The Chronicles of Spellborn Forum » General Discussion » Surprisingly good...

after playing the game for a couple hours i was tempted to post here about how surprisingly good The Chronicles of Spellborn is; "not so fast", I told myself. i resisted that temptation and played for a few more days. now im here and ya, this game is pretty damn good. 

the combat is engrossing (thats fancy talk for fun and challenging) and the graphics are quite nice. anyone who has seen a screenshot knows that the art style is unique and ya i like it alot. i was skeptical about the items not having stats but i found myself somewhat liberated by that... dunno why - maybe thats the surprising part. the animations are very well done and the spell effects are nice. im running the game on a single core 2.4ghz AMD CPU + ATI 4870 GPU + 2gb RAM + WinXP and the game runs just fine. questing is standard but the PVE AI is somewhat challenging at times so it keeps it fresh... PVP is a blast with the twitch based combat. there are rough spots - i'd love to customize the UI for instance - but overall the game feels mostly complete. i havent gotten too much into the guild/House system but i hope to soon.  there seems to be a very healthy amount of players around and ive already gotten 5 people in my friends list.

anyways, i really encourage anyone curious about this game to try it.. its very very worth the download. and i sincerely hope they add a cashshop or whatever cuz they deserve some $ for their largely unrewarded efforts. The Chronicles of Spellborn is definitely better than some pay-to-play MMOs ive tried. and no, i dont work or have stock in this company hehe

I was also surprised by CoS. I was expecting the usual F2P crap, but it is considerably better than that. I also like the combat, the artwork and animations. Overall, it's pretty well done.

Originally posted by Nizur

I was also surprised by CoS. I was expecting the usual F2P crap, but it is considerably better than that. I also like the combat, the artwork and animations. Overall, it's pretty well done.

Thats partially because it started as a P2P ;)

 I just launched and it is patching for the first time- this is the most original launcher i have seen in years. 

The core of the game as far as mechanics go were great. The game offered character advancement that wasn't dependent on gear, as gear had no stats. The twitch-based combat, active dodging, manual aiming was amazing and much more fluid than similar systems like Age of Conan.

Spellborn's problem was the publishes and Acclaim getting a hold of the game. There was no advertising, the support was horrible, even the subscription and payment options were a joke before launch, at launch, and after launch.

Something else lacking with Spellborn was any content that was group oriented. They introduced one instance after launch, right before the game was announced to be going F2P and support was dropped. The instance was mid-level, I want to say around 25. But other than that, the only thing to do was quest grind. And most of the quests were solo, or only required one or two other people.

You could get to max level easily in Spellborn, within a month without playing too hardcore. And at max level, there was nothing to do. They eventually introduced arenas, right before support was dropped and the game went F2P. But through all the content they added it just wasn't enough. There still was really nothing ingame to do, the content had no substance.

Lore was great. Gameplay mechanics was great. Quests were interesting, zone design was great. The idea of having PVP enabled zones like the mines and such was great. The only problem was there was no need to fight in the mines as crafting in the game is a joke since it's all cosmetic. This left the world feeling empty and virtually any content aside from leveling pointless. They eventually added the key and chest system for PVP and it sparked some action, but they added it too late. The starter zone was also completely redid, but it was too little, too late.

Now that the game is being recreated the core foundation is being changed. The F2P version, when it's done, will completely change what made Spellborn come into it's own. Gear will have stats, itemshops introduced, the lore changed.

This just goes to show you that regardless of how good your game is, how much potential it has that choosing the wrong publisher will completely kill you and your title. Spellborn right now isn't a typical F2P, it was a P2P that was abandoned by any support and updates because the company behind it went bankrupt and Acclaim chose not to advertise.

Don't be surprised when the game relaunches in 2010 and Spellborn is completely different. There are a few sites, and posts on the official forums that highlight some of the changes being made when it relaunches.

The only thing I can see that they need to do is get away from Gameguard. The N. American market won't deal with it.

I'm checking out F2P options atm and TCoS looks very appealing :)

I have the client on dvd somewhere, going to install it and RoM tonight and see which I think is a better overall time investment. Performance is a big deal for me as well, considering I have an ancient system, and I know RoM runs great on it so I'm hoping TCoS won't disappoint in that regard.

We shall see!

Originally posted by Lateris

The only thing I can see that they need to do is get away from Gameguard. The N. American market won't deal with it.

We already didn't deal with it. That's why the game failed as P2P and is now sitting as an unsupported F2P that will relaunch the beginning of 2010 completely redid by an asian studio that is completely changing some of the core mechanics.

So before you get too invested into a character be sure to keep in mind they're gonna be wiping and relaunching beginning of the new year.

At no time has acclaimed said they would be wiping characters..This is a rumor only.

Dustin

so its acually Full F2P now?

Originally posted by Xidal

so its acually Full F2P now?

Yes tottaly fully f2p even without cash shop. 

yes, acclaim is reworking the game to be used with cash shop similar to their other games. right now there is no cash shop, the cash shop will be out sometime next year. Until then we also will not get any patches from acclaim until their version is complete. It is a decent game but extremly buggy... if it works for you go for it, if not its a lot of work to make it run at most 25 frames per sec.

Dustin

 Runs for me over 70fps...

every game i own but this one does for me but i can't get it to run right, they tell me it will be fixed when the cash shop version is released..

Dustin

 It ran so perfect before... and today it was like triple fps lower, don't get it. Tried to restart pc relaunch the game etc, but still it was so much worse than it used to be...

Hello,

  Yea I have good days too with it but usually crap days.. What server do you play on?

Dustin

I really took a liking to it myself when I played it for our review. I sometimes have the urge to fire it up now and then. I really loved the music!

Hello,

  Hey Tyrantus is there a way you could send me a screen shot of your display settings in the game and what not to see if i can mimic your settings and then try ot run it to see how it does.

Dustin

Originally posted by fatenabu1

yes, acclaim is reworking the game to be used with cash shop similar to their other games. right now there is no cash shop, the cash shop will be out sometime next year.

Maybe it is not so important, but it is not Acclaim that is doing the rework on the game. Acclaim would not even know how to begin. It is Frogster, and probably their Korean developers that already assisted during the earlier development of the game..

Any links to info on the redevelopment? What are they changing?

Originally posted by jimsmith08

Any links to info on the redevelopment? What are they changing?

Nope. No information is available on redevelopment afaik. Just that Frogster is doing it and that the plan was to be ready somewhere next year.

Originally posted by MikeB

I really loved the music!

This. 1000 times this. I have the CoS login screen music as my mobile phone ring tone :)

Music is such an underrated component of a game imo.