inside your palisades to set up balista internally specifically).

I enjoyed it for 7 months and my purchase and subscription for that period of time was well worth it, although I wont play again until they fix alot of things and comparibly Starvault is slow and take a long time to fix things(even compared to other indie sandbox devs).

Originally posted by xDayx

I had a subscription for 7 months and loved it. The realism is awesome. Cancelled my sub due to Starvault not fixing exploitable mechanics of the game (campfire jumping into palisades and then enemies log out inside your palisades to set up balista internally specifically).

I enjoyed it for 7 months and my purchase and subscription for that period of time was well worth it, although I wont play again until they fix alot of things and comparibly Starvault is slow and take a long time to fix things(even compared to other indie sandbox devs).

They have fixed the campfire jumping as of the latest patch. And MO puts patches up in lightning speed compared to Aventure for example. But sure not as fast as big companies and their MMOs. I´m a fan of sandbox games and have enjoyed both MO and Earthrise. Have taken a brake from ER til they get their shit together, and since there is only one active guild there, that are the lamest bunch ever, and our guild didn´t wanna have to fight them only. Hopefully it will pick up as it goes F2P as of next year. MO took 2 steps forward and 1 step back this time. Compared to mostly doing 1 step forward and 2 steps back. The territorial conflict has brought back alot of people. Many prolly trying the 5 days free they got. But i think alot of them will stay. That is at least the feeling I get from reading the forum and talking to peeps ingame. Well worth a download and a test for the free trial. Just be ready for the hard learning curve. ;)

To the OP's question... is the game that bad? Well, let's just put down FACTS and you can extrapolate whether it's good or not.

 -The game is made by people who have no experience programming ANYTHING. Their "lead programmer" has never shipped a single PROGRAM in his life, nevermind a full featured MMO. The CEO has not done anything professionally in this space either.

 -The game is almost wholly funded by the CEO's dad. Verified by ex SV employees, as well.

- The CEO used to spam for poker sites.

- The company entered all users into a subscription WITHOUT their consent, many of them being billed for months without their knowledge, and there were no receipts of these transactions mailed to users either.

- The company has double, triple, and even quadrouple billed people.

- The "capital" city of the game, in which every poster, marketing materials, etc -- Tindrem -- is not even in the game in a functional state. It's like playing WOW without Ogrimarr, or UO without Britain.

- SV was unable to create a working patcher for the game, and it functioned so poorly that a VOLUNTEER from the community stepped up to make one for them. He's now working for them, but the patcher still works poorly, especially for new users.

That's just a taste. There are countless other things, but these are black and white facts. Now you tell me, from this information alone, what do you think ?

Originally posted by HerculesSAS

To the OP's question... is the game that bad? Well, let's just put down FACTS and you can extrapolate whether it's good or not.

 

 -The game is made by people who have no experience programming ANYTHING. Their "lead programmer" has never shipped a single PROGRAM in his life, nevermind a full featured MMO. The CEO has not done anything professionally in this space either.

its SV's first game, pretty muh they had no other coding experience until they made mo and worked on it for a number of years beofre launch.

 -The game is almost wholly funded by the CEO's dad. Verified by ex SV employees, as well.

From most palyers understanding this is true.

- The CEO used to spam for poker sites.

This is likely not ture, since nobody i know of has heard of it, also his dad is rich and hes a male model i doubt he would need the money but ya never know.

- The company entered all users into a subscription WITHOUT their consent, many of them being billed for months without their knowledge, and there were no receipts of these transactions mailed to users either.

Personally i think its wrong of them to of done this, but emails were sent beofre the free month started stating their subscriptions would need to be cancelled. So players werent kept compeltely in the dark.

- The company has double, triple, and even quadrouple billed people.

Some people were double billed and refunded, emails were sent to all subscriped players to check there accounts, i recieved 2 emails for 2 payments but i only payed one when i looked into it. Never heard of quadrouple or triple billing.

- The "capital" city of the game, in which every poster, marketing materials, etc -- Tindrem -- is not even in the game in a functional state. It's like playing WOW without Ogrimarr, or UO without Britain.

