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New Review June 28th
Slapshot1188
Member LegendaryPosts: 17,654
http://www.playbbg.com/reviews/mortal-online-review.html
Summary:
Overall
The game, like EvE in its release days, is very, very bare bones. There are only very basic systems in place and they’ve hardly been fleshed out to where they could be. It’s also easily just as confusing and, even in the later game, features very little direction at all. A lot of people are hoping this might be the next Ultima Online, or go the way of EvE, but it’s yet to be seen if it will even survive its first year. I’d be hard-pressed to say it will, though, seeing as the company has already had a few financial issues and the game was released in an inadequate state.
Final Score: 4/10
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Comments
I'd agree with much of his short review, however it's obvious he hasn't played much since he is under the impression that there's no background music at all when in fact there is. You'll hear the music after one play session for more than 20 minutes so it leaves the question how long has this guy played?
All in all I agree with his conclusion, it's very much like EVE was at launch. It's an open world crying to be fleshed out and I hope this will happen, the first year is going to be a rocky road for any independant company so we'll see what happens.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
There is a good deal of wrong and/or misleading information in that review:
"Mortal Online’s setup process was so long and monotonous that I felt it required its own section."
-- Though I know that many people have had similar problems patching, I was never one of them. Your own mileage may vary here. All I can say is I am a NA player who has no problems downloading these patches or torrents in general.
"You can have 5 characters, each entirely unique, and you can create and delete as many as you want without penalties."
-- You can create 3 characters. This means that no single account can have access to every possible skill at a maximum level.
"There are PKers, thieves, and even all sorts of people that “push” you to get you to attack them, then call the guards to kill you, and steal your stuff."
-- If you push someone correctly you can't get killed by guards. There is really no reason to die in town unless you have blatantly ignored the help section or any previous knowledge of sandbox mmos. Also, the actual thievery skill isn't even enabled right now so no one can steal from you directly. I've only seen about 2 reds in the newbie zones over the last several weeks of playing. I've never been killed by red so far.
"I never once saw anyone really “friendly” even after saying “hi” to about two dozen people."
-- I suggest using IRC to supplement your community interaction. The only time people are going to ignore you in game is if they are macro chopping wood or afk in town. People don't just ignore you in an open world pvp setting.
"Even with a free month, it can’t come anywhere near competing with games like Xsyon, which will run you $40 for the client and 2 months of free play after release, as well as a unique item."
-- Honestly, the price never even registered as a problem to me. The fact that the reviewer mentions that Xsyon is a better deal makes it sound like someone writing a review for the specific purpose of promoting Xsyon.
Conclusion:
You may or may not enjoy MO and it needs a lot of work.k. Don't trust this review though. It smells like a competing company's propaganda.
I think he was relatively honest on the short-comings of the game, though he likely is missing those things that are actually good. As it stands I think that the only positive(?) thing he mentions in the entire article is that first-person view feels immersive. I think that he somehow extrapolates the lack of meaningful documentation (A BIG MINUS) to all fields of the gameplay. Nonetheless, it is an honest review of what you are likely to encounter in the game and although the hurdles can be triumphed, they are of such nature that they will most certainly drive away zounds of players. Something which Star Vault can't necessarily afford.
Just wait until the ones that hit metacritic start to surface... they are more harsh, usually.
To be perfectly honest, I doubt they will review this game. From Star Vault's point of view it would be a highly positive thing to get any kind of a review from a prestigious gaming site and/or magazine. After all, there is no bad publicity and as it stands most of the people have likely never heard from this game. I could imagine that Darkfall in the end got more subscriptions thanks to original Eurogamer review as people were too interested to pass on a chance to see a game that got such a dismal review.
No such thing as bad publicity? Then why would Tasos claim things online against Eurogamer when they did the first review? He was worried about the fallout from it, and as a result -- shot a salvo to try to save face.
Mortal Online will be in the news, perhaps not for a review -- but more for the fact that they are auto-billing people without their consent. It'll make some headlines when people realize what happened.
Really? How's that working for BP and Tom Cruise?
Hmm so the reviewer never gave MO a real chance. The music have been in for many months. Either he played before Christmas or he only played for like less than 20 min.
Btw, I have never heard about that site so it's probably a newly started site or very small one.
That review = epic fail.
Or he had a bug where the music didn't play.
Reviews in general, aren't meant to be scrounging around forums for answers, jumping into IRC to troubleshoot, etc. It's what the game feels and plays like at face value. Obviously his face value impression wasn't very good. Just because you disagree with the review doesn't make it incorrect. It's being reviewed by a person that more likely, has WOW experience rather than indy MMO experience.
