After 350 hours of Mortal Online 2 gameplay, I have decided that Mortal Online 2 is soundly the worst MMO I have ever played. And that's saying a lot because I have played many MMOs over the years such as Ultima Online, Darkfall, etc. Below are my personal issues with MO2.
Henrik claims that the Star Vault team could not have known one hundreds thousand customers would purchase his game. However, these sales did not happen overnight. A lot of these customers did in fact purchase the game well in advance. So Star Vault had more than enough time to prepare for a proper game release.
Henrik spent well over a year hyping up the game to players. Stating the map and server could handle 100k players. That the map would have more than enough content for everyone. That they did not want to repeat MO1 and had learned from their past mistakes. Yet all these statements which are on video were fragrant lies.
Their PING Normalization System does not work. Most of the population plays in the US and Steam tracking proves this. Yet we are forced to play a game with 150+ ping. On top of that, the servers are constantly having mirroring issues. This makes combat with other players nearly unbearable.
The lack of Star Vault staff shows as well. Servers are constantly having issues when the Star Vault team is asleep. Yet Star Vault has yet to hire second or third-shift teams to deal with issues. Which is a basic practice for any live service game.
This part of your review is extremely on point.
However, my main issue is how toxic the Mortal Online community is as a whole. I have never seen a community be so overwhelmingly racist, discriminatory, homophobic, xenophobic, or misogynistic before. This toxic community pushes new players out completely since most players simply do not want to deal with these behaviors. This game may as well be 4chan Online.
Sitting in Meduli I overheard players on the main server discussing killing African Americans, raping women, and how whites are better than other races. When I recorded and reported this well over a week ago, nothing at all was done. The same players, are playing, and still doing the same poor behaviors.
This is where it derails a bit. Every community has these issues when moderation does not exist at all, because this is what humanity sounds like when allowed to speak freely and anonymously. Free speech and freedom of expression are very valuable, and that we have reached the point where 4chan is the only notable place on the Internet where it is (mostly) possible and almost entirely concentrated is a bit disconcerting.
Not really related to the game, though I do recommend you read some Solzhenitsyn.
And Stat Vaults' silence on the issue is deafening.
What's worse is Star Vault and the Discord Moderation team take a very lax stance on all these behaviors. Nearly nothing is ever done about players breaking what should be zero tolerance guidelines.
And here things shift back on topic. This is you making a bad/the wrong assumption, I think. I sincerely doubt Star Vault records VoIP discussions, as that'd be quite taxing on storage. From personal experience and the experiences of others, it's also easy to gather that the GM's are both lacking in proper tools to address issues and overall bodies to actually watch over the quantity of active players.
You'll likely get more mileage by submitting video evidence that has the offending players easily identifiable. I digress; this puts the ball back in Star Vault's court, but for the same reasons outlined in the first section of your post rather than bringing things down to choosing not to respond to specific things.
It seems we are never going to get a proper Full Loot MMO, unless a company finds the will to properly regulate its community and stand by
its promises.
Never say never, though the chances aren't good. There are two types of companies: those concerned with making a profit, and those concerned with stroking the ego of their figurehead. Only the latter can likely produce a good sandbox MMO as the former will always appeal to the masses through simplification and monetization.
We are fortunate that Star Vault is the latter. We are unfortunate that Henrik is not a good stand-in for Richard Garriott in his youth.
Must be Murican, your view on freedom is crazy...Yes the alcohol you consume does melt your brain.
Very off topic, but it's a bit ironic how we Americans turned out despite our foundations, isn't it? Though if you want to know why, an okay starting point for the trail begins roughly in 1918 and not at all in the US.
Dont blame the community for SVs failings. They make it and they enforce it. And they and only they can change it. We can merely complain and point out the shit they do.
An apt summary. Could probably end the thread with this and we'd all be better for it.