Let me preface by saying: I like this game a lot. I think its combat is, even with bugs, the best of any mmo on the market right now. There are many other strong reasons to play this game.

But wandering around the zones today, I realised that an already low pop has tanked from underpopulated to effectively empty. Within a month of launch this is very sad.

The reality is, that apart from a few moments here and there (fight for the demon chest) you will barely ever see another player beyond the first 2-3 zones. I would be surprised to learn that there were more than a couple of hundred subscribers right now.

What a shame, and what a failure on Acclaim's part. This really is a good game, and yet Acclaim seems to have completely dropped the ball - poor marketing, payment issues etc. The devs I feel some sympathy for, although their failure to fix basic combat bugs is growing less forgiveable with every week that passes, and the failure to complete inter house pvp mechanics is a disaster - that was the hook that would keep people playing.

I feel genuinely sad about this... finally, an innovative game with a compelling world, great combat, and interesting classes; no gear grind, well written quest texts, some very fun plot-driven events. And a great set up for interesting pvp.

Here are some thoughts I had on potential reasons for this good game going to waste -

a) Bugs? Perhaps... although i do not think that they are that much worse than any other game's at this stage, and the combat is still fun. That said, the incredibly long list of abilities that do not work as described is very irritating - and becomes more so as time goes on.

b) Poor starter experience? Will have contributed. Five kill boar quests in a row was a dreadful idea... they should have sent you to town MUCH more quickly, do the murder mystery wonder round the houses... and the tutorial is awful awful

c) Skill deck too complex? Sadly, many people wont have understood it. Those who do, realise its about the best combat system in the world of MMOs right now. It's just that great. But most people wont give it enough time.

d) No gear grind. People are so mind-numbed by wow, that they cannot understand that you don't get loot with stats. Personally,I think this is one of the greatest features of this game, but it transpires that the majority of people are so trained to expect a gear hamster treadmill that untraining them may be too hard..

e) Bad customer service. The while fiasco over the cancel button and cc card payments is a real disgrace. No excuses from Accalim here. I think this may have done a lot to wreck the chances of this game, and Acclaim should be ashamed of itself.

f) Poor marketing? I am in two minds about this. I quite liked the lack of hype, and they are working on mmorpg.com and others quite well. The two week free trial is what got me involved, so it was useful. Developer webinars are cool.
But so many chances have been missed. Metacritic still does not allow reviews of the game because 'it is not released'. That is a terrible mistake. Metacritic is god. Where is the G4TV interview? Why is this not on Steam? etc etc The gamer blogs hardly touched it. The ball was dropped on marketing, I think.

g) Incomplete inter-house pvp features. This was a very bad mistake, imo. A compelling narrative surrounding the battle between houses would have kept people in game. PVP is the best part of TCOS. The factions are nicely conceived. But its all dressed up with no place to go. They really should have got this in at launch.

i) Lag. This is another killer - although personally I have not felt it so badly as others seem to. This game revolves around its great combat - but if that is falling apart because of server-side issues, that is a death knell. What happened here?

I have never seen such a quiet release of an mmo, ever.  It is almost like acclaim is trying to keep this game a secret or something. 

Regardless of my issues with the game it is sad that it died off so fast. It looked so promising during development. I was really hoping for a different experience, tho. Not in terms of the combat system, or character progression even, but in terms of leveling options and general gameplay flavor. There was just too many kill and delivery quests when I was hoping for more of a diversified approach and more content aside from your typical quests. Exarch was a nice start, but it should of been there @ the Euro launch, if you ask me, and multiple other encounters similar added by now.

Even tho it didn't deliver what I wanted, still is sad.

I understand exactly what you mean. The NA game is effectively a ghost town now. The combat system is nice, but as you stated, it may be too complex for most people, and little attempt was made to teach players how to really use it.  I've liked this game from the start, but I've had a bad feeling as well. I've seen this happen to several games now. Saga of Ryzom and Horizons to name just two. As for Acclaim... They can't seem to be bothered to put any real effort in to the game. Look at how long it took to get something as simple as a credit card payment system in place.  With all of the time, talent and money the Dev's put in to this game, why in the world did they pick Acclaim in the first place??

One of the biggest reasons it died so fast is because they offered all the premium for free for two weeks stuff and everyone leveled for two weeks and once it went away, bam. Everyone forgot that the game was free to play untill level 7 and all those people for the first two weeks who were 8+ couldnt log in anymore without a sub. Pretty big reason to be pissed and rage quit.