Tindrem isnt in the game, its the only feature stated to be in for release which didnt make it and the community agree it isnt a priority since they are willing to wait on it until the city offers something different compared to the current cities.

- SV was unable to create a working patcher for the game, and it functioned so poorly that a VOLUNTEER from the community stepped up to make one for them. He's now working for them, but the patcher still works poorly, especially for new users.

Patcher works perfectly fine, at least it has for me. Not always the case early on but certainly is now.

 

That's just a taste. There are countless other things, but these are black and white facts. Now you tell me, from this information alone, what do you think ?

 Hercules is right that the devs have made some poor decisions and their own coding experience is lacking, but despite all this somehow they managed to make a very original and refreshing mmo that its current community find enjoyable, even those that dislike it were affected on such a level they still make regular posts about it on a daily basis. MO is unforgettable if you enjoy it or not. It all depends on who you listen to and those who dislike the game but have something to say about it post here mainly because they are banned on the offical forum.

The major problem with MO is that every time you forgive them for something awful that happened either due to the terrible coding that allowed multiple exploits in the past, or by the GM team favoring some guild by some dubious decision, something new always comes along that put the bar even higher in the list of reasons why you shouldn't pay to play the game.

The 16 hours downtime in primetime us weekend playtime this weekend is a good example, yet anothe duping bug that totaly ruin the economy was made public, and there's not a word from the official to let us know if anyone even got banned from it.

The statement "Mortal Online is full of potential" has been something said since beta. Yes it has potential but will it ever reach or even come close to its potential? Probably not.

This is a game I've played for a very long time, since beta and have only recently stopped playing. No offense to Hercules or slapshot but I think at this point people are going to stop listening to your opinions because at this point you guys come off as trolls rather than trying to give real input. I'm not saying that the things you guys say is incorrect, but when you look through this mortal online forum it's full of slapshot and hercules bashing the game. How can anyone take anything you guys say serious when it's mostly you two spamming the forum? Again I'm not saying this to start any drama or crap, I'm just pointing out that some are not even going to listen to you guys because of the above stated.

As for the state of the game.

Is it really as bad as many are saying? It depends on how you look at things. If you are looking for a professionally made MMO with a good staff then yes this game is bad. If you are looking for a game where the developers get things done within a 3-6 month period (bugs, exploitation fixes, basic MMO features) then yes this game is as bad as people say. If you are looking for an immersive MMO sandbox where you can go out and hunt things and actually enjoy exploring then again yes this game is bad. It will be fun for the first couple weeks but then you will find out you are wasting your time.

This game does have potential though, if you can look past the many troubles this game has then maybe you'll enjoy it. I enjoyed the game for over year but that came with many frustrations and dealing with lots of lost time because sometimes it takes 2 hours just to find a fight and if you're lucky you wont be ganked. :)

Some above poster said something along the lines of PvPing not being skillbased but knowing what exploits to use. This is totally incorrect, there is some skill in pvp. Not lots, some... They took much of the skill out of pvp. No I didn't say that pvp is totally skill less. It takes some skill, but occasionally you'll find that a noob may be able to bring you down one day. :)

This game is not for the solo player! If you're looking to get into this game and play solo then just pass on it now, save yourself the time and frustration. if you can't handle a rough start (being PKed, losing gear that took 3 hours for you to get the moment you leave town) then just give up. You'll end up quitting anyways.

If you decide to play the game then good luck to ya.

Originally posted by Lashley

All I see about MO is bad press, be it from news sites or players. 

 

What makes it so bad?

* A small, inexperienced team without funds. They've made tons of newbie mistakes when it comes to providing a professional product. In fact the game resembles a student project - but they charge people as if they were an AAA company.

* Worst development priorities I've ever seen. The code is an obvious mess, but SV keep adding stuff on top of an already broken foundation instead of fixing the core issues. Many systems, including magic, the GUI and the AI, are placeholders or half-finished. Yet SV decides it's a good idea to implement more stuff like genes for mounts and territory control.

