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Post Your Timeline in MO and Experience- Long Post
Ajmags
Member UncommonPosts: 63
I started getting interested in MO about a year before beta opened. I visited the forums checking out the ideas and plans for the game and the community seemed refreshing compared to the horrible Darkfall community so I decided to give the game a shot.
SV offered a pre order where you would be able to participate in the Beta testing if you bought a pre release copy of the game with the chance to get in beta blocks A,B,C,D,E if you bought the Limited Edition (which I did) you automaticly got into Block A. When I first logged into Block A the game was new and very very clunky but that was to be expected. I put in as many bug reports as possible but the game was so bad at this point I just had to back away for a few weeks.
When I came back things seemed better and I began to enjoy the game more and patches were comming in at a good rate. Some very annoying bugs that made the game nearly unplayable were getting addressed, but this was only with the characters themselves and the combat. The fighting itself was different than most if not all MMO's and it was fun. Resources at this point were unlimited so you could make any weapon or armor you wanted.
Our guild began recruiting for the release of the game and became one of the top guilds on the server we had some really good battles with other guilds and made both friends and enemies ,once again it was fun as hell and we were all excited about the release of the game, then the INSANITY started.
We all felt SV had a plan and that they were holding alot back that would be in release but when the crazyness started was around christmas time ( the height of the games popularity) SV decided to release an important patch and everyone was very excited for the patch. In previous patches up to this point they would release and it would take them about a week or week and a half to Iron out the bugs and get the actual patch working, but alot of times they would break other mechanics in the game with each patch, and it would happen without fail after each patch. They would always break things they previously fixed over and over and over and the community could not understand how you could continually break the same things over and over. The Christmas patch was special for its own reasons because it was supposed to be one of 2 patches before actual release. What did SV do ? They released the patch and completely broke many aspects of the game then the ENTIRE company went on a 2 week Vacation because they were not smart enough to stagger the employees vacations during the year and by LAW they had to let everyone take Vacation. As a company at the height of its poularity they LOST alot of fans due to this ridiculous manouver and really pissed off the ones they had still testing because for 2 weeks no bug reports no fixes no NOTHING. At times the server was down for 12 hour periods because no was there to reboot it. How completely Ignorant is that ?
SO... They come back from Vacation and start to work on all the things they broke and finally realised release was not possible so they pushed it back. As they begane to work on the game they felt they were not getting where they needed to be so they announced they were not going to patch for a while while they worked out some Issues with epic. While this Debacle was going on the CEO and the Devs were almost non existent for an entire month. Other than a post at the mid point by Henrik the Devs were quiet for the first time in the developement of the game and MR Henrik made it sound like they holy grail of patches was on the way.
Finally they emerge from silence with this new patch. Everyone is excited more than ever actully. The pathc gets released and of course breaks alot of the game but were used to that and understand it will probably be a week before its fixed and eventually the game becomes playabke again. What this new Patch brought us was nearly and unplayable de Sync. Whenever you entered a new node everyone around you would dissapear as if you were in your own instance and go into an offline mode. It was so bad you would be standinf outside a town with nothing going on and a few others standing around then decide to go in the town to use the bank and you would start getting hit repeatedly until you died . WTF just happened ? how could I die no ones hitting me ?? Well what actull happened was someone did actully hit you outside the town about 2 minutes before and the hits didnt register until 2 or 3 or sometimes 5 mintes later. It was actully pretty comical to see players just dropping dead right before your eyes in town with no one even close to them, it was sad as well.
Finally after a while SV proclaimed they could not fix the de sync or other issues without help from Epic Games and that a re coding of the game had to happen to fix it. Keep in mind at this time alot of other bugs were fixed, to an extent and other than the De Sync most features seemed to be working. But in order to fix the desync they had to apply this new code patch WTF ever you want to call it to fix the de sync and make the game playable again.
SO after much waiting and anticipation and not as much excitement as in previous announcements SV aplies this fix, patch, re code and breaks the entire game. All the bugs and i mean ALL THE BUGS that existed before and were fixed ALL came back. It was almost as if the game was back in beta blocks A B C D and E .
People in my guild got disgusted and began to leave the game but were still planning on playing at release. Same with other guilds . I asked Henrik personally in a PM (which I cant post here because Im banned for life from the MO forums ) I asked him if they are holding back alot of things for release and he said to me "wait till release your going to be amazed" and he had a giggling tone as if to say Just wait I think you will be surprised at what we have in store.
Once again Like an Idiot I get exctied and pump up my guild in turn they get excited and we wait patiently for release.
