First Impressions

The very first thing I noticed after finally logging into the game is that the first person view is absolutely incredible. I think Star Vault has really succeeded at creating a more realistic first person view than any I've ever seen. I spent my first couple minutes in game just admiring the unique perspective and the motion blur as I looked around.

Mortal Gold Online - Combat Beta Screens                 

The small island we were placed on looks impressive, especially for being a temporary beta test island, and for some reason, I just can't get over how incredible the sky looks (something I don't think I've ever really noticed in an MMO). Some Mortal Gold of the other beta testers and myself had a lot of fun exploring the island and finding a few hidden ruins. Traversing the island is no easy task, so although the island is relatively small, it certainly seems large. Not only are there mountains and other land formations obstructing any straight paths across the island, but navigating the island is very difficult until you've walked around it enough to really familiarize yourself with it. At one point, I broke off from the group to do a Mortal Gold little solo exploring, and I quickly realized that I had no idea where I was. For me it was a Mortal Gold really unique experience in an MMO because there was no radar in the upper corner showing me where I was on the map. There was no arrow pointing the way to go. I was actually lost, which made for a truly immersive experience, and this was only on the tiny test island we were placed on. I can only imagine what the immersion of being lost in a much larger and inhabited world would be like.

To put it simply, melee combat is a lot of fun. Circle strafing and spamming the left mouse button is definitely not the strategy to use in this game, as you will run out of stamina very quickly and be rendered helpless. Attacks can be “charged” so that you can release at the precise moment to hit your enemy, which adds to the skill based strategy of combat. Furthermore, blocking Mortal Gold can be very effective, as achieving a perfect block (aiming directly towards the incoming attack with a block) will mitigate a very significant amount of damage that would have otherwise been dealt by the attack. The current prediction system needs a considerable amount of work to ensure that the client side location of players match up with their server side location. It has been frustrating to attack an opponent directly in front of you, only to have the attack miss him. Fortunately, I'm told that the prediction system has been fixed and the corrected system will be Mortal Gold implemented in the next build.

At the moment, weapons are imbalanced, so some weapon types are far more effective than others. However, I imagine weapons and armor will be balanced throughout the remainder of the beta.