We’re not sure whether to raise our eyebrows or be impressed by the ambition shown by the fact that a small company with two live games (including a newer game that’s been plagued by issues) has just announced a third.
Yes, last night developer Star Vault, which currently operates Mortal Online and 2022’s Mortal Online 2, announced Mortal Exodus, and it’s set up less like a spinoff and more like a solid third entry in the series as the “exodus” in the title refers to an exodus from the into spaaaaaace. (This of course presumes you don’t count the failed Mortal Royale.) Either way, the studio doesn’t want us thinking of this as MO3 but rather as “MO2 but in a different setting, using the same technology and systems.”
“We must leave the mud and reach for the stars,” Exodus’ trailer says.
Before you panic – and believe me, the Mortal Online Discord was in full meltdown mode last night because of the perception that MO2 is in need of major help – Star Vault has already said that development of ME won’t impact MO2. In fact, while some assets built for one game will be shared with the other, the teams for each are separate, and the studio asserts that this project will allow it to achieve its goal: to “obtain more resources for MO2.”
“100% of the Mortal Online 2 dev team is focused on Territory Control and fixing bugs currently, and we are looking to further expand the team in bottleneck areas,” SV’s Henrik Nystrom writes.
“Mortal Exodus is not a sequel to Mortal Online 2 and it has not and won’t affect Mortal Online 2’s development in any way. Many systems and components made for MO2 are transferable and will be passed on to Mortal Exodus, which will be worked on by a different team. Mortal Exodus is a long term project for the future, that will help the development of MO2. Mortal Online 2 is the most important focus of Star Vault and we are spending all our resources and focus on making sure we can deliver TC in a balanced and stable way. The next big milestone for MO2 is the UE5 transition and Epic Games Store release, which also includes populating Myrland with more AI, PoIs, an improved new player experience, lots of polish, new player recruitment (guild noticeboards) and an improved standing and criminal system.”
Mortal Online 2, of course, launched at the top of 2022 as a buy-to-play FFA PvP sandbox; it struggled with server capacity problems in its early months and peak concurrency has hovered around 2000 players over the last few months, down from nearly 10,000 at launch.
Free-to-play Mortal Online itself is still up and playable, though it hasn’t broken 50 concurrent players on Steam since 2020, which as reviewers note makes it a great time to check it out since you’re unlikely to be ganked.