I played for a bit, but it became fairly obvious there is nothing to this game aside from slaying mob after mob. There is no reason to even need gold.

Maybe you guys should wait with calling it dead until it actually "died"?

The servers are still up, the population is increasing and im having quite a good time..

this might be the EU-side tho

Originally posted by Deathreat

One of the biggest reasons it died so fast is because they offered all the premium for free for two weeks stuff and everyone leveled for two weeks and once it went away, bam. Everyone forgot that the game was free to play untill level 7 and all those people for the first two weeks who were 8+ couldnt log in anymore without a sub. Pretty big reason to be pissed and rage quit.

The free two weeks of premium did help kill interest, since people who played it realized that the game really was no different past level 7 and there was no reason to subscribe.

I can appreciate the potential complexity of the skill deck,  but I would rather have the usual hotbar.  And all the dancing around and one click for one swing of the weapon was too much.  My hands got tired and started to hurt after awhile, which is why I quit first person shooters.

In concept the game sounded interesting to me.  In practice I found it to be kind of boring.  But I could just be experiencing mmo burnout.

 I quit because of lag, or bad hit detection, or whatever is the problem. The combat system seemed fun, but I just couldn't tolerate it more than a few kill quests that I was able to dodge but it was about avoiding something invisible, not about avoiding the enemy I was fighting.

 Thats true as well. After a few fights my wrists started to ache, and it just got more unpleasent from there.  The combat system is a nice idea, but in application it just doesn't work out for many people.  As I said, the NA servers seem like ghost towns now. Its too bad, as this could have been a good game if it had been handled properly.

Great game, hit lvl 33 and realised there is nothing interesting to do anymore. I unsubbed yesterday, gave all my gold and items to guildies. As I said my goodbyes to one he told me he was also quitting in a week (sub ending) and doesn't see the point to re-sub, he was lvl 40. The guild I joined is one of the largest on the server, a beta guild, most aren't active or have quit.

A real shame, this game had/has great potential.

I have played hundreds of games and i can tell ,VERY early into a game ,weather effort was spent on it or not.For myself COMBAT is the biggest thing,as that is pretty much what everyone does the most.First of all,i got the feeling of a F2P game as soon as i set foot in the game world.No matter ,i wanted to check out the combat.As far as effort,it felt like TCOS was done similar to a F2P game.

First of all,i do not agree on the COMPLEX of the combat,IMO it was nothing close to complex at all.Having an annoying hotbar that limits the ease of selecting your abilities /spells,does not make it complex at all,anyone can setup the hotbar with ease,but why it is an annoying setup to say the least.

The ONLY thing i found good about combat,was the ability to climb onto a rock and avoid being atttacked,that feature is pretty much non existant in most games.However,the mobs were all set on auto distance,soon as you hit a certain range,they ran away,it got to the point that it did not feel realistic at all,but like playing with bots.Yes i know they are bots,but you don't have to make them feel like they are.Try to get a mobs back,pretty hard,their AI was always the same,generic i guess is the word.

There is not much this game could do to make it any different than all other games,so it should have at least made combat uniqe,without screwing with a hotbar,that was done with VERY little effort.Think about it this way,you have spent the time in the game to learn a new ability,but you cannot use it because the hotbar has not flipped around yet,,lmao ridiculous idea to say the least.The hotbar has not flipped,so you have forgotten how to use that ability?All games IMO have a VERY tough act to follow in FFXI's combat system,it blows the doors off of every game,but at least show something unique in combat[not hotbars].

This is why TCOS did not make it,it did not appeal to the gear grinders,it does not appeal to the hardcore FFA'rs,it does not appeal to crafters and it does not surpass other combat systems,so really,why would anyone expect the game to make it big?

The game has great combat (I use a Logitech trackball so no wrist problem).  Some of the quests are innovative, but not enough of them.  The game gets old fast.  I never made it past level 16 and my duo partner made it to 26 before he just got bored.  It's sad cause there was so much potential.

