Greetings Mortals,
The time is almost here, the release of our largest update to Mortal Online 2 yet is just around the corner.
Sarducaa Release Date
We are pleased to announce that Sarducaa, our new continent hosted on a North American server and opportunity to experience a whole new land starting alongside everyone else equally, will be releasing next week on Wednesday July 1st!
NA East Server Location
We have seen a few people discussing this on our community platforms, and so to clarify why we chose to have the server for Sarducaa located where it is, below is a comment from Henrik Nyström, the CEO of Star Vault:
We want to clarify why the Sarducaa NA server is planned for Canada East rather than a US Central, US West, or US East location.
For Mortal Online 2, this is not only a raw ping-distance decision. Our combat system is real-time and melee-focused, so every player action first depends on the server’s internal tick rate and processing stability. Network latency is then added on top of that. If the server has weaker internal tick performance, the baseline combat response becomes worse for everyone, regardless of how close they are to the datacenter.
Our server architecture is built around multiple systems, processes, and clustered services, many of which are threaded and distributed. However, some of the most critical real-time gameplay work still depends heavily on high-frequency CPU performance and stable tick execution. That makes strong per-core performance a core requirement for the heart of the server simulation, especially at higher population and during large-scale combat.
We also have sensitive infrastructure, security and privacy requirements around our server network setup. The available US locations do not meet the full combination of requirements we need: hardware profile, private infrastructure compatibility, and security model.
Canada East gives us the strongest viable setup currently available for Sarducaa, with the best internal tick-rate headroom and capacity for our real-time server architecture.
The server is located close to Montreal, about 50km from the New York state border, as such from a network perspective, it still gives good coverage for the full NA player base within our ping normalization range, while many EU players can also connect under reasonable conditions.
In short: we are not ignoring location. We are choosing the best complete technical foundation available for MO2’s combat system: internal server tick performance, capacity, private infrastructure requirements, and then the best practical network reach around those constraints.
Housing Upkeep Changes
As we are making a rather impactful change to the way housing upkeep works with the release of Sarducaa, we wanted to let you all know about this ahead of time so that you are aware and can prepare.
The change planned to go live with the release of the Sarducaa Expansion will make it so that only house owners will be able to pay the upkeep on their house.
We are making this change for several important reasons, however the short summary is that this combats and prevents people from owning a near infinite number of houses in the world and taking up the limited world space and housing locations without them needing to be tied to an active account.
We know that many of you in the community have been asking for this to happen for a long time and so we are pleased to announce that we are making the change, however we also understand and appreciate that this also means for some it will no longer be possible to have guild members or friends upkeep their houses while they take a long vacation or extended break from the game. We did not make this decision lightly however, and ultimately this change will better secure the integrity of the game’s housing both in Myrland and for the important release of the new continent.
Steam Summer Sale
Starting tonight, Mortal Online 2 will also be available on the Steam Summer sale for 60% off until July 9th!
See you in Sarducaa,
The Star Vault Team