* An inability to design what makes fun games fun: simple, yet deep systems. Instead SV seem to focus on implementing complicated, yet shallow systems. Almost everything non-combat related, like crafting, fishing, cooking, refining, and so on are overly detailed and potentially very deep. However, in reality it all boils to a boring grind, clicking and dragging the same icons over and over, and staring at the screen waiting for timers to count down. 95% of the countless mat/recipe combinations are useless, 95 % of the time spent on refining materials consist in passively looking at an extractor or a butcher bench.

* Rampant exploiting, cheating and hacking, combined with shitty customer support. Many GMs are corrupt, or at least behave as if they were, and some of the most glaring and well-known exploits are usually met with the response "we are aware of it but we can't do anything about it". Forum censoring and banning have been extreme the last 6 months. Dev communication swings between manic hype-machine and dead silence.

Wall of text ahead, spare a moment to read.

Originally posted by deathshroud

 

  It all depends on who you listen to and those who dislike the game but have something to say about it post here mainly because they are banned on the offical forum.

Thats a page right out of SV's propaganda book. If anyone got anything negative to say about MO then its not because the game has issues but because the person got issues.

But that comment does make me wonder WHY are these haters banned on the forum?

Is it because they are all hackers and the game is that easy to hack?

Or is it because the game is so frustratingly broken that it makes players voice their concern on the forums which is a strict no-no lethal offence, so the mods ban them for asking bout why is MO broken?

Or maybe its because someone mistakenly asked out about an incident concerning real life pics on IRC and this being the highest count of mortal offence in mortal online, even fanboys arent spared from the banhammer? (This being the biggest joke on any game forum ever, banning a fanboy due to a silly mistake...it happens only in MO lol).

So player retention isnt MO's strong suit, but why go ban players when the population is struggling to "break even" from the losses the game incurs on a monthly basis? Oh right, banned people can still magically come back in game, even the most hardcore hacker / exploiter will be welcomed back with a red carpet as long as he is playing for (multiple) subscriptions.

Not making this up OP, can link you up with posts and videos from this forum, since obviously the official forums would never have any thread that brings to light anything so shameful up without deleting the thread and banning the user (another reason for banning a player btw, posting anything that brings up SV's black history), where the CEO calls a banned exploiter back as long as no one knows that it is him. That being one of the smallest examples, you can judge for yourself if this game is really that bad.

Originally posted by Energyo

This is a game I've played for a very long time, since beta and have only recently stopped playing. No offense to Hercules or slapshot but I think at this point people are going to stop listening to your opinions because at this point you guys come off as trolls rather than trying to give real input. I'm not saying that the things you guys say is incorrect, but when you look through this mortal online forum it's full of slapshot and hercules bashing the game. How can anyone take anything you guys say serious when it's mostly you two spamming the forum? Again I'm not saying this to start any drama or crap, I'm just pointing out that some are not even going to listen to you guys because of the above stated.

 

No offence, but I call BS on that paragraph since you are basically posting a thinly veiled insult, while actually agreeing with what they have to say. You know, that looks like trolling to me, ie. to incite a heated response while having nothing constructive to add to this thread.

For your information, no new player wanting to check for player output would come here and sift through thousands of posts and see if Hercules or Slapshot posted negative comments bout MO in them just by the few comments they might make in this thread. Unless ofcourse the player has already made up his mind and checks posting histories to make snarky comments about them, in which case your informational paragraph still doesnt affect the outcome of what a new player would do.

Why dont you look at it the other way around? Fanboys have been spamming this forum with half truths and whole lies and with the standard motto "MO IS A GREAT GAME" without the compulsory "BUT it has so many problems that man oh man I cant even to start explaining since Im in hardcore love with this game and cannot take off my rose tinted glasses".

I dont think you stopped to wonder if any player who fell for that "MO IS A GREAT GAME" punchline checked out the game for himself and found it so messed up and that he just HAD to come back and call the fanboys a bunch of liars. But then he would get tagged a hater for having been let down by false claims, by the same people who fed him the bunch of lies. See how that works?

But hey, I'm not saying this to start any drama or crap, I'm just pointing out that some are not even going to listen to you because of the above stated.

