To All My Homies:

[Emdash]

WELL, I have excess mental energy that I would be able to use on trying to coordinate a meeting of people with the necessary pull to reinvigorate MO as well as generally realigning the game; however, like the rest of the people who tried this, I have not been able to gain any momentum. It's not as much self-confidence as I think I don't really care about being shit on if I think there is a chance I will be successful. Using this model, I have accomplished a lot of shit maybe even I thought I couldn't do.

I am IN WAITING. This forum has been dead; Reddit is dying; there isn't really much I can do besides say I really would have helped. I HAVE tried to spitball and discuss ( as well as encourage discussion and even encourage people TO discuss, with success.) I believe in some ways over the time I have been here (since end13,) I HAVE helped.

Most of us know MO is on a track unlike it was ever on before. I don't think it's worth laying out the details on that at the moment. It's known. I'm not super bitter, but I did have a part of me that thought they might recognize things and take larger steps. I don't even need to be involved in whatever happens, but it needs to happen. I would like to be involved

Peace tho and hi Melly.

 

[CherryKush]

This forum has been dead; Reddit is dying; there isn't really much I can do besides say I really would have helped.

Everyone has lost hope...

 

[Rhodri_Taliesin]

WELL, I have excess mental energy that I would be able to use on trying to coordinate a meeting of people with the necessary pull to reinvigorate MO as well as generally realigning the game; however, like the rest of the people who tried this, I have not been able to gain any momentum. It's not as much self-confidence as I think I don't really care about being shit on if I think there is a chance I will be successful. Using this model, I have accomplished a lot of shit maybe even I thought I couldn't do.

I am IN WAITING. This forum has been dead; Reddit is dying; there isn't really much I can do besides say I really would have helped. I HAVE tried to spitball and discuss ( as well as encourage discussion and even encourage people TO discuss, with success.) I believe in some ways over the time I have been here (since end13,) I HAVE helped.

Most of us know MO is on a track unlike it was ever on before. I don't think it's worth laying out the details on that at the moment. It's known. I'm not super bitter, but I did have a part of me that thought they might recognize things and take larger steps. I don't even need to be involved in whatever happens, but it needs to happen. I would like to be involved

Peace tho and hi Melly.

No game succeeds where marketing does not exist.

A: It's not enough to simply have a game exist if the people do not know about it.

&

B: If the product on offer does not meet expectations from the marketing campaign and does not hold any significant appeal, player retention suffers.
What does this game do that is unique and one of a kind? What sets it apart from the rest of the medieval/fantasy survival/sims?

I've said for years when I did play and was active that combat/pvp is all well and good, but without other functions to add meaning and reason and motivation to our actions that it becomes a stale gameplay loop that inevitably gets supplanted by something newer, shinier, better or differently made.

 

[MolagAmur]

No game succeeds where marketing does not exist.

A: It's not enough to simply have a game exist if the people do not know about it.

&

B: If the product on offer does not meet expectations from the marketing campaign and does not hold any significant appeal, player retention suffers.
What does this game do that is unique and one of a kind? What sets it apart from the rest of the medieval/fantasy survival/sims?

I've said for years when I did play and was active that combat/pvp is all well and good, but without other functions to add meaning and reason and motivation to our actions that it becomes a stale gameplay loop that inevitably gets supplanted by something newer, shinier, better or differently made.

The thing I've figured out is Henrik/SV doesn't WANT a lot of people to know about it. I think a lot of people overlooked exactly what happened at launch. We were told the servers could handle tens of thousands of players at once. They sold well over 10k copies knowing damn well that the server could in fact not handle even 20% of that. They then opened up the alt servers that still had massive login/crash issues.

We had Asmongold streaming the game and seemingly having a decent time. It obviously wasn't his kind of MMO, but he seemed to appreciate what Star Vault was trying to do and naturally a lot of his viewers also bought the game...only to realize they couldn't login. We had 12+ hour long queues remember? lmao. It was a shit show and iirc Star Vault wasn't offering refunds...but I could be remembering that wrong. Thousands of people were also outraged that we didn't have a NA server. Why Henrik was/is against something so reasonable such as that blows my mind. The common reasoning him and some of the community say is because they "didn't want to split the playerbase". Well we had over 10,000 copies sold and thousands of those potential players didn't even stick around for the lack of NA server...so I'd say not having an NA server made us have an even smaller population. And by the way, adding Sarducca is going to split the even smaller playerbase.

