I’ve been waiting for Darkfall Online for quite some time – and probably like you I still haven’t secured a copy of the game yet, maybe this week!  At any rate, more recently I’ve been watching another game develope that reminds me (and others) a lot of DF, it’s Mortal Online.  And it’s pretty damn similar in many respects.  It’s a fantasy, sandbox, full PvP and full loot MMORPG.  Just looking at those features, it does sound the same, a carbon copy if you will.  But upon closer inspection, their are some pretty big differences.

Graphics are an obvious example of one of the big differences between the two MMORPG’s.  Mortal Online has Darkfall Online beat hands down with a next-gen MMO based on the Unreal Graphics Engine.  Darkfall’s graphics more resemble something along the lines of maybe Everquest II.  For a great comparison on graphics, see the two accompanying video’s below.  Both are shot showing in-game play instead of your standard cinematic special effects that look nothing like the game.  Watch a bit of each video and you’ll quickly see that DF doesn’t hold a candle to MO.

Darkfall Online Video                      Mortal Online Video

See what I mean?  But just because DF has weak graphics in comparison to MO, it does have some shiny features of it’s own.  While MO’s next-gen graphics can be attributed to it’s roughly four year development process, DF has been under development for twice that long – which means more content.  Sheer size of the game world lends a big nod to DF.  MO will be releasing with about 1/6th of it’s overall game world available to the players when it launches this summer, but even if that weren’t the case, DF is still larger.

MO has some pretty unique game features that I haven’t yet seen in an MMO that sound pretty exciting, some of them.  For one – the world is filled with unique places, objects, spells and monsters.  If you are the first person to discover some new area on the map, you are given the oppurtunity to name the area.  I can only imagine how bad of an idea that can be, but for now it’s an option.  I’m sure you can imagine some area names people will come up with that won’t exactly fit the theme of the game.  Unique monsters however is a pretty neat idea.  There are creatures out there that once slain, will never be seen in the world again.  The player who slays them will be given a trophy in one form or another – be it a unique title, a scar on their character to show the story.

Speaking of unique – spells and some skills are going to be uniquely learned in the game world as well.  Whether players decide to teach others how to perform a move or cast a spell is completely up to the character.  Giving some lucky players the chance to really be unique.  Both games offer players serious PvP, including the option to fully loot your defeated opponent.  MO may or may not (still up in the air) allow players to loot the unique abilities and spells players learn if they are defeated in combat.  That remains to be seen whether that is going to be unrealistic or not, depends on how the handle it.  Unique spells could be based off of items found in the game – so players aren’t actually looting the memory of other players, that would just be odd.  But then that throws a wrench in the idea of teaching another player, unless they to acquire that same unique item once taught?  Either way, the idea of looting spells that are unique is interesting.  You see a player casting some really cool spell and he refuses to teach you, bash his head in (preferably not the part of the head that contains spell memory) and take it from him.  That’s full PvP for you.

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