MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood had the recent opportunity to take a run through the beta for Acclaim's upcoming MMORPG, The Chronicles of Spellborn. Today, he offers an overview of, and his thoughts on the unique character creation process for the game.

Recently, I had the opportunity to get my hands on some test time with Acclaim’s upcoming MMORPG, The Chronicles of Spellborn.

I’ve said before that I think that this game could be what some players, who have felt left behind by the more recent major MMO launches in terms of their ease and structure, have been waiting for.

The journey, like almost any other journey through almost any other MMO, begins with character creation. For those who might not be aware, I’ll go into some detail about what’s available to you:

The first thing that you’re going to be asked to do is to choose your character archetype. There are three: Warrior, Rogue and Spellcaster. These archetypes aren’t full-blown classes just yet though. TCoS lets players get comfortable with their Archetype before asking them to settle on a more specific class. This happens only when the player is at level five and to keep it in the context of the game, it happens at The Academy rather than through a single dropdown menu.

Read the Character Creation Preview

Just a shame Spellborn screwed up with their publishers Frogster and Acclaim!

Who in earth ever had the idea to split up the European playerbase by throwing the UK on the NA servers?!

And by the looks of it, even more EU countries will be split up by this whole Acclaim deal.

So the game hasn't even been launched yet and they already make the wrong decisions!

As appearently both Spellborn and Acclaim have no clue whatsoever how the European Market works!

So I wish them good luck if they continue with this dividing mess and IP blocks.

Cheers

Based on screenshots I've seen over the years, I think there are 4 body types, at least for men. I've seen average skinny, average muscular, hulking fat and hulking muscular. Basically two small bodies and two large bodies.

Acclaim is a disaster for me to decide on playing a game that I have been waiting for since '05. This is something that I am going to read about but never play more than likely. Freemeium game or whatever name they gave it is scary. Acclaim comes in and developers redesign the game to have free zones was just the start of the scary part of having Acclaim in it. Acclaim has a broken site for the game. That tells me how much the company cares about making the game work.

Ummm.....more WOW like character graphics.Have to say I'm disappointed.

I'd have to disagree that the general archetype -> specific class is a good thing. Eq2 used to do that, but they dumped it, so did Daoc iirc. It hurts replayability as you have to grind out the same common base class, again, in order to try a new specialist class. I can see where developers like it, as it has a nice story theme to it. Start off a commoner work your way to hero, but as a game mechanic it sucks.

As for the praise given to clothing options as being unique, I guess you've never played City of Heroes. Sounds like they've emulated CoH's system, which is a plus in my book.

Originally posted by Arawon

Ummm.....more WOW like character graphics.Have to say I'm disappointed.

Dude, seriously, did you even read the article? The graphics are nothing like WoW. You may like them, you may not, but they are NOTHING like WoW. What exactly is it you're looking for in graphics anyway, what could possibly meet whatever it is your standard might be for a game to NOT look like WoW, because this is about as far from it as you get. Seriously.

Originally posted by Robbgobb

Acclaim is a disaster for me to decide on playing a game that I have been waiting for since '05. This is something that I am going to read about but never play more than likely. Freemeium game or whatever name they gave it is scary. Acclaim comes in and developers redesign the game to have free zones was just the start of the scary part of having Acclaim in it. Acclaim has a broken site for the game. That tells me how much the company cares about making the game work.

It could mean they are more concerned about the game than a stupid website. I hope you decide to at least try it before passing judgement on it. I mean it's going to be free so it's not like you have a lot to lose.

As for the graphics they remind me of Fable more than anything. Graphics should never be a deciding factor in whether you play a game or not because you could lose out on something very enjoyable. Then again it does keep the idiots out.

Originally posted by Arawon

Ummm.....more WOW like character graphics.Have to say I'm disappointed.

You have to have a narrow perspective of art styles to say that. Yes, it's highly stylized but the style itself is nowhere near WoW's. I'd even go ahead and say they belong to altogether different visual design traditions.

Don't expect very high-detailed textures and cutting edge graphics from this one, but the art style is fantastic. The models are not as detailed as those in some new MMOs out there, but they have a character of their own. And that's enough to get me going.

