Mortal Online 2

They needed help making the game and bit off so much more than they could chew. Would have been happy with less than half of the graphics and for them to fix all the glaring issues others below have stated. Seriously it could have been the best mmorpg since DAOC and ULTIMA ONLINE. To hell with the graphics fix the builds and the gameplay.

This game could be great, combat is trash and the player base is complete garbage.

EDIT: I have played another 150+ hours since I wrote the review and I now see there was a superb PVP game here 10 years ago, and it's never coming back. I've made some tweaks where I was wrong. I bought MO2 from the official site for 18.99 which came with a month free subs. If I had to pay full price and a month's sub on top I probably would still have risked it because this game promises so much that I crave. After 100+ hours playtime, I've come to the conclusion that Star Vault (SV) has stopped real development and are riding a money train to the last stop. SV is a very small but publicly traded company with no debt and operates similar to the way a VC backed risk venture would.. that is every year they make a loss and every year the priority is convincing new people to invest and old people to invest more, by issuing new shares. Becuase banks won't lend them money, right? Banks aren't stupid but investors like a gamble. Expect game-breaking new content year-on-year from here on, because new features bring in new money. I have learned that MO1 and MO2 are actually the exact same game just using a different engine and I understand MO1 actually still had more features than MO2 does today and they moved to UE5 from UE4 because of EPIC games. You may think this puts MO2 at the cutting edge but remember Dune: Awakening (releasing June 2025) runs UE4. I've been told the player base was force-mirgated to MO2 where they would have to start from scratch. The world is much bigger than MO1 but assets are re-used completely, I have been told (so more space, same content). I have learned that there is a new continent being released soon (probably next year around summer at a guess), one that already existed in MO1, called Sarduccda. It will be open desert with heat death, with a single NA server behind it, but nobody will live there because everyone is in Myrland (the situation in MO1). My experience of this game and conclusions. It may seem conflicting in places but I stand by it all. I have to say I love playing in FPS mode it's the best for me by far. The travel is intense but I kinda liked it. I'm a careful man, and stole a sack-full from the jungle and made it back to Fab alive. I have ended with a hella-horde in 2 cities that will never be sold. Ganked mb 5 times proper. Rare I lost more than a horse. I find barely-coherent, personally-insulting, mindless aggression in voice chat can put most of them off, but it's rare they're alone, sadly. But 6 hours of tension like that a day will probably kill a man in 5 years. Judging from chat I think ESP use is sadly common (its mentioned often in global chat), but I don't have the experience to verify. I never really suspected foul play. Using ESP would be literally giving yourself more time to live though as a gatherer, if you think about it. But I like tension, it's fun when it matters I don't really understand cheating myself. Stealing resources is also surprisingly fun. I literally turn into a goblin pest, stealing calx outside houses and making off with the goods. I joined a guild easily but never shown up, I got too distracted just learning the place and feeling out my chars. Advancing magic is like a never-ending, 10 thousand dollar slap in the face.a The melee combat is well thought out and fun. Basic combat is a fantastic pvp experience. I was very excited. But as I play more I learn that there are new combat action skills in the last patch that delete hp, can't be parried and cause stun. I learn that lag can spike bad. I learn that this is NOT A FULL LOOT PVP, because non-drop trinkets were added to the game (2022) that give huge +stats +dmg and go for stupid gold like $300+ if you used RMT to get one and there are 3 trinket slots => OP geared players res with $900 of gear and noob geared players res naked. So, there is skill needed but the game is well into the dumb-down phase with OP abilities and non-drop gear reversing OG ideology. It's super zerg / gank friendly and moving further that way. I've heard in MO1 players had the tools to get jumped by 2 or 3 and come out winning. In PvP, game mechanics are favoring noob hunters massively in general. You have no crouch. No prone. No lean. No dodge. No sneak (what kind of RPG has no stealth mechanic??? literally RPG standard since OG D&D). Movement is slow, akin to an rpg from early 90's, reminding me of Might and Magic 3 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Might_and_Magic_III:_Isles_of_Terra). In other words, MO2 leans hard into “realism” when it benefits the predator playstyle but ditches it the moment realism would give prey a fighting chance. The entire game model is based on suffocating new players off the server to keep the population low enough for the game to run. It's a massive battle of attrition and exploitation. PVE dungeons are designed, play, and look like, an RPG from the early 90's, except with less textures, more dead ends and much less to find. Again reminding me of Might & Magic 3 (1991). Dangerous mob fights can be adrenaline pumping but that's only because you spent 3 days getting to them. The fight itself invariably involves kiting in circles for 30mins unless you are grouped, at which point the game reminds me of Ultima Online at first release (1997). The build system is actually very good. Most skills level up passively and although it looks confusing it's actually quite simple. It's well designed and probably comes from the very earliest development cycle. You have limited points to spend in skill trees which requires you to specialise and cooperate. To give an example you will be mounted or foot spec because you can't afford to get talents for both and weapons and magic that you want right? Again the skill tree is something that got me very excited. There are so many builds to do and you can retrain your character quite easily to a new specialisation. All that really matters for min/max is you pick the right race, size and age and this is pretty simple stuff, everything else is easily re-trained. Yes, the skill tree is probably the best thing in the whole game. But what is the point of massive build potential when you only have 2 char slots? Yes if you want more slots you need extra subscriptions! And bear in mind this game ONLY HAS 1 SERVER with ~1400 max players. This will never change because it needs a re-design at data level (shared data persistence over multiple instances with player housing / guild territory = very hard and earliest design phase, not something you add on). The inventory system is also well designed. If you kill 3 pigs and loot them you don't have 3 pig carcasses taking 3 slots in your inventory you have ~80kg of pig carcass taking up 1 slot and this makes inventory management better than pretty much any game I've played. Again this makes me believe there was real intent behind this title when it began. The economy of this game is good. Resources are important and finite (on variable respawn timers). Gold is king, but the supplier has power because gear is lost continually. I mined lots and hoarded and local prices went up. You can make a good living killing pigs right outside town and selling their bones and leather to craftsmen in town. I bought bone armor. Ore will be likely processed by multiple skilled people before a craftsman gets the end product to use. The distance between cities and the danger of travel gives life to a genuine early-civ like economy with big price differences between them, dependent on big variable factors (like player activity, aggression). It's simple and authentic, which is very high praise. Ruined by trinket gambling (2023). I want to play this game more but the golden age has clearly been played. It's just not worth it. This game will continue to break what players loved with updates until the CEO shares pictures of his new yacht in the discord and one day your game is gone, Swedish Mafia style. And you will lose your new friends too.

