MMORPG.com Chronicles of Spellborn Correspondent Patrick S. Marshall has written this post-launch update on The Chronicles of Spellborn, giving his opinions on what the game needs in order to continue to thrive as it sets to roll out in North America and the UK.

A little bit over a month ago, The Chronicles of Spellborn had its launch in Europe. Soon, it will be North America and the UK's turn. So it is about time to have a little round up and see what has been done since the beta and what the Devs have been up to in the last few weeks while Europe was live.

Read New Launch Update 

Why oh why did they separate the publishing

Its making UK and USA lose interest...:(

WOULD BE alright if they actualy let you into the beta grrrrr....

 That is indeed the whole problem with the game here in Europe.

The international servers are empty. Even the starter zones feel empty.

That's why I lost interest so quickly and didn't login anymore. It was feeling like a single player experience.

Real shame tho. And this stupid IP ban has done most damage in this.

A David Perry approved MMO... count me in... oh IP ban for US and UK... "Access Denied, Access Denied..."

it is a shame you have to muck around with the proxy registering process... this game could be good

Another example of how not to launch a MMO, then picking Acclaim to host in the NA market.....

This game will be gone within the year.....sad to say it looks like a pretty good game too....

From the title I was expecting to see an actual launch date from Acclaim, all I got was a quick summary of how empty it is on the European servers.

     Been looking foward to this one, alwasy a rush to start a new game, make the Discoveries and such,

       Checkn the Forums to see some spacific date of Luanch in the USA,  this tid bit of informaton lets me down, no confirmed start date, and my fears of another Vanguard ( low pop)  seem to be Justified.

      Back to web to search for the NEXT  mmo.

I read the article but didn't see what the actual "update" part was. Did I miss something? (not trying to be snide but it just seemed like observations more than anything else)

I'm still trying to figure out what the actual launch date is for the US!

For the Uk (and lets not forget, the other 15 european countries not included in the "European" launch) it's too late.
I've already moved on.
Well of course I am talking about me, but I have the feeling that many share my own feeling.

This was by far the worst launch of an MMORPG  ever.................inclunding Vanguard, which says it all.
It is a pity since apparently this game don't share the bugs Vanguard had, and it is actually complete.

I like to play with Swedish, Polish, Italians, Germans and even French.
Of course I like to play with Yankees too, but they will be asleep while I wanna play, so what's the frikking point.

I'm honestly wondering what's going on over at Acclaim. Are they second-guessing their decision to run with TcOS? Maybe the ROI projection numbers aren't looking too good? Why isn't Spellborn NV pushing acclaim harder for faster distro? I honestly lost interest in this game for other reasons, however, the distro split really did it for me. I said this six months ago and I'll say it again, I think Spellborn shot themselves in the foot by choosing to split distro and further to allow region-based IP bans (absurd!). For the sake of those players who have invested their time helping create this game I hope i'm wrong; but as a poster above said, this game will be gone within a year.

Peace.

I registered for an account through a proxy. Apart from that little hurdle there was absolutely nothing barring me from trying the game. I decided to play the trial in order to determine whether or not it's worth getting hyped up about. 

All I can say is that I'm glad I tried it, because it lives up to my expectations and more. The game is a finished, high quality product. I had an issue of getting stuck in-game, which support promptly fixed for me. Other than that, I've only noticed around one or two grammatical errors in quest text - nothing game-breaking. 

I created my character on the International PvE server. The starter area, though not teeming with people, had more people than I was expecting. The community is very friendly and zone chat had a good number of people conversing in it. I would love to see more people playing it, but the fact is that this launch was more of a "test" launch in my opinion. It's been released in 5 countries...Germany and France being the two main countries out of those 5. These aren't exactly huge gaming nations, meaning that the large majority of people will sign up when the game is released in other territories. 

Personally, shunning the game for the apparent terrible launch in 5 countries that have absolutely no effect on the product I will be playing would be silly. I am confident that the game will have a sizeable amount of players when it is officially launched over here. In all honesty, they deserve a healthy number of subscribers simply because they have delivered what they promised and are the new kid on the block that can, in fact, show the big boys how a few things should be done (the innovative combat system, for starters). Hopefully they've learnt from this launch and the larger launch will go much more smoothly (though the only bad thing about this launch I can see is the lack of players...clearly as a result of there not being enough people in said 5 countries to justify being a "territory" in itself).

Spellborn Dock had a launch update that was a bit more critical.

I agree with Lydon. I'm happily waiting to give this game a shot whenever we get the chance.

Part of the fun of mmo's for me is the mixture of different cultures in one game, IP blocking takes that away to a great extent so I'll pass on any game that is stupid (imho) enough to enforce something that is against the entire reason muds/mmo's are fun for me and my friends from all different countries across the globe.

Originally posted by Delanor

Spellborn Dock had a launch update that was a bit more critical.

Great link, Delanor. Obviously not from a basher, but not from a Fanboi either.

This is the issue with lydon's POV above, the test launch probably hurt them more than help. If you do things 1/2-ass'd you are setting yourself up for trouble. Not a merit or dismerit of the game itself, but definitely it tarnishes Spellborn NV image as an effective developer. They CHOSE, I repeat, CHOSE the way the distribution was gonna work and anyone choosing distribution in such way simply lacks the vision and knowledge to carry on a successful MMO. Additionally, I'd say, by far the vast majority of players don't have a proxy server they can readily use for testing a game nor they want to fork more money to do so. As a counter example I say we look at WAR (I don't play that game, btw) but their launch was flawless (with a few hiccups here and there) considering the gigantic number of people with beta and preview access and with millions of copies pre-sold. Again, the game itself is pretty boring, IMO, but as far as the launch is concerned I don't you can do any better.

