Mortal Online, a free sandbox MMO from Star Vault, has released a new City Building feature. This new content allows guilds to build a huge variety of buildings on their territory. They can hire almost any NPC in the game for their city, and if players buy from one of the hired vendors the guild will earn taxes from the transaction. Guards can be hired to protect the city from other guilds and criminals, or—to make the city guild-only usable—keep everyone else out. By using these tools, guilds can now build massive cities that will be just as useful for players as the game's existing cities.

Check out the city building trailer below and download Mortal Online at the official site!

In the next few weeks, Mortal Online is rolling out some big updates, starting with their new territory control system. If you don't know about Mortal Online, it's a fantasy MMO done in first person a la Elder Scrolls Oblivion, but with a harder edge. The territory control system which enables you and your guild to own "zones" or land.

When your guild controls a zone, you can decide whether it's a dictatorship or a democracy. If you choose democracy, you have to go through a toilsome voting process to see if your awesome guild or some other loser guild gets to have control of the zone. With a dictatorship the only way another guild can take your land is through war! Now we're talkin'.

If this sounds like fun-tastic fun to you, then you might want to take advantage of Mortal Online's summer offer of 20% off the original price. They do have a load of cool updates coming up every new week (crossbows anyone?) and now's a great time to jump on. Check out more on Mortal Online's website.

According to an official post on the Mortal Online website, the team is planning to hit open beta over the weekend so that players can get a taste of the game before its commercial launch. As well, since they note that their Christmas sells went well, they are also planning to offer 5 Euros off all purchases of Mortal Online made during the open beta weekend.

So what are you waiting for? Head on over to the Mortal Online website and check out this unique MMORPG! Be warned, however, that the servers are located in Stockholm and there is a possibility that they may cap the server populations. Be sure to tell your friends!

We've primarily been tracking the upcoming Mortal Online's development progress via its online newsletters; one of the most notable was the June edition, from which we reported the newest playable race, the Half Orcs. Yesterday, the October newsletter announced that the newest version of the beta client (release of v.0.8.10.11) had just gone live, introducing a bunch of new features and fixes. One of these features is the first version of the "housing system," which allows you to gather materials like timber and craft your own personal dwelling. The new client also introduced the ability to tame a horse as a mount, finally allowing players a better way to travel.

Additional updates include optimizations to both client performance and server stability, and a new patching software that promises to make upgrading to future versions easier. The developers also direct players to check out new additions to the official site's photos page, and tell users to stay tuned to the front page for upcoming story and lore info in the future. Check out the full announcement after the jump, and visit ZAM's Mortal Online portal site for more news and information.

Mortal Online has released a little blurb for a June newsletter with tons of info, including their playable race. the Orch!

Thieves, traitors, beasts. The fear of the half orcs has brought them many undesirable names. As sons and daughters of the unspeakable crimes committed in the wake of a war, the half orcs’ life stories are often stained by tragedies. The majority of the half orcs are doomed to roam aimlessly in a world where the full blood orcs look upon them as weaklings and the civilised world despise them as witless barbarians and fear their orcish heritage. However, few surpass them in strength and stamina, on the battlefield or in the arena, and the non-human heritage in their blood and mind make even veteran soldiers cautious.

Click here to read more about the Half Orc

They'll also be attending the game convention in Leipzig, Germany this year, so I'm sure we'll see some coverage from there!

Mortal Online has published a piece on their official page regarding what skills and attributes we can expect to see from them!

Character skills are very important in Mortal Online, as it is your skills and not any "character level" that define what you can and cannot do in the game. The skill system itself is very dynamic, meaning attributes and skills are dependent on each other, and that training one of them also improves the other. It also gives you the opportunity to fully customize your character. Unfortunately, this system may seem a bit confusing at first, especially when reading about it, but let’s look at each piece of the system one at a time:

Read on for the rest of the look at what's in store from this developing game!

In very exciting news, Star Vault has announced their new game!

For the first time ever we at Star Vault are proud to announce the title of our project: Mortal Online!

It is a very exciting day for everyone involved in this project and we have had some stressful but rewarding days prior to this release. We are very pleased to introduce you to the first teaser of Mortal Online as well as our official homepage and our forums. In the forums you will be able to discuss everything regarding the game, and don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter, that way you will stay up to date on the progress of the game!

Each month we will release as much information as we are able to. This information will concern features, screenshots, races and classes and much more. Every so often we will also try to absorb what is said in the forums and what result the surveys display. Some great ideas might even make their way into the game itself!

Check out the official site, and keep an eye for the most current information as this game develops.