One of the most eagerly awaited online role-playing games is approaching the final stretch in its development. The German, English and French versions of The Chronicles of Spellborn are scheduled for release on November 27th, 2008 in Europe. In preparation of the release, the innovative fantasy MMORPG has started into the next phase of the closed beta tests along with a large content patch Wednesday, 17th of September..

The update brings along substantial advancements in the class system, the quest architecture, the fame system and the combat gameplay as well as improvements on art and general game mechanics lifting the game onto a new level of gameplay experience. During the upcoming weeks, developer Spellborn NV and publisher Frogster will invite more selected registered community members into the closed beta tests. A detailed beta and release schedule for The Chronicles of Spellborn will be announced shortly. Interested fantasy adventurers can register via the brand new beta registration on www.tcos.com to get the chance to have a look at the game before the actual release.

source - tcos.com/news/

Chronicles of Spellborn doing what other developers rushed their products to avoid(AoC, War). 

May not be releasing on the same day, but its within two weeks of the expansion is extremely close.

Developer(s) Blizzard Entertainment
Publisher(s) Activision Blizzard
Series Warcraft
Platform(s) Mac OS X, Windows
Release date(s) November 13, 2008

Only question in my mind now is, do i wait two weeks and try TCoS before the expansion? Or risk getting hooked into the expansion grind and probably not play TCoS till next year sometime?

Brave of them, I hope they find their customer base and be profitable.

Originally posted by obii

Brave of them, I hope they find their customer base and be profitable.

They will do fine.  The people that play WoW will not be too interested in TCoS.  Also, with it being a small company they wont have to pull in the overhead that some of the larger companies have to so everything should be fine.

I´ll sure be playing it. Seems as one of the few desent MMOs in development during the last years. Cant afford to miss it. Been longin for a MMO for a year now : (

This one still feels sketchy to me.  No insult to this game, but we keep getting burned here.  I'm keeping it at arms length until it holds up. 

damn thats 1 game i didnt want to come out close the wrath, oh well guess i buy wrath on the 13th then TCOS 2 weeks later. the combat looks great just hope it lives upto my expectations.

Honestly, there is no reason not to try it. Since it will have a Free to Play area to test it.

Won't have to put in credit card info or anything, just download and play likes its free.

Also, I agree Coffee. Its the one title I didn't want to see released so close to Lich King, but its also the one title i think has the least to fear from Lich King. Its not another clone of the EQ style gameplay.

TCoS is the FPSer MMO.   You'll die in the newbie area if you try to go stand still and trade damage moves like most MMO's.

I imagine to many who are looking forward to the WoW expansion TCoS will have little impact to them. So I honestly doubt WoW is going to have any impact on this release.  So far TCoS is very quite, not over hyped as other games this year have been. Along with a F2P trial area I think ppl will give it a whirl n if it interests them they will buy.

Originally posted by Kabbax

Honestly, there is no reason not to try it. Since it will have a Free to Play area to test it.

Won't have to put in credit card info or anything, just download and play likes its free.

This is one of the things that I feel will benefit them to a HUGE extent.

I really don't see why more MMO companies do this. I can't tell you how many games I have passed simply because they didn't offer a free trial. It's very smart of them to offer something like this at their launch.

Because I'm skeptical (but hopeful) of this game this is the course of action I'll be taking with this game and pray that it's fun to play. The deck system they're proposing interests me greatly, and it can be a hit or miss for them (and a hit or miss for the customer too, as if they can prefer that or the current standard even if it is a hit). I don't know why but this game reminds me greatly of Guild Wars. 

In all honesty I think they have poor management. I dare not start an argument so I won't state my reasons.

 That is only the European version, no word on the US version yet, nor any time table.

Anyone who dislikes instancing will hate Spellborn. Search back on this site where the developers were interviewed and they said there would be "lots of instancing".

Even open world areas are instanced.   Once the player count hits a predetermined amount people will start to be filtered into a different and identical instance of that area.   Granted it's also a trade off since there is no sit and watch,  even healing needs to be aimed to hit(if you miss enemies can intercept),  if you wanted to you could litterally take on mobs that would annoy people a considerably higher level than you as well(or PvP and win if they don't have the same player skill or manage to miss a time too many).   There also aren't any statistical misses either(just damage reductions) or anything of that sort if you hit you hit.

All in all some people's dream game when it comes to combat.   Shame they turned crafting into a bring mats to a NPC type thing.

It appears great responsive combat systems come with a price- instancing. sigh....At least keep the instances down dont go stir bat crazy and instance open areas thats just lazy

TCOS is appealing to a very different type of gamer than WoW is, so I dont think it will be effected by releasing 2 weeks after the WoW expansion. Plus its an expansion, the people that play it would most likely not have looked at other mmos because they are obviously still enjoying WoW.

Btw, apparently the instances are limited to zoning for the starter area because it is small, and the obvious reason its a fps combat system. The other instances are dungeons, and the ports where you travel to different shards.

To be honest, outside of gaming sites not many people have even heard of TCOS anyway, so it was never going to matter when it releases, just whether or not it is good. If it is a good game word of mouth will make it successful, if it isn't I really doubt anyone will notice it fade away.

It is probably a good thing it has next to no hype, expectations wont be so high that people start to think it will be something it never set out to be.

I hope it does turn out to be good, it is as different as you can get from all these everquest type of mmos, so it doing well would be a good thing for the industry and more importently gamers.

Originally posted by Korby

In all honesty I think they have poor management. I dare not start an argument so I won't state my reasons.

I agree. They have made no effort to keep the hype going and interested gamers up to date and informed. You never see anyone from that company posting on this site in the CoS forum.

Originally posted by Samuraisword

Originally posted by Korby

In all honesty I think they have poor management. I dare not start an argument so I won't state my reasons.

 

I agree. They have made no effort to keep the hype going and interested gamers up to date and informed. You never see anyone from that company posting on this site in the CoS forum.

North Americans are so good at whining.  Plenty of buzz about TCoS in Europe.

I can hear the crickets chirping already in Spellborn.

Originally posted by Sharajat

This one still feels sketchy to me.  No insult to this game, but we keep getting burned here.  I'm keeping it at arms length until it holds up. 

     I have my concerns about the game also......I was really interested at one time but lack of information and direction scared me away......a few months ago I liked what I saw but now I jsut have a feeling the game wont do very well.....I dont think going head to head with WoTLK will  hurt it much as TCoS has a different audience really.......