Peace.

Originally posted by Lonewolf

Why oh why did they separate the publishing

Its making UK and USA lose interest...:(

The real sad problem is.. whos going to brake the news to the UK that there not Europe. hehe..
 

I thought Spellborn dock was right on.  Though I didnt know there was no bank or AH ..

Originally posted by toord

Originally posted by Delanor

Spellborn Dock had a launch update that was a bit more critical.

 

Great link, Delanor. Obviously not from a basher, but not from a Fanboi either.

This is the issue with lydon's POV above, the test launch probably hurt them more than help. If you do things 1/2-ass'd you are setting yourself up for trouble. Not a merit or dismerit of the game itself, but definitely it tarnishes Spellborn NV image as an effective developer. They CHOSE, I repeat, CHOSE the way the distribution was gonna work and anyone choosing distribution in such way simply lacks the vision and knowledge to carry on a successful MMO. Additionally, I'd say, by far the vast majority of players don't have a proxy server they can readily use for testing a game nor they want to fork more money to do so. As a counter example I say we look at WAR (I don't play that game, btw) but their launch was flawless (with a few hiccups here and there) considering the gigantic number of people with beta and preview access and with millions of copies pre-sold. Again, the game itself is pretty boring, IMO, but as far as the launch is concerned I don't you can do any better.

Peace.

I don't know if i agree 100%, being an American I kind of like the idea that EU is our beta test... let them suffer bugged releases first, and we American's will reap the benefits of a later release less buggy version
 

Originally posted by mylin1

Part of the fun of mmo's for me is the mixture of different cultures in one game, IP blocking takes that away to a great extent so I'll pass on any game that is stupid (imho) enough to enforce something that is against the entire reason muds/mmo's are fun for me and my friends from all different countries across the globe.

 

That's another good point. The MMO I'm playing right now has Asian, North America, South America and European servers. however, there's nothing forbidding people from other locales to connect to the servers in US. In fact, i'd say 30-40% of my server's population are people from AU/NZ/UK/SouthAm and yes it's nice having people from other cultures and be share the same experience.

Peace.

Originally posted by toord 

Great link, Delanor. Obviously not from a basher, but not from a Fanboi either.

This is the issue with lydon's POV above, the test launch probably hurt them more than help. If you do things 1/2-ass'd you are setting yourself up for trouble. Not a merit or dismerit of the game itself, but definitely it tarnishes Spellborn NV image as an effective developer. They CHOSE, I repeat, CHOSE the way the distribution was gonna work and anyone choosing distribution in such way simply lacks the vision and knowledge to carry on a successful MMO. Additionally, I'd say, by far the vast majority of players don't have a proxy server they can readily use for testing a game nor they want to fork more money to do so. As a counter example I say we look at WAR (I don't play that game, btw) but their launch was flawless (with a few hiccups here and there) considering the gigantic number of people with beta and preview access and with millions of copies pre-sold. Again, the game itself is pretty boring, IMO, but as far as the launch is concerned I don't you can do any better.

Peace.

I completely agree with the fact that the launch hurt them...but I don't think that's merit enough to write off the game. They've delivered what's they promised and had a hiccup at launch, which is far more than most MMO companies can say these days.

P.S. The only IP-blocked part in the process is the account creation stage, therefore signing up for an account and confirming one's email address via a website such as www.gingerproxy.com is all that's needed. The actual client itself incorporates no blocking. They also accept credit cards from anywhere in the world.

Originally posted by Zeblade

 Though I didnt know there was no bank or AH ..

O.o ... neither did I. I guess they didn't want to worry about designing the game around the "economy". Though sometimes the economy of a game adds another dimension that players can delve in. For instance, if you get a super rare loot drop (sigil) but your character can't use it (or has no use for it), what do yo do? there's no AH where to sell it I guess you could sell it to NPCs or spam zone chat with "WTS such-and-such sigil. PST"?

Peace.

On the contrary that could encourage people to roll alts, or...believe it or not...give away items (as I've experienced in Ryzom oh so very often).

Originally posted by Lydon

On the contrary that could encourage people to roll alts, or...believe it or not...give away items (as I've experienced in Ryzom oh so very often).

This is true. As far as giving up items, well, let's say that i've given up awesome items to people who supposedly needed them ... only to see that item posted on the AH a few minutes after. Or having the same people try to price gouge me when I wanted to buy crafting ingredients (which aren't rare at all). It's disappointing to say the least. So now I resorted to sell them to NPCs or give them to guildies who I know actually NEED the item.

Peace.

Stealth seems to be the primary feature of the game(sarcasm off).

Originally posted by toord

Originally posted by Zeblade

 Though I didnt know there was no bank or AH ..

 

O.o ... neither did I. I guess they didn't want to worry about designing the game around the "economy". Though sometimes the economy of a game adds another dimension that players can delve in. For instance, if you get a super rare loot drop (sigil) but your character can't use it (or has no use for it), what do yo do? there's no AH where to sell it I guess you could sell it to NPCs or spam zone chat with "WTS such-and-such sigil. PST"?

Peace.

i usually just give it away to party members or people that have been cool w/ me in a game... if they can use it, why not help out rather than just selling it to npc