But back to what I realized, is that Henrik doesn't want this game to be large. He wants it to be one single server with 1500-2000 players maximum. Thats why they decided to make the world so much larger than in MO1 (aside from Henrik ego saying "woo we have a 6x larger map"). After the failed launch and negative reviews the game bled players quickly and once we had around 2000-2500 playing Henrik said "hey guys we fixed the servers and they are running stable now". Yeah its totally not because thousands quit because they felt scammed...

I HATE how shitty Star Vault is at running their business. They accidentally made a really cool MMO a long time ago with a ton of potential...but have fumbled around for over a decade and wasted their golden chance to start new with MO2. I hope Henrik plans to personally keep the lights on with MO2 like he did MO1...for the sake of the people who find enjoyment in this game.

Their best bet is for Henrik to sit back and do CEO things while hiring a good lead game designer who can make the game fun.

 

[Emdash]

No game succeeds where marketing does not exist.

A: It's not enough to simply have a game exist if the people do not know about it.

&

B: If the product on offer does not meet expectations from the marketing campaign and does not hold any significant appeal, player retention suffers.
What does this game do that is unique and one of a kind? What sets it apart from the rest of the medieval/fantasy survival/sims?

I've said for years when I did play and was active that combat/pvp is all well and good, but without other functions to add meaning and reason and motivation to our actions that it becomes a stale gameplay loop that inevitably gets supplanted by something newer, shinier, better or differently made.

I don't envy who has to moderate this botwar, but...

I think that the marketing need might be overstated. Even if it's not, in its state, basically since launch, it has been very hard to market. People know about the game, though. Marketing is different now. Most people can be pulled into trying something on a site like MMORPG dot com or even MMORPG Reddit.

Secondly, the combat is bad. With a better combat system, I believe post-beta MO2 would, minus server limitations (maybe multiple servers?) would be a game that people played. I dunno if you ever ended up playing MO2 at all, but other than the joke that is melee combat, the game wasn't too bad when you could put down your house and before there were so many of the 'wrong direction' mechanics.

I do agree that they should focus on more in depth mechanics and that they are spending time adding in PoIs and mounts when they should be focusing on the deeper 'bones' of the game, like the social structure. There will be people who pvp, and that's cool, but there will be people who actually want structure as well, and there should be a nice conflict between both sides. I really feel they missed a chance to add social roles and instead added stuff like grinding mastery.

So yeah, as Molag was saying, the game is neither 'fun' nor 'immersive,' nor is it really hardcore. It's not really doing anything. I want to talk with people about this stuff, but the weird thing is like, for instance, on Reddit, I post stuff and sometimes people are like NOO and other times people seem really receptive. There doesn't seem to be a method as to why, but either way, it doesn't accomplish anything.

 

[Jackdstripper]

In case people havent figured out yet Henrik is a dreamer, a very stubborn, very driven, but an impossibly expectant dreamer none the less.

He set out to make his dream game based on his first gaming love that was UO. However, his dreams are so big( and his stubbornness so strong) that he refuses to let the laws of physics restrain him. One single server for the whole world being a prime example. A pipe dream right from the start. Its never worked, it still doesn’t work, and he is still refusing to adapt his dream.

There are other countless examples.

His love for the rpk and ganking gameplay is one other. While UO had RPKs and gankers, that wasnt the majority of players, nor the point of the game. You need a lot of sheep to sustain a pack of wolves. If all the sheep leave, the wolves starve. Mo2 caters almost exclusively to wolves. Henrik has time and time again tried to make this game more and more RPK friendly, only to see his community dwindle and no new players joining. 15 years after he started this game and MO still has the same tiny player-base consisting mostly of squabbling old vets, while to everyone else MO has largely become known for ganking, greefing and janky combat.

I could go on, but what is the point? This is Henriks private server that we are allowed to play on for a fee. Until he changes, MO2 will always be in the same boat its been for the last 15 years.

 

[Emdash]

In case people havent figured out yet Henrik is a dreamer, a very stubborn, very driven, but an impossibly expectant dreamer none the less.

