Can you tell us how combat will work in Mortal Online?

Combat is initiated by drawing your weapon, meaning you enter combat mode. This is very seamless and simply means you enter your combat stance, where you will be slightly more protected at the cost of movement speed and more stamina drain when moving fast. This takes care of bunny-jumping and too fast circle-strafing. Combat on mount is the same as combat on foot; you have no virtual restrictions on what you can do or not on a mount, and your mount can also be trained, equipped, hurt, killed or stolen (and you can not put it in your pocket). Needless to say, mounts and mounted combat fill an important role in the game.

There is no "targeting"; the combat is aim-based and you charge and strike in the direction you want. Each character features several hit-zones or "hit boxes". As each hit box has its own armour part, there is no generic defence value or "AC" and that makes a huge impact on combat. Simply put, if your opponent lacks protection on his/her left arm that may be a good spot to aim for. Likewise, you may choose to use more flexible armour on your right arm to increase the speed of your strikes, but at the cost of protection. The hit boxes also means that you can do more damage by hitting your opponent's head and that you have a slight chance to disarm him/her if you land a blow on his/her sword-arm. Furthermore the weapons and shields have their own hit boxes; it's possible (and recommended) to actively block strikes by holding up and aiming your weapon and/or shield against your opponent's blow. Characters also have general collision, meaning you can block the path of your opponent and even push him/her.

Archery uses trajectories, meaning it's possible to shoot over walls or in fact straight up in the air hitting yourself in the head on the arrow's way down. The aiming-techniques for spells depend on what spell you want to cast. Some spells shoot in a straight line, some are like archery, some use a cone or a sphere for hit detection, others are projected onto a surface, while a few use targeting and are homing. However, we have chosen to only have a handful of important spells for direct PvP-combat. It's tempting to go wild and design a multitude of combat spells, however we want mage-duels to be about coordination, reaction and possible counters, and it's simply not possible to predict your opponent's next move if there are too many combat spells. Ultima Online is definitely our biggest inspiration here.

No targeting, first-person view, character collision and hit boxes also means tactical manoeuvres and training in groups becomes very important. You cannot have archers or mages randomly sending in projectiles or AOE's into the midst of battle as they risk hitting their own. Furthermore it's possible to really use the environment by taking advantage of line-of sight, choke points, terrain height etc.

PvP is going to be a major focus of the game. Can you tell us how that system will work?

The game has it's foundation in PvP, meaning both the rules around PvP as well as a purposeful, exiting PvP experience. Don't get me wrong here, it's not to say you have to PvP in the game, but I personally don't believe you can design a PvE game and then add some PvP features in afterwards and get a great result. Purposeful PvP inevitable has consequences on the whole game design and playing experience, and a big game always run the risk of scaring away its casual customers if that impact is too deep. Already by having full loot, we are steering Mortal Online into a niche genre.

So, the game has full loot, meaning if you die someone can loot all your equipment. You are also free to fight anyone anywhere. But there are also consequences, administered by the players themselves as well as a flagging system. The flagging system keeps track of your actions and sets your flag accordingly. If you for instance steal from or kill someone that's innocent (neutral) you will be flagged as a criminal or murderer. People can call the guards on you if you are in a guard zone, some NPC's won't trade with you etc. For murderers additional penalties apply. The flagging system is deep and very hard to explain by words, but pretty easy to grasp when playing.

It's also worth mentioning that guilds at war will not be affected by the flagging system. It's very possible to fight out your battles in a city, attacking and killing members of the opposing guild will not lead to a murder flag. You are still flagged if you attack other people though.

What tools will be available to guilds?

Guilds can be formed when someone owns a large enough house or building and then acquires and activates a Guild Stone. The guild stone (and building) then acts as the central point for the guild where members are accepted, promoted and titled. Declaring wars are made with the guild stone and it can also upgraded with more abilities such as guild chat. Guild property is administered by storage spaces such as chests, with the ability to set rights. There will be a lot more to guilds, especially when it comes to building upgrades, keeps and fortresses, but I'm afraid it's too early to talk about as many of these mechanics and sieging most probably won't be in at launch. We have decided on getting a solid foundation for one-on-one and group-vs-group combat before we move on to the next step, although a lot of it is planned and some aspects already tested.

What kind of options are available to players who might prefer to play solo?

I have mostly been talking about the PvP aspects of the game, but there are indeed a lot of features that has to do with solo-play. Gathering, refining, crafting and building are typical examples. The sandbox crafting is definitely worth mentioning, as the weapon crafting alone has over 142 million possible combinations of grips, handles, blades, heads and materials - not counting bows or shields. The armour crafting has even more options. Each piece and material has its own pros and cons and there's no such thing as a "best" weapon, not even a "best" sword, or a "best" short-sword. Instead players will have to try different compositions to suit their skills and playing style, and often discuss the various options with you as a blacksmith.

"Gathering" or "farming" in Mortal Online is also rather different. You actively have to hunt many animals as they will flee and not mindlessly attack any player in their vicinity. Also, neither bears nor terror birds drop gold or swords, and their value instead lie in meat, skin, teeth/beek and bone, if you have the skills necessary to skin and process them. Many creatures act in groups, and the more intelligent ones will use different tactics depending on who they fight and what happens to their group. Rare locations, items, creatures and ingredients will have to be searched for and that can be done alone or in small groups.

As the NPC vendors will only sell the most basic items and only very few creatures will drop crafted items, the crafting and economy is player-driven. There is a lot of money to be made in both crafting and trade, and logistics and transporting of goods (and defending these caravans) will be very important.

There are no regular "quests" in Mortal Online. There are however a lot of events, special places, artefacts, and rare creatures and beings in the world waiting to be discovered, used, protected or killed. Exploring the (map-less) world and finding the clues to these quests, puzzles or enigmas can often be made solo if you are prepared to take the risks.

Nothing of this is really solo-play, as eventually you will have to sell your masterpieces to other players to make money, or you will have to agree with another player to transport his or her goods someplace. Or you may have trained a skill to perfection and written some skill books that you need to sell to other players to get money. I do understand that a Massively Multiplayer Online Game doesn't have to be about people actually interacting online, but however strange it may sound this is what Mortal Online is about.

What, in your opinion, are the features that set Mortal Online apart from the competition?

If you've managed to read this far, I hope I've been able to shed some light on what those features are. We are not afraid our game won't stand out; rather we're afraid people will find it a bit too different ;)

For those of you who want to know more and get a better overview of the game, I can recommend the PowerPoint presentation at http://www.mortalonline.com/files/presentation/MortalOnlinePresentation.rar (You don't need PowerPoint to watch it, just read the included .readme file on how to start it.)

I would also like to take the opportunity to mention that if you are quick you may still have a chance to pre-order a boxed or Digital Download version of the game. As a bonus the pre-orders give free access to the Beta all the way to launch, planned for Q4 this winter. Please see https://account.mortalonline.com.

Thank you for reading, hope to see you in game!