In conclusion, try the game out for yourself OP. You may like it for a week or maybe for a month or two and then the reality of how bad this game is might actually sink in, but then again in case you absolutely love this game no matter what then good luck to you and happy gaming.

You're being an idiot. There's plenty of current MO players who will tell you that this game has many faults. I think most will tell you their are major problems with the game.

All you have to do is read the forum for about 5 minutes and you get the feeling that slapshot and other guy are just very angry at the game and are trying to badmouth it as much they can. Some people will view this as them being trolls and will ignore them which is the case for nearly the entire MO community and new players coming in.

You don't need to make the same statements over and over again and make thread after thread bad mouthing the game. You can simple make your statement somewhere and leave it at that. The thread about the Q3 financial information, sure that's good stuff. But within that thread you will find raff, slapshot, and hercules going back and fourth on pretty much how terrible the game is.

slapshot, raff, hercules, as I said before don't take what i'm saying into offense. Moreso wanting to point out how you guys are coming off to other people.

There's a lot of fanboys on the MO forums OP but I believe that overall you'll find a more honest answer if you ask there instead of here. Especially if you ask in the public section where I often see MMORPGers trolling on new forum accounts about how much the game sucks... as long as theyre careful with what they say otherwise their "negative" posts will get removed.  Many of us disagree with how the mods there define "negative" and believe they censor and ban far much more than they should. For example I am perma banned from the forums there and Im one of SVs most loyal supporters. But to be fair this forum is pretty strict as well.

This forum is avoided by most MO players because most of the people who frequent this forum do so purely to bash SV and the game. Im talking people who have not logged in for years. Im pretty sure HerculeSAS was banned from MO back in early beta, around two years ago, and yet he's still here. Im not sure what psychological issue it is but it makes me laugh so whatever

You will not get a fair answer here so gogo ask on the MO forum.

Originally posted by Cyde77

There's a lot of fanboys on the MO forums OP but I believe that overall you'll find a more honest answer if you ask there instead of here. Especially if you ask in the public section where I often see MMORPGers trolling on new forum accounts about how much the game sucks... as long as theyre careful with what they say otherwise their "negative" posts will get removed.  Many of us disagree with how the mods there define "negative" and believe they censor and ban far much more than they should. For example I am perma banned from the forums there and Im one of SVs most loyal supporters. But to be fair this forum is pretty strict as well.

 

This forum is avoided by most MO players because most of the people who frequent this forum do so purely to bash SV and the game. Im talking people who have not logged in for years. Im pretty sure HerculeSAS was banned from MO back in early beta, around two years ago, and yet he's still here. Im not sure what psychological issue it is but it makes me laugh so whatever

You will not get a fair answer here so gogo ask on the MO forum.

How ya doin Cyde? been awhile :)

Anyway exactly what you said is what I'm getting at. It's mostly from the 3 guys I mentioned.

No offense but, it seems ok for the MO lovers to repeat the same thing over and over. But if someone is forced to repeat themselves to contradict a MO supporters claim (done in response to an oft-repeated MO fans comment) it ends up repetitive in the MO lovers eyes but, the continuing posts of the "Population is surging" type comment is just fine.

I don't get the logic here.

All I can say OP is I bought the game 2 years ago and was horribly dissapointed in the game. Please try it before you buy it.

Originally posted by Lashley

All I see about MO is bad press, be it from news sites or players. 

 

What makes it so bad?

Ahhh now that would take some time to list. My advice is to ignore us all here and on the official forums. 

Basically you have 2 groups. 

Group 1) This is the largest group. This group has no tolerence for SV after so many disasters. They managed to double or triple charge players, they've managed to cost players in game a great deal of time and effort due to nasty mistakes on their part in which they refused to adequately compensate those effected (By this I'm reffering to accidentally deleting an entire city durring a patch and causing all that logged out there to die and lose everything that was on them when they logged in), GM's have unfairly interfered with several PvP events in game and tipped the scales in one guilds favor or another (Whether it was intentional is up for debate), threatened those that spoke negatively about MO whether they did so on their site or on others (They actually tried to demand MMORPG.com give them names, ip addresses etc. of those speaking negatively about MO). Then you have things like the mods and GM's etc. asking the players to come over here and act as shills or to stir up trouble. 