The review doesn't exactly ring true here but I'll start with what I agree with first;
1.) The download process is a bit of a pain, the launcher could be more user friendly
2.) The game is barebones and needs fleshing out
3.) As a new player the game is very confusing
However...
1.) The interviewer immediately throws in false speculation without any proof about that game, "over time garnered a massive amount of attention, slightly less than that of which it all but lost during testing phases."
2.) "You can have 5 characters, each entirely unique, and you can create and delete as many as you want without penalties"
It's very clear you can only have 3 characters also how he tries to make creating/deleting sound like a negative thing?
3.) "In fact, you may have to several times in order to find your favorite starter build and starting zone." Ok, you may well have to remake your characters if you want to change your career path completely and can not be bothered to retrain but he assumes new players know the difference between starter zones. Bad review technique there. To add to this he brings in the fact the races were not locked in beta which is also bad review technique as he's reviewing the released game.
4.) "Unfortunately, unless you want to start with a definite build, your efforts here seem all but useless, as you can easily train and detrain these attributes later on during actual gameplay." Again making it sound like a bad thing you can re-adjust your character ingame. This sort of flexibility is encouraged in MO by having no classes which he clearly knew. He then continues to do the same thing below turning the fact you can change your skills into a negative feature which is the complete opposite ingame.
5.) He clearly has not played long enough to get strong enough to engage in the high-end PvE and calls pve 'lacking' because of it, all PvE is lacking during the begining phases of a game. Especially games which don't give you epic quests at level 10 ala WoW. (Not saying that's bad but it's not this type of MMO)
6.) "Other than that, you can either build, or you can fight other players." A broad sweeping statement which over simplyfies the game, a real reviewer would of looked into each thing you can do in the game and gave a critical but constructive analysis of it.
7.) "You can build yourself a nice little house, but I don’t really know if there’s all that much reason to, due to a lack of customization." Admitting you don't know what you're on about in a review, also showing you don't know what your on about instantly removes any form of credibility the review has. Ofc houses do have multiple purposes and reasons to get them, customisation however is not in.
8.) "but at least the textures are getting to the point where they’re all of high resolution." Yet again the reviewer showing he doesn't know anything about the game as high-textures are currently turned off. I'm not saying I'm happy with the fact they're turned off but a reviewer must atleast do enough research to look at the main website.
http://www.mortalonline.com/content/under-development
The underdevelopment section is clearly there to see, a full proper review would of looked at these things and perhapes taken them into consideration.
9.) "there isn’t any background music. At all." However there is, not playing long enough to experience the background music and then creating a review also points to a lack of credability. The music isn't great however I turn it off.
10.) "The community is…well, to say it straight, the community, especially in the newbie areas, is absolutely horrendous. There are PKers, thieves, and even all sorts of people that “push” you to get you to attack them, then call the guards to kill you, and steal your stuff."
A very bold and false statement. The community is great I can stop just about any player and ask for directions at a minimum. PK'ers are to be expected it's an open PvP world however they're not rampant. (See the harsh pentality thread in these forums) Thieves are not implemented. You don't have to attack them, if you did you won't fall for it twice.
11.) Comparing the games value by comparing prices and free time given is a piss poor way to review something. The products are completely different and Xyson most certainly needs the time to develop during those two free months. E.g. Xyson's combat actually makes me laugh because it's comical.
(play with sound)
Overall the review hits a few things on the head which was good however it shows a clear lack of knowledge of the game even of a basic level. It shows the reviewer did not research the game in any shape or form. The way it is written is also very poor. Review of the review I give the review a 2/10
Good post merieke82.
Hercules, if it only was that ... but if he had played the game for more than just a very short time, he should have known that you only can have 3 chars. That is so obvious when you create a character there is only 3 slots. Or have he played it at all and just read about MO?
Also if he would have played the last weeks after the large code convert was done and they added much more content ... he should know that thiefing skills was disabled and still is. It will be enabled soon thou.
So you see ... the whole review is fishy or he hadn't played for more that just a very short time ... like 20 min.
Very very bad review that is full of fault info about MO.
To be honest, many reviewers when they find a game tedious, will "phone it in". It means that the game wasn't exciting enough to capture their attention for a long enough time to review it properly. Perhaps that's what happened here. In the case of Darkfall, that's what seems to have happened as well with the Eurogamer review.
Time will tell of course, and the more reviews you have the more accurate the picture will be. If the majority of reviews find the game lacking, problematic, buggy, etc... then it's safe to assume that the game is just that. And if a few reviewers "phone it in" and leave out some details, or have problems or whatever that are easily solvable or not really problems, then it will be overlooked due to the other reviews.
