Nomad Souls

Since the release date is drawing near, I was wondering whether any of you will try this out. Last post in here from november. Maybe you all have tested the beta and already have decided. I haven`t followed the work on this closely, but when I read about sandbox, housing, crafting, skills instead of levels etc. I am intrigued.
For those who have tested it out, what is the verdict? Are there enough consequences in place for pvp so one can have hopes to progress even as a crafter? Seeing as they want to build a world with many different playstyles, that is a must I think.

I have the game box lying on my desk here. Still havent found time to install and test it. I played a bit very early beta.. and that was… bad. But from what i understand they have done lots on the game since then. Will probably install and give it a try during summer. To stuck in Battlefield at the moment:)

I played very briefly in the beta, but it was such a technical mess that I gave up pretty quickly. I had one session of about 20 minutes where I actually connected to an offline version of the world, so I had a look around but there were no other players or creatures, which was rather odd.
After that I only managed to connect a few more times properly, and then only for about 5 minutes each before I crashed out. What I did see didn't inspire me too much, it was very rough and felt more like a game in its alpha stages rather than an open beta phase. I have been thinking about giving it another look at some point, but I am feeling pretty settled where I am mmo-wise, and there didn't seem enough here to make me want to move on.

Yeah, I might try it during summer as well. Although I am still addicted to my old games, I am looking for that 21st century feel of
"Wow, they can do that now?" Not sure if MO would give that, but perhaps worth looking into.
Ouch Bobbin, technical mess: After Vanguard and AoC I dont want to experience that again. Think the shortest time was with Horizon. Bought it, installed it, couldnt get it to run on my then pretty up to date computer. Searched for answers on the net and found loooong lists of things I had to do to tweak it. Uninstalled it promptly.

Anyone had any recent experiences with Mortal? I’m looking at the install disc here, and was wondering if it has shed it’s teething problems. I was taken a bit aback with all the technical issues in beta, and didn’t try it as much as I would have liked, but I’m playing with the idea of installing it and giving it a try.

A quick FYI: I thought I’d install and have a look, but the install DVD I got in the mail turned out to be about as useful as a third nipple. Download the installer from the website instead. That works fine it seems. Download speeds have been much impoved, doing about 2 MB/s.

Let me know how it works… my box is still lying here

I’d say the game should have been in development at least another year. I guess the small MMO developers will continue to use this kind of release model, to be able to finance their development. Unfortunately the risk involved in releasing what is essentially a beta-product is high. CCP managed this with EVE, which has since enjoyed 7 healthy years of development. I’m hoping MO will have subscription numbers to allow Starvault to make necessary improvements to the game for at least another year. The problem is that they seem to be devoting a lot of programming resources for game balancing and bug fixing, so I just hope they have enough resources to actually correct the more fundamental flaws and shortcomings.
So what are the major gripes so far? The world feels too small to be the arena of a sandbox MMO with waring guilds and alliances. The continent has about the same landmass as Kalimdor in WoW, however the lack of instant transportation makes it seem a lot larger, but still not large enough in my opinion. I still manage to get lost every time I log in though They also haven’t opened up their mega-city of Tindreme, which was supposed to be mindblowingly big. Let’s hope they can get it into the game and that it delivers on it’s promise.
The quality and performance of graphics are poor, and even though this isn’t high on my list of priorities in a game normally, but there are some game-breaking graphics problems in MO (fisheye lens, motion blurs and stuff that makes combat extremely jerky and difficult.) The major problem is just the lack of faith in the developers that come from having seen the beautiful trailers, and heard all their sweet promises, and then have a very subpar product released. I remember saying that they couldn’t go wrong with the Unreal engine, but they have.
It has it’s redeeming features though. The skill system seems really good, the best I think I’ve seen. You skill up pretty quickly at first too, so you feel like you can be competitive without grinding weasels for hours and hours. Crafting is very complex, but not fully implemented. Crafters are the driving force of MO, as they should be in a sandbox. There is no stuff to buy anywhere, except from other players. And it seems like the majority of the players are quite mature, and ganking is not a big problem (it seems). I’ve had encounters with many other players on my expeditions, and they’ve all left me alone.
So to sum up this monsterpost, I’ll keep testing it from time to time, and hopefully Starvault will begin to deliver on their promises, because there is potential in this game, and in my eyes; a lot of it.