One of the most toxic and gatekept games I've ever seen. Don't waste your time unless you are planning to join one of the zerg guilds.

Прекрасный хардкорный сендбокс с уникальными механиками. Порог входа крайне высок, поэтому детей в игре практически не встретишь - что является большим плюсом игре. Увлекательная крафтовая система, нон таргет боевка, различные школы магии. Красивый, наполненный, живой мир - путешествовать интересно и везде найдешь чем заняться. У игры есть свои минусы (куда без них), но попробовать данный проект определенно стоит - так как достойных аналогов на данный момент нет.

This game was fun but playing $15 a month sub is not going happen. If I knew they was going do that I would of never bought this game to play.

The game drives you towards mindless zerging. Solo or small group play / pvp? forget it.

This game is one of the most fun games I have played. It is easy to sink time into. Its a bit hard as a new player since the tutorial in haven tells you to use the wrong keys (tells you to use R for interacting and such but its actually E). Also the tutorial doesnt really teach you a lot. It was pretty confusing when I went to the real world on what I was supposed to do and what I needed. Like if I want to use spells I needed a spellbook and to get scrolls, and the entire profession side could use more explaining. But overall I still figured it out with help from the community. The community is a really tight knit community and besides the random slaughter sometimes, everyone overall is pretty nice. I would recommend this game to everyone with a reminder that the servers sometimes are pretty bad (Not too much that I stopped playing after a few weeks being a new player), and that for NA the PVP is pretty hard due to servers being in EU. Also to be willing to try things and experiment because there is little to no information online about a lot of things. So lots of patience, willingness to learn, and this could easily be the best game you sink your time into.