SV releases the game and many aspects of the game are still broken but some things were completely broken like the Entire magic class which was UNPLAYABLE. The AI was a disaster and the graphics were broken to the point of most of the armor you wore looked like it came out of a game from the Atari back in the 80's. Yeah it was bad and people were pissed but they had patches coming. The first patch broke the skill system so all th skills you had were either not registering or people were exploting the hell out of them actully getting more skill points and Hitpoints than normally would be allowed. They broke many aspects of the game too numerous to list and within a 2 week period , somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 month after release my guild went from 25 on a night to about 5. We had 35 solid members and 55 signed up on the forums and all of them left the game from the very end of beta to one month after release. This was not sue to the guild itself since we were pretty successful, we actully had the second Keep built on the server along with 13 and were very active. But the game was so horrible people just could not stand to play anymore.
This began to happen over the next few weeks to the point that the entire server began to stop logging in. At this time a did a little test within the guild. We had players in each city and I asked them to give a head count as to how many people were in each city. This was about 2 months into release and the numbers I got back were a good barometer as to where the game was heading. GK - 1 person ( actully the guy in my guild telling us how many) Vadda around 10 people , meduli around 10 people, Fabernum around 5 people, Kranesh empty, MK around 5 people, at this point I was riding across the map and saw one person riding from meduli to vadda and back to Fabernum. The world was empty and it was prime time. It was sad because at that time I knew the writing was on the wall.
The Duping was running wild and Keeps were going up in days, in what should have taken months for the amount of people playing. SV did nothing to stop this and they let it all stand. I begged Henrik in a few PM's since the game has so little population why dont you wipe the server , getting rid of all the content built by cheats and all the resources they accumulated and start fresh ?? Since the population was so small (Probably at most a few hundred on a night) The impact would be small and then you can Issue a statement explaining why a wipe had to be done and re release the game. Most people I spoke too agreed they would attempt to come back if SV did this and FIXED the DUPING which was the single most impactful cheat in the game and SV (Henrik) refused. You know who disagreed with th Idea of a wipe ? A few guilds who claimed they worked hard for what they had, you know all 20 or 30 people who were too selfish to see the game was in big trouble and needed some honesty and life breathed into it. Selfish bastards IMHO. Oh please dont take away my 10 gold or the Keep I built with cheat money.. Idiots.
Now we stand here and look at a game that next to totally empty. I logged into Fabernum yesterday and the day before and saw 1 AFK guy in the bank and 2 people at the front door and one guy at the Crusher. To give you an Idea HOW EMPTY Fabernum was I went AFK for about 2 minutes in the bank to get to a phone call and when I came back I was dead. Someone came up to me and killed me having to hit me at least 7 times and NO ONE was there to call guards while he killed me looted all my stuff and walked away unscathed. Anyone who plays or played this game knows that means totally empty city, totally empty game.
After reading the financial report this game has 2 or 3 months left at best. I had such high hopes for this game and trusted the Devs would pull it off but in reality they didnt even scratch the surface. I feel Horrible for Mats Persson because his ideas are incredible but the team and its CEO cant make those Ideas a reality.
Comments
I was in the game Friday night NA primetime. And I think it was Spader, but he was in FAB red just standing in the top of the bank. He was there for about 20-30 mins before he logged. I just could nto believe it. Now there is a furnace up there so it is usually a hot spot to be. And the pop is so low there isn't anyone just randomly calling guards on a grey or a thief.
I saw the game about 4-5 years ago and had been following it. Like an Idiot I had faith in the indie company to deliver at least a somewhat playable game so I decided to preorder (thankfully I did not do the box CE edition and just got the download one). Was in Beta Block D. I would pop in during beta at every patch for about an hour or so to check to game out. I loved the progress the game was making and thought "oh it will be at least SOMEWHAT playable at release". OB rolls around, I do the same thing with checking in at every patch.
When release hit I started to play. I think I played a total of 24 hours before I gave up on the game. Desync, bugs, exploits, random no reason pk as soon as you step out of guard zone, exploited bugs during pk (had one guy fly over a gultch and one shot me)....
The thing that really chapped my ass was how unfriendly the game actually is. I picked the hunter or whatever template with archery/taming skills fully expecting to be able to get a noob bow and arrows to use the skill with. The entire time I was in game I was unable to get a freaking bow, couldnt read what the books were in the library to buy the bowmaking one and didnt have the money to buy one to begin with.
All in all this game was a complete flop. I know they had to release because of money problems, but they should have at least pitched the game to a larger company that could have bought the IP/game and give us something than the steaming pile of shit that it was/is.
At least this game made me learn my lesson and never preorder a game again. Its epic fail finally showed me the light.
Same here too.
Think I did not go further than about 5 mins run from starter town, then got bored
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ab/Norsefire-logo.png
I heard about it about 2 years before launch, and followed it casually.