Originally posted by Stradden

Originally posted by Arawon

Ummm.....more WOW like character graphics.Have to say I'm disappointed.

 Dude, seriously, did you even read the article? The graphics are nothing like WoW. You may like them, you may not, but they are NOTHING like WoW. What exactly is it you're looking for in graphics anyway, what could possibly meet whatever it is your standard might be for a game to NOT look like WoW, because this is about as far from it as you get. Seriously. 

I think he meant to say that they are like WoW in the sense that they are very "cartoon" like. As in, silly and not realistic. They don't look like WoW, but they follow the style of WoW in the sense that the developers apparently decided that absurd looking characters who would either have died of starvation or would be too fat to fit though a normal doorway were easier to create than realistic models.

Actually, they remind me of Final Fantasy characters. Not the ones from the more modern games, but the older style games where people were either super short or super fat or half animal creatures. Like in FF9. And I don't recall FF9 being one of the better FF games.

Honestly, the closer TCoS gets to release the less it sounds like what I had in mind when I first heard about it. Its getting a little... wierd to be honest.

The char create and dressup gameplay of this game is one of the better systems I seen.
The fact that looks are for looks and have nothing to do whit the game itself is a verry positive thing.

The game it self plays like a umm.. Action card game..  its RPG system is verry well tought over and the action keeps you focust on the gameplay instead of letting out a yawn killing boar number hunderd.

I Hate , capital H, Cartoony grapics.  but this game.. duno, its grapics could be discriped as cartoony but  It has a verry realistic look/feel over it. its not bright and mostly earth tone collors are used.

as a tip i would advice everyone to use the char creation tool well, its quite powerfull and making a chance later is exspencive for the first ten/ twenty levels (buying other looks armor and cloth aswell as recolering it)

 I realy hope they will sort out this Uk=non-europe stuff as that will have a huge negative effect on the game they cant use as a indi develp team.

The game is realy good, it needs time like any MMO but it realy stands out from any MMO i played bevore (and I played / tested them all) 

Read the later pages of this thread..

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/212642

Or check out the official forum it is done and dusted as far as the UK player base in concerened,as for the other European countries my thoughts are they will also end up under Acclaim,this is just my thought.

What ever happens it has been a massive mistake and sad to see a good mmo kill itself before it launches.

To clarify with the Free TO Play aspect of the acclaim part..... They made the starter Area free to play (this is no real different then a free trial) Just because its acclaim people are going to whine without giving it a chance... Have any of you actually tried the games they ported over (9Dragons and 2Moons are not bad MMO's ok they have a cash shop but if thats the only argument they can sod off lol) I'll give it a fair try and making the starter Zone Free To Play is smarter then just a free trial as they can try all archetypes through the starter area before deciding if they want to play...

I may take a look at the game, depends on how acclaim services it.  Also the freemium thing doesnt seem too bad to me.  I believe EQ2 did it for a while too, just make the starter zone f2p.  Great way to get people to try the game, and I believe due to that more people will try the game then if they had to buy it from the get go.  The starting zone is free, so is the game, but in order to go past the starting area you have to pay a subscription.  So from a business perspective it makes a lot of sense, especially from a small nobody developer.  So I think you should do a little research before you make idiotic statements and assumptions.

As for the look I like it, much more so than the photorealistic.  The simple reason being is the technology just isnt there yet.  Sure Vanguard and AoC had some beautiful worlds, however the character models still looked... off.  There is still something there that never seemed right, it never seemed like the characters belonged in the world.  Even with motion capture I remember a computer animator who worked with final fantasy once said making realistic humans is almost impossible.  Humans just instinctively know if something is not right with a way a person walks or looks.  They may not be able to understand or state what is wrong but they just know.  It is that way with games, there has not been one released yet where I thought the character models were good enough, and actually ruined the beauty of the world.

Edit - apparantly i forgot how to write.

Character creations looks to be an interesting feature. We have had an eye on this game for long now. But as long as they will keep UK seperated from the EU servers, they wont get our money. We will skip this game. It is only 4 accounts, but I expect that we wont be the only ones.