He set out to make his dream game

I would say (and not gonna keep blowing up this thread, but I will reply once more,) that IN GENERAL, I might disagree with some of his vision, and we have seen some of the things fail in real time, but the truly bad changes seem to come when he feels like people are leaving the game (like adding the mastery system.) So his absolute worst design decisions, ones that will be really hard to take back, aren't based on his vision. His vision isn't wrong per se, or at least it's not impossible to enjoy, but it's stuff like, again, PING NORMALIZATION. He wanted a single server, but instead of making the game play well adjusted and less finely detailed (to make it easier for those with poor latency to compete,) he added ping normalization and long parry windows.

That's my PoV, and maybe I'm wrong.

As I said, though, until Henrik makes himself available on MOFO or MOReddit, I'm dun even wasting my time. People might not care, but that's my line in the sand at this point. The game is shitting out, so we can make more crazy changes that will inevitably fuck the game up more OR we can actually discuss. IF something like an e-mail is sent out, too, I imagine people will reappear. There are many people who still want to play this game, enough people that they don't need to look for a big influx of new players, but they just have to get things right. There are people you can @ on this forum that would probably come back.

Speaking of @Robmo do me a cake day favor and tell Henrik that some person that never took the chance to meet him when he was available is saying he should visit here or Reddit more regularly. That seems like the only thing that is gonna help at this point. SEBS, TOO.

peace yall and enjoy the botwar.

 

[Rhodri_Taliesin]

In case people havent figured out yet Henrik is a dreamer, a very stubborn, very driven, but an impossibly expectant dreamer none the less.

He set out to make his dream game based on his first gaming love that was UO. However, his dreams are so big( and his stubbornness so strong) that he refuses to let the laws of physics restrain him. One single server for the whole world being a prime example. A pipe dream right from the start. Its never worked, it still doesn’t work, and he is still refusing to adapt his dream.

There are other countless examples.

His love for the rpk and ganking gameplay is one other. While UO had RPKs and gankers, that wasnt the majority of players, nor the point of the game. You need a lot of sheep to sustain a pack of wolves. If all the sheep leave, the wolves starve. Mo2 caters almost exclusively to wolves. Henrik has time and time again tried to make this game more and more RPK friendly, only to see his community dwindle and no new players joining. 15 years after he started this game and MO still has the same tiny player-base consisting mostly of squabbling old vets, while to everyone else MO has largely become known for ganking, greefing and janky combat.

I could go on, but what is the point? This is Henriks private server that we are allowed to play on for a fee. Until he changes, MO2 will always be in the same boat its been for the last 15 years.

Preaching to the choir, I've said that for years and only got BTFO'd for it. Hence why I give and gave nothing to this iteration of the game, especially after they failed to follow through on promises of some kind of carry over from the first game into this one. Yeah, Like I'm gonna no life to catch up in this one after all the work I put in the first one, lol. Lmao even.

The regular players need motivations, the fighting will spring forth naturally when builders have reasons to build and squabble. Whether that be the Religion system and integration of the Deva system that they conceptualized a decade ago causing holy-wars or territory control and mechanics allowing players to exploit the landscape for farming and natural resources or town control and tax control. Basically all the reasons people have ever fought wars and had battles and sieges and conflict would be natural motivators for such if SV simply gave more consideration to the players who build and create and nurture new players into long time players as opposed to what I've often described as the pathological and almost parasitic nature of the "wolves" or PK/RPK players.

The first game was often such a headache as the mechanics actively discouraged players from being "good guys" or "ARPK". The game just didn't support NOT being a mass murdering red flagged psychopathic hobo. Sure you could access storages in towns, but that's also nothing that couldn't be worked around with constructing storage sheds and using red camps.

 

[ThaBadMan]

MO2 was for me SVs last chance at doing it right, I had fun for as long as the combat was fun. But this time I left as so many did in MO when the same shit happened.

MO2 was a true copy/paste store bought copy of MO with better graphics, this time however they could not blame inexperience and old code.

Still have not logged on since before release. All hail advanced Swedish written lore!

 

[Rhodri_Taliesin]

MO2 was for me SVs last chance at doing it right, I had fun for as long as the combat was fun. But this time I left as so many did in MO when the same shit happened.

MO2 was a true copy/paste store bought copy of MO with better graphics, this time however they could not blame inexperience and old code.