Preordered, played since Beta Block B.
I've been playing it steadily since launch - 5 months now - and still enjoy it a lot. It provides a play experience that is uncommon amongst most current MMORPGs.
Mortal Online has its issues, and needs more sandbox content, but I think it's an enjoyable game as it is now, and is improving slowly.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
You ran for 5 mins and then quit the game? what were you expecting? the game to be a WoW clone and tell you what to do, and where to go? I honestly can't believe how many people are on this forum complaining. MO is a sandbox, not a linear MMO. To even suggest the game is "shit" or "crap" because it doesn't tell you what to do is complete igorance.
No game in the history of gaming has ever been complete in alpha/beta, and even less have been close to finished in the Sandbox category. The best example for this could be EVE online. It had just as much content as MO does, just as many bugs/issues, and also had the same group of linear haters that are always going to hate. Now look at it, it has it's own slice of the market for it's targetted niche.
I giggle every single time someone brings up the Q3 financial reports and uses that as a point to make when saying MO was a flop. That's just a silly misconception. Small companies like SV don't have a huge amount of investment and need to invest every penny they get into fixing, developing, and advertising their game in the first 12-24months to ensure that their product is headed in the right direction. What would you prefer? a game like WoW where only 1% of their profit is used to improve, fix, and update the game? or a game like MO where every penny is put into improving it? If you're not losing money in the first 12 months, you're not spending enough!
At the end of the day it comes down to what sort of MMO you prefer, and which company you think can use your money to the best of it's capabilities. And based on that, I will continue to subscribe to MO after seeing/reading what they've done and have to offer.
(not a SV employee...)
Here two reviews from EVE's launch (quick and dirty Google).
http://www.game-over.net/reviews.php?id=847
http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/425/425535p2.html
Compare those to an MO review -
http://www.massively.com/2010/09/02/anti-aliased-i-can-finally-stop-playing-mortal-online-now
EVE had it's problems at lauch, but they are not comparable to MO's problems. For eg those EVE reviews mention the enormous amount of things you could do in EVE even just after launch. Apart from kill/loot/bank in PVP (or shoot MOBs that ignore you impaling them) what is there to do in MO? Six or seven months later, have they added anything else you can do? Both those reviews are pretty favourable, can you find me a favourable, independant review of MO?
EVE released an expansion 7 months or so after launch that added a ton of features too, to be on track SV would have to release one next month. Does anyone think that is likely? That is the difference between a competent Dev team and MO's team.
On the wider "incomplate sandbox at launch" topic, UO had a living world on it's release full of life and activity. A andbox is not a euphemism for lack of content, it is a set of tools to allow players to create content. UO had them in abundance, MO has ... what?
The Q3 reports show that, now box sales are pretty much done without a major revamp of the game, SV cannot continue as a viable company. MO in it's current state will not get new players in any appreciable numbers and will continue to lose it's existing players. They can't pay interest and salaries from their income, never mind reinvest into the game.
I support the OP, as I was there too.
I have never seen such a desperate attempt to make a game before, and to fail at it. It's like they simply woke up one day feeling like playing UO and decided "OH LET'S MAKE OUR OWN GAME!!".
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OP forgets to mention what to me was an undeniable display of SV's inability to run a game, and to do what it takes to make it right, to fix the problems no matter the cost: the skill books incident 1 week after release.
All skills in Mortal are learnt by reading a specific book, a lá EVE.
When Mortal was released, all books had the same price (10 silver coins), an amount you could get in a few minutes killing animals and selling their hides. So dozens of players took advantage of that and filled their banks with the high-end books, possibly knowing what was coming. They filled their alt's banks with the high-end books. Guilds told their members to fill their banks with books, and their alt's banks with books. Ok. One week or so after release, Starvault realizes they released the game with wrong book prices and correct them. Now a book that used to cost 10 silver coins costs 5000 gold coins, or 500.000 silver coins (five hundred thousand).
Except imature Starvault forgot to delete the books people had stocked when the price was low. People complained, but SV was way too coward or incapable to do anything to fix their big failure, or they simply didn't care about it.
So UP TO THIS DAY 11/12/2010 we still have people with alts full of books, selling books for half the price and becoming rich without effort, further breaking the economy.
This and the christmas vacation episode were my biggest dissapointments with Starvault... i'm afraid they will never be able to redeem themselves.
Thanks for reading.
Mortal Online is like a prostitute that tells you she loves you so she can get more money out of your horny pocket.
RE: not deleting the skill books. They don't have the ability to manipulate the database in that way. It is the same situation with bugged weapons, in that patches are not retrospective and result in the bugged weapons remaining in circulation. As is in evidence in another thread, they have to rely upon the integrity of the player base to delete said bugged items.