This whole seperate servers idea has to be one of the most idiotic ideas ive seen so far in MMO land. As publisher you cant show more clearly that you dont give a shit about your playerbase.

A good article and I agree with the entirety of it, The game could well be on its way to becoming something big...please just sort out this individual EU/UK server crap.

As previously mentioned, the "pick your class at x level" has already been tried and failed on at leats 2, prob more mmorpgs.  EQ2 I think was the worst implementation of a system that sounds ok on paper but when you come to your new alt and had ot spend 20 levels getting to the class you wanted to play at lvl 1 it became a problem,. Now they are saying archtype till level 5 -  hopefully that will be very short amount of time to get otherwise this game will break where the others have, still imho this is a mistake.

Personally for me they are going to have to work really hard at interesting content if they do not have a gear based system, in other mmo's you could get semi-execited by an area based on the chance to pop a rare uber sword but whats TCoS going to do to keep people entertained and looking to see whats over the next hill?

The game isnt pitching itself at the main market of mmo, thats fine but even though I love the thought of a radically new game I'm not sure I can be bothered learning one! - I think the Wii shows how successsful you can be in game dev if your system has a low learning curve.  So who knows how this will pan out.

I cant see this game succeeding beyond a small player base of fans who love it, prob simillar to saga of Ryzom, great concepts but the game is dead...

Mylin

Originally posted by Stradden

Originally posted by Arawon

Ummm.....more WOW like character graphics.Have to say I'm disappointed.

 

Dude, seriously, did you even read the article? The graphics are nothing like WoW. You may like them, you may not, but they are NOTHING like WoW. What exactly is it you're looking for in graphics anyway, what could possibly meet whatever it is your standard might be for a game to NOT look like WoW, because this is about as far from it as you get. Seriously.

 

Yeah I agree on this ... I felt like I was wandering around inside a Discworld Book .. so yeah nothing like WoW , except maybe a little cartoonish .

Still I'm really sad because I live in the UK and wont be able to play it

Originally posted by mylin1

As previously mentioned, the "pick your class at x level" has already been tried and failed on at leats 2, prob more mmorpgs.  EQ2 I think was the worst implementation of a system that sounds ok on paper but when you come to your new alt and had ot spend 20 levels getting to the class you wanted to play at lvl 1 it became a problem,. Now they are saying archtype till level 5 -  hopefully that will be very short amount of time to get otherwise this game will break where the others have, still imho this is a mistake.

 

Personally for me they are going to have to work really hard at interesting content if they do not have a gear based system, in other mmo's you could get semi-execited by an area based on the chance to pop a rare uber sword but whats TCoS going to do to keep people entertained and looking to see whats over the next hill?

The game isnt pitching itself at the main market of mmo, thats fine but even though I love the thought of a radically new game I'm not sure I can be bothered learning one! - I think the Wii shows how successsful you can be in game dev if your system has a low learning curve.  So who knows how this will pan out.

 

I cant see this game succeeding beyond a small player base of fans who love it, prob simillar to saga of Ryzom, great concepts but the game is dead...

 

Mylin

    Ya with all the delays and acclaim at the head this game is now dead to me and thats to bad i was looking forward to it.

The cartoon graphics are definately more Tim Burton than Disney, it has a unique style which I think makes it a visually interesting game. Sure it's not a Vanguard or AoC but at the end of the day gameplay is much more important than graphics. Character creation is great fun if you can get your head around the visual style. I love that itemisation doesnt matter and looks are all about just that. As a UK potential player though I doubt I'll be having as much fun as I would have playing alongside  my EU guild mates so those of us that are checking it out won't be here for the long run when new MMOs that let us play together are on the horizon.

Originally posted by summitus

 

Yeah I agree on this ... I felt like I was wandering around inside a Discworld Book .. so yeah nothing like WoW , except maybe a little cartoonish .

Still I'm really sad because I live in the UK and wont be able to play it

You should be able to play, Summitus! Acclaim has UK in their territory. So just go to http://spellborn.acclaim.com and wait for them to spark to life there.