Still have not logged on since before release. All hail advanced Swedish written lore!

"Advanced Swedish written lore" never gets old. Much like this game.
You know what's wild to me is back in MO1 when farms and extractors and all the new TC tools came out that helped to automate production and make some materials cheap, that people actually complained that it wasn't as time consuming, that there wasn't MORE timers and grind.

Sh*t, imagine complaining that a stack of steel got cheap when instead of spending all your time grinding timers to get goods, you could focus on PvP or political wars, or literally anything else besides the farming aspect. I swear, half the time this community didn't know what it wanted, it just liked to complain about things.

 

[ThaBadMan]

"Advanced Swedish written lore" never gets old. Much like this game.
You know what's wild to me is back in MO1 when farms and extractors and all the new TC tools came out that helped to automate production and make some materials cheap, that people actually complained that it wasn't as time consuming, that there wasn't MORE timers and grind.

Sh*t, imagine complaining that a stack of steel got cheap when instead of spending all your time grinding timers to get goods, you could focus on PvP or political wars, or literally anything else besides the farming aspect. I swear, half the time this community didn't know what it wanted, it just liked to complain about things.

Back then we where all naive hopefulls hoping for a real economy so timers was a real concern. Alliances did not want small guilds to be able to outperform them with small numbers.
Resources was THE main way guilds and alliances would and planned to rid themselves of bandit nuisances. Sadly none of that happened. Trade routes, caravans, supply lines, etc.
Thats the struggle with a MMo like this, PvPers want this, PvEers want that, RPers want the other thing and empire builders want this and crafters want that and so it goes the more playstyles your MMO caters to, all would be the best but very unlikely due to the amount of work.

But all in all we all wanted the same simulated dangerous hardcore world that drew us in. We only needed the tools to build upon it. Instead we got this....

 

[MolagAmur]

Yeahh I was one of those people who complained about the automated stuff. Yeah it made it cheaper and easier, but it also completely changed the meta to tungsteel armor and weapons minimum. I was NOT a fan of those. I was also a hybrid 99% of the time though so I'm biased on what meta was fun.

Scale/Incisium was the most fun combat of MO imo.

 

[Rhodri_Taliesin]

Yeahh I was one of those people who complained about the automated stuff. Yeah it made it cheaper and easier, but it also completely changed the meta to tungsteel armor and weapons minimum. I was NOT a fan of those. I was also a hybrid 99% of the time though so I'm biased on what meta was fun.

Scale/Incisium was the most fun combat of MO imo.

I recall, I still think you were wrong in your position, but everyone has a right to an opinion. We could go back and forth for hours on "what if's" and "what could've been's".

Ultimately the end result was that instead of embracing the streamlining of the less fun elements of the game, we regressed to a system that forced us to do things the slower, less efficient, and more boring way, which of course enriched and empowered people who used macros/alts/bots to do the grunt work.

 

[Jackdstripper]

This game has far worse problems than the tediousness of resource extraction. I have never heard anyone rage quitting this game because of how long it took to make metals. As long as its the same for everyone, then its fair.

People quit because combat is janky at best of times. People leave because they get killed anywhere they go, and the community is toxic af. People quit because of the endless bugs that often get you killed. People leave because there is little balance in builds. People leave because large scale pvp is a laggy, buggy mess. People leave because of cheaters and exploiters. People leave for the unprofessionalism of GMs that play favourite.

 

[Teknique]

In case people havent figured out yet Henrik is a dreamer, a very stubborn, very driven, but an impossibly expectant dreamer none the less.

He set out to make his dream game based on his first gaming love that was UO. However, his dreams are so big( and his stubbornness so strong) that he refuses to let the laws of physics restrain him. One single server for the whole world being a prime example. A pipe dream right from the start. Its never worked, it still doesn’t work, and he is still refusing to adapt his dream.

There are other countless examples.

His love for the rpk and ganking gameplay is one other. While UO had RPKs and gankers, that wasnt the majority of players, nor the point of the game. You need a lot of sheep to sustain a pack of wolves. If all the sheep leave, the wolves starve. Mo2 caters almost exclusively to wolves. Henrik has time and time again tried to make this game more and more RPK friendly, only to see his community dwindle and no new players joining. 15 years after he started this game and MO still has the same tiny player-base consisting mostly of squabbling old vets, while to everyone else MO has largely become known for ganking, greefing and janky combat.