Here's what I found:

-Quest exp is all over the place (hard quests can have low exp....easy ones can have high exp

-The game gets too hard too fast for most intermediate and casual players

-The music is great

-The combat is unique

-Too many bugs (client crashes and quest bugs)

-Liked the fact that a quest NPC could attack you (really caught me off guard the first time)

-Quests that are repetitive (boars and more boars)

-Should have priced it special (like ($9.99 a month)

-Lack of players (because of some of the above)

it's a nice game, but the developers screwed up with things like IP blocks and such. Sure they are no longer used, but at launch they crippled the game and an MMO sort of needs a substantial user base before it can grow and if that isn't even at launch, you're officially screwed IMO. :)

also, what can you do at level 50? What sort of ENDGAME is there? Afaik ..... nothing! :/

Originally posted by Wraithone

 Thats true as well. After a few fights my wrists started to ache, and it just got more unpleasent from there.  The combat system is a nice idea, but in application it just doesn't work out for many people.  As I said, the NA servers seem like ghost towns now. Its too bad, as this could have been a good game if it had been handled properly.

You stole my avatar... how lame

Originally posted by markyturnip

b) Poor starter experience? Will have contributed. Five kill boar quests in a row was a dreadful idea... they should have sent you to town MUCH more quickly, do the murder mystery wonder round the houses... and the tutorial is awful awful 

That was what killed it stone dead for me.  Sheer, utter monotony.  I've never seen worse quests, ever.

The combat 'skill deck' was indeed rather clever, but started off so simply and logically that a bunch of crappy "kill X boar quests" just plain and simply wasn't needed - the excuse that the boring quests were put in so that players could learn the ropes is sheer crap.  They're just BAD quests. 

It wasn't as if you could skip the actual Tutorial when you created another character, which REALLY annoyed me.

Loved the skill deck, hated the quests.

I really like the game..many aspects...all mentioned already. It's very clean looking out the gate. Not to many bugs ..so far ...for me. The main one is the "floating 5 ft off the floor" at times....which is not necessarily a bug. My main problem is the lag. It can run perfect in certain sections..outdoors...cities....populated...not populated...and lag like hell the next time..in the very same areas. I happened to change from a 9800gt to gtx275 OC.....no difference. So it is likely the server. I was told on chat that it was my card or to lower the settings. But I don't think the stylized graphics of  Spellborn, although nice, are not so amazing that my card would have a problem running it smoothly. It runs LoTRO ...maxed out DX10..at 60fps (the highest my crap 22'' Acer will refresh) and AoC DX9 the same(....the dx10 is good too but not optimal)

...it could also use a few more races (maybe classes..but definitely races)..no overkill..just a bit more Avatar variety.

People berated me for saying this would be EXACTLY what would happen. Now it is true. I knew it would happen because I played through two phases of beta (pre-NA release/beta) and it went the exact same route.

I posted it about it also on some other sites, explaining the population would thin out to nothingness and people went ape sh** on me. Well, it turned out to be true. I'm not gloating, I'm just saying that it was not exactly hard to see that this was going to happen. Acclaim does not help but I think that a big part of the problem also sits within the game itself.

The game has no staying power despite a few neat aspects. It's far from crap but it does not do enough to separate itself  (beyond the combat system) and KEEP players interested. It's fun for a few weeks, maybe a bit more or less. That's about it. And that's exactly what an MMO can NOT  do if it expects to survive.

I also agree that the quests were completely unoriginal and boring.

Its sad, but I think this is the same thing that happened to Tabula Rasa. Its not a bad game, it does the basic stuff alright and has a few nice ideas here and there, but the MMORPG business right now basically consists of a mixture of game hoppers wanting HUGE, GREAT, AWESOME games to drag them from their old ones in which they feel bored, but comfortable, and die-hards firmly entrenched in their games or sub-groups (pvpers, raiders etc.) where they will not ever move out unless a new game beats their old one at its game.

In that market, there is no place for "another one" which does everything fine, but nothing great, simply because it does not suck people in. The very same virtues that especially the casual crowd loves, stuff like non-addictive gameplay, easy gameplay, solo-centric, small-scope, is the stuff that everyone has anyway nowadays, and so people come over, see it, think "yeah, its nice, but I feel at home in WoW/LotRO/AoC, and its not THAT great really" and leaves.

Nobody hates the game, nobody goes to great lengths to flame it, because nobody is passionate about it.

This, I think, happens when Designers design by listening to the people that are, supposedly, right now the big market. Casual young male players with a relatively strong drive towards skill-based fast no-consequence PvP and soloability. On paper, there is much money to be had, but in reality, that crowd does not readily change games, and is fickle as hell anyway.

As a MMO, you dont live on the casual game hoppers, you live on the fans, and without more than a solo-centric superfluos paper-thin gameplay, no matter how accessible and easy, you dont get fans, cause nobody really cares enough.