All we can do is look forward to more reviews.
Hmm, are we talking about oil spills or am I missing something? I guess that I was too optimistic to take for granted that no one would take this argument out of context. Tom Cruise thou is a bad example as he is still doing most decently as you can find from his imdb page. And even BP isn't doing all that shabby with roughly 10 billion dollars yearly given to its share holders as dividend. Sure there can be bad publicity for them as it stands but it does not seemingly affect all that much their personal/company revenues and that is what it is all about. But to get back to the subject matter: I will further refine what I ment by stating that there is no bad publicity in order to reply partly to you Brostyn and to HerculesSAS in particular.
I ment with my bad publicity statement, as I thought was obvious from the context, that getting into a major gaming site and / or magazine would under no circumstance be bad publicity for a game like Mortal Online. Darkfall example still holds true as the community support and general gaming buzz after Tasos outrage after Eurogamer review shows: people were rallying for Tasos and Aventurine against big and corrupted gaming sites! Also, people visiting Eurogamer were commenting how they had never heard from Darkfall but the abysmal review actually made them interested from the game. For a while there was quite a bit of stir on a number of gaming sites that made more and more people aware from a game known as Darkfall.
As with reviews in general, the people who are already playing the game won't really change their opinion no matter what a review says. Hence, the only people you can affect are those who are thinking of investing to the game. With Mortal Online and other indie developed games, there is minor if not non-existant ad campaigns and, thus, the overall awerness of its existance amidst gamers, even amidst MMO-gamers is relatively limited. If you get your game reviewed by anything that gets its scores to Metacritic you have already reached a certain level of interest which is about to create more players aware of the game.
Even if the review would read from word to word as the review linked here, it would make someone that was before totally unaware of the game interested. Key words such as Ultima Online, EVE, sandbox, Unreal Engine, FFA PvP &c. would for certain appear on that review as well. These are all known concept for most gamers reading gaming media and if they happen to have a positive stand for the values they stand they might extend this positive image on the game reviewed even if the game would be deemed a massive failure. It is just the way it works. Hence, for Mortal Online, there cannot be bad publicity if it comes from a renowned gaming media. I just don't think any of these media is interested from Mortal Online.
"There are PKers, thieves, and even all sorts of people"
Theres thieving-system ingame???
"not “re-priced” for people in the U.S"
Players outside EU don't pay VAT.
"game is extremely NSFW, as your character is naked"
So what, it shouldn't be concidered as negative feature.
Yea great review, seems like the last time he played was at some stage of beta -.-
The website is really weird and cheap looking, with lots of unknown MMOs as "top games". However, to the review..
I am far from MO fanboy, but the review feels like it is done far from neutral point of view and quite unprofessional. However there is one thing about someone flaming the review, "Just check IRC/Forums" is NEVER an excuse, a good game should be self explaining/self functional without additional thirdparty programs.
Hmm, I'm not sure if you are referring to my comment about using IRC or not. I only suggested to use IRC as a supplement for communicating with others.
Hmm... incorrect information that should be easily known by someone who has played the game for more than 20 minutes, AND a built-in advertisement for an unreleased competing game...
Mortal Online ain't exactly reviewer friendly, but that review is a bit shady to me...
Well it's a small step up from that other review in April http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/274803/page/1 At least this one is a gaming based ad farm. Unfortunately if you look around it shares many of the same faults as that other one.
In the past month Babyface http://www.playbbg.com/author/admin (the author) has also done articles on: Ceasary, cultures online, Freejack, Zentia, Fallen Earth, Fantasy cards RT, King of Kings 3, Need for speed: World, Business Tycoon online, Playmobil Online, World of Pharoas, RaiderZ online,Galamon, Rocktropia, Kung fu Panda, Europe 1400, Canaan, and others
Reviews of: Knights of Dream, Mortal online, WW2 assembly, Soul Order, Caesary, League of Legends, Star Trek online, Lord of Ultima, company of heroes online.
Being so prolific, brings into question just how much time was spent with any one game.
Just for kicks and giggles, I decided to recheck that other review from April. The article is still up, with the only change being that it now says it was published on June 3. The comments are even still there from April. Obviously that review ignores any changes made in the intervening 2 months (i.e. the trip to Epic studios) That combined with the obvious factual inaccuracies of the subject of this thread illustrate that ad farms are NOT reliable sources of reviews.
Taken from page 2 of that review:
http://images.brighthub.com/eb/e/ebee735411c2ce56fa4e79223d8a67860dfb9e95_large.jpg
I wonder if it was just mistake, or pure trolling on author's part