I could go on, but what is the point? This is Henriks private server that we are allowed to play on for a fee. Until he changes, MO2 will always be in the same boat its been for the last 15 years.

You say that the game caters to griefers but is that really the issue? The reputation/murdercount system being a glaringly obvious exception everything is more softcore than its ever been, blink striking lictors, guilds can't be destroyed, no forced wardecs, mats raining down from the sky, sieges seem nonexistant. Is the issue not that it's too hardcore but that the game is just bad. Think about it just the class balance alone is damning for the game. You have a game where mages literally can't pve at all, mounted classes that just play laughably stupidly, additional primary skill requirements and random nerfs that are designed to make any creative class customization useless. Its footfighter online, which is fun in its own limited way, but thats about it.

 

[MolagAmur]

I would say the biggest issue, aside from dogshit combat and bugs, is that the game doesn't respect your time and the endgame loop feels meaningless. It takes so much time to gear up, gather horses, gather people, and travel to wherever you're going. You really need a lot of free time to play the game to the point to where it can be enjoyable imo. I ran a guild of about 15 at launch with mostly people who could play from 6pm to 9/10pm. After we did all things I just mentioned, if we made it all the way to a dungeon and wipe due to zergs or mobs running through walls...then that was pretty much it...that was our night as a group. It was so exhausting and just plain didn't feel worth the time.

But perhaps more importantly for the people who do have the free time, the endgame is just terrible. Maybe I'm just old now and its a different time, but the politics and conflicts of MO1 were just so unique and interesting. The sieges and wars felt so personal and like they really mattered. Claiming a town as your own was a cool mechanic too, that they removed and as far as I know don't have in MO2. Idk, its hard to really explain what I mean here, but I think those that were a part of it back then know what I'm talking about. It could very be that I'm just older now and care less too...idk. Its just odd that after all these years MO2 doesn't have more features to support the endgame and push guilds to fight over things other than boredom.

Point is...games bad. SV fumbled (surprise). But yet again, it can all be fixed so damn easily if there could just be a competent person in charge to tweak things how they need to be. Thats the SV we all know.

 

[Amelia]

It's time to repopulate MO1 !

 

[Morwen]

Well, before investing again time on this game I am waiting (and maybe other people too) for some answers to be replied.

• I am waiting for official apologies on all the disrespectful and unprofessional Henrik comments on twitch chats like "game is not ready yet lol, go play wow lol" and using MO official channels to advertise Mortal Exodus or UE5 tech demo like the dragon animation and even having the mortal exodus link in Henrik discord profile during months, what are you doing Henrik?
• I am waiting for an explanation on why after TC launch it took months for the team to patch all the not working TC stuff (even the small changes like prominence fix or storehouse exploit). I was in a discord with 300+ players and some streamers trying to siege and make TC work and some of those players and streamers like Jonah havent touched the game again since.
• I am waiting for an official explanation on the Epic launch hack and youtube videos of british players speaking fluent russian while emptying their banks. Also we all know the ultumeki incident wasnt a couple of minutes like Robmo said.
• I am waiting for an official explanation from the dev team on why there are screenshots on fishy discord of sarducca wood or meteor stuff and why Sebastian keeps patching on Fridays and leaving the game unplayable during the weekend.
• You make now a TC poll for the current 500 players when the game has no TC and current players dont participate on massive TC, are you doing game design by polls? really? the poll should be done to the thousands of players that are in other games. Who is your game designer?

Regarding relics launch:

• is your team going to take 6 months to patch relics after relics launch?
• is your team going to patch on Fridays on relic launch?
• is your unprofessional GM team going to be ready for relics?
• are the nodes ready to hold hundred of players for the relics or are you going to waste everyone's time?
• is the login server ready for relics?

Can all this be answered, Henrik? can we have a working TC and a stable game?

Yes or no?

The game doesnt need marketing. Everybody in the genre knows about the game but just decide to dont play it. Stop the copium, the marketing money could be used to hire a competent game designer.

Doesnt SV brag about selling 100k copies when MO2 hadnt even launched? why do we need marketing then? the game only needs a couple of those thousands back.

Just fix the game.