And all this is just the tip of the iceberge in regards to why so many are fed up with SV and MO. This isn't even getting into the difficulties in playing the game itself. Between the bugs, exploits and the limited playerbase they have enough issues without dumping the above and much much more on top. 

Group 2) This is a very small group. These are those latching on to what could someday be a decent sandbox to play. They've put up with everything that SV has thrown at them and they are holding on hoping to see MO become they game it was promised it would be. Many have become blind when it comes to the stunts SV pulls, they ignore it or try to down play it and justify it in some way. Others know how bad things have been and are but don't want to let go of that ideal of what MO could be. They try and get others to join hoping that if SV makes enough money they can improve the game and bring it up to snuff. 

So both sides are fairly polarized. MO could turn into the greatest game of all time but me and others in group 2 wouldn't give it the credit it deserves because SV has handled things so poorly that there simply is no way SV or MO could ever redeem themselves. The other group is so enthralled with what MO could be one day they kind of turn a blind eye to some pretty insane stuff SV likes to pull on them every so often. 

So my advice and the only advice you should take is to do the free trial. Ignore us all and just find out for yourself. I'd advise against giving them any kind of credit card information if at all possible before deciding you want to go all in though. 

i honeslty think that mo has very few fanboys in the traditional sense, the only one i know of who wouldnt admit to mo having faults is tizio but the rest agree that mo is flawed but they enjoy it.

So no i do not beleive theres some form of balance between the offical forums and these forums only that theres alot more speculation and naysaying on mmorpg forums and more ocntructive critisism on the offical forums. Afterall people have been shouting on these forums mo is closing down soon for the past year and half. I honestly do think new palyers should read both versions but i bleeive theoffical forums are way more accurate of the state of the game than these, whilst the offical forums might be filled with hope of future content these forums are filled with potential pitfalls and misinformation from players who have hardly played the game, infact many people who post in here havent even played mo.

Most of the naysayers on here ocnsider me an mo fanboy because i simply like the game, regardless of the fact that it was me who posted the recent dupe issue and is actively criticising the game on the offical forums but because i do it constructively it must mean im a fanboy.

Originally posted by deathshroud

i honeslty think that mo has very few fanboys in the traditional sense, the only one i know of who wouldnt admit to mo having faults is tizio but the rest agree that mo is flawed but they enjoy it.

So no i do not beleive theres some form of balance between the offical forums and these forums only that theres alot more speculation and naysaying on mmorpg forums and more ocntructive critisism on the offical forums. Afterall people have been shouting on these forums mo is closing down soon for the past year and half. I honestly do think new palyers should read both versions but i bleeive theoffical forums are way more accurate of the state of the game than these, whilst the offical forums might be filled with hope of future content these forums are filled with potential pitfalls and misinformation from players who have hardly played the game, infact many people who post in here havent even played mo.

 

Most of the naysayers on here ocnsider me an mo fanboy because i simply like the game, regardless of the fact that it was me who posted the recent dupe issue and is actively criticising the game on the offical forums but because i do it constructively it must mean im a fanboy.

Yes, some that post here haven't played but those tend to be the ones commenting on the latest debacle and expressing as gamers how they would feel if they were a paying customer but for the most part those commenting here have played at some point or another. 

No need to try and discredit the posts and opinions here though by trying to claim many or most haven't played MO seeing as I said to ignore both camps. 

Secondly with how heavy handed the moderation is on the MO forums (an example would be Black Opal shutting down the patriarch forums due to the excessive complaints about the various things wrong with MO and yes thats why it was shut down because he threatened to shut it down for that reason shortly before doing so) that forum is forced to the opposite extreme. 

Why don't we agree that the OP is better off giving the free trial a go and let them form their own opinion. 

But like always thanks for chiming in death. 

{mod edit}

 

Is this real gameplay or just a bad joke?