I think the maturization of the F2P market will create competition and we'll see more and more of these deaths due to the payment plan being far less reliable and potentially a source of disconfort.

It's a high-risk business running a F2P and competition will lead to deaths like in any such business.

Odd, why buy it only to shut it down?  Unless they tend to do some work on it and re-release it with some sort of payment model attached to it.

Originally posted by Kyleran

Odd, why buy it only to shut it down?  Unless they tend to do some work on it and re-release it with some sort of payment model attached to it.

 

acclaim paid them to buy it, so wouldnt be closed down in their name :P

I say with all honesty, this is a good day. None of those games had a playerbase and there just taking up bandwith. Hopefully the publishers can view what worked and what did not and come back with a more polished and successful entity. Until then, I ask why are more games hanging around with dismal player bases and stale content?

Sad to see this. TCoS was a solid game with refreshing and fun combat. It is a shame that poor publishing choices doomed this game before it had a chance. But we all know the whatever WoW-clone comes out next will be sure to find a top-notch publisher.

Originally posted by AlienShirt

Sad to see this. TCoS was a solid game with refreshing and fun combat. It is a shame that poor publishing choices doomed this game before it had a chance. But we all know the whatever WoW-clone comes out next will be sure to find a top-notch publisher.

I hear ya.  Look at my account name, this game was gonna be huge for me.  Unfortunately, even though the game was fun and unique it had no playerbase, and an mmo without players makes for a really poor single player game - no matter how good it is.  Like you said, publishing doomed this title, which is a real shame because it could have been something great.  Oh well, there goes another one I guess.

Originally posted by AlienShirt

Sad to see this. TCoS was a solid game with refreshing and fun combat. It is a shame that poor publishing choices doomed this game before it had a chance. But we all know the whatever WoW-clone comes out next will be sure to find a top-notch publisher.

 

I agree, and lets hope some other developers decide to utilize the combat system as I thought it was great.

Originally posted by AlienShirt

Sad to see this. TCoS was a solid game with refreshing and fun combat. It is a shame that poor publishing choices doomed this game before it had a chance. But we all know the whatever WoW-clone comes out next will be sure to find a top-notch publisher.

 TSOC was a really fun game, different and unique. I loved my fat toon. Most other games just let you pick some lovebaby of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dolf Lundgren (hey I wouldn't complain if they took Vinnie Jones as example) or some smooth shaven in baby-oil rubbed Orlando Bloom. The game really deserved a better ending!

 Oh so apparently this rumor was true, seen a post by someone yesterday about it with some vague article attached, and it made me wonder.

 What a shame, I tried to play this sometime last month since it looked very different, but was having connecting to server issues, guess i'll never get that chance now though.

I dont think its a bad day.

TCoS was a niche game and could never been have more than a niche game, a few nice ideas arent enough and the management did the best to make it a dead born so it never had a chance to get its niche.

The other two get never on my radar.

For the employees that have mabye spend their soul and heart on their product it is a hard experience as its hard to accept the success is never depending only on skill but also as much or even more on oportunity.

With the hundreds of mmos out and the very long development cycle of a mmo there is only a very slim chance to time it right to catch the few oportunitys that may happen - in reality its impossible for any underfunded developer.

I was already in the most early beta phases, and really I am not surprised at all. Spellborn never really got out of beta, and even back then I always felt the game was clumsy to play and way too odd in many ways. I suppose many ppl didn't even hear of Spellborn.

It's always a pity when creative visions die, but then even a great vision needs a solid gameplay. And Spellborn just didn't have that.

Unique combat

Great artwork style

Not strictly gear based

Unique classes

Nobody to play with....

Game needs to be polished and then re-released!

TCOS 4life!

Oh sad to hear about this. The game had an unique atmosphere and great combatsystem. But I guess it was one of those failed launched MMO's that was doomed to die like this (dividing Europe lol). Just too bad for the players who are currently enjoying it.

One of the atmospheric games I ever played.... I don't think they take such a revolutionary try again very soon. The game hadn't a big player-base but a lot of reliable players... I was one of these :'(

A rough diamond .... unfortunatly it never got cut and polished to sparkle as it should.

The MMO model has to change. I don't mean pay-to-play or free-to-play, but rather the production cycle. There is so much startup capital required for these games, and development time is so long, it's no wonder there is a failure epidemic.

I followed Spellborne for quite a while, and a bunch of talented developers bankrupted themselves making this game.  Many of us reading this site, are in software development. This isn't right. There hasn't been a real superstar MMO hit since World of Warcraft in 2004. Think about how many console hits there have been in that time.  The original God of War for example came out for PS2 in 2005!

Small fortunes are being spent, trying to catch World of Warcraft, but look at all of the unique stuff WoW had going for it. Everquest and DAoC were aging. Computers had become mainstream. Broadband internet was taking hold. Starcraft and Diablo had already put Blizzard on the map. The time was ripe. Everyone was waiting of an online game of this proportion to come out. And it was fun to play.

I don't believe this feat will ever be replicated again in a studio setting, and yet fortunes will be lost pursuing it.  Today's MMO developers need to focus on doing less, not more. Give us API's and allow users to generate their own content. Make it easier for dev's to add content on the fly. Focus on bulding the right tools. Add content as the game matures. Think small.

If you can get the MMO production cycle down to a year on a much smaller scale, but with the ability to grow as the game does (or doesn't) require, you save yourself a ton of capital, you reduce your risks, and losses are much easier to absorb. That's the direction I'd like to see.
 

There is only one reason this game failed like it has.  Poor release.  The game itself ain't bad, it's the hugely staggered release and the companies they chose to release it.

If they'd gone with a company or two that would have treated it right, supported it, and had a worldwide release within a day or two, this game would be rocking.  I followed the game in production for years, but the botched release left me disinterested.  Acclaim was a piss-poor choice, so was the mess of companies picked to handle europe.

The game was good enough to make it.  The release wasn't.

This is bad, I was hoping for the re-devolped spellborn, i like the game.

Originally posted by Honkie

There is only one reason this game failed like it has.  Poor release.  The game itself ain't bad, it's the hugely staggered release and the companies they chose to release it.

If they'd gone with a company or two that would have treated it right, supported it, and had a worldwide release within a day or two, this game would be rocking.  I followed the game in production for years, but the botched release left me disinterested.  Acclaim was a piss-poor choice, so was the mess of companies picked to handle europe.

The game was good enough to make it.  The release wasn't.

The poor release is not a reason it failed...

The money issues and management failures that caused the poor release are offcourse the real reason...

These developers where inovative and creative, but ammateurs at the same time. I even talked with them a few times in real life and they had great ideas but no money to execute them, it's just impossible to create an MMO with a team of only 20 people. 

Where people think they threw away money on the Within temptation video, its the other way around, they made money because it was the within temptation video clip they created with ingame material. No, its just impossible to create a game like this with just a few millions. 

The game died when they got intoo contact with money ravens like frogster that pushed the game to an early release instead of investing the real money needed for succes. 

I have a 42 Deathhand in this game and have to say as a long term player (I level slowly because I have a life), that it is an amazing game if you require an interesting to learn and hard to master game. 

The combat is the best of any MMO I have played, you have to think and play well. The sigils system adds a unique way of adding stats to gear. There are so many innovative deep concepts in the game.

I am sad as it has nearly ruined my expectation of RPGs and MMOs, in terms of combat. It stood out because it avoided the stupid tank/dps/healer grouping. It allowed you to solo (even bosses if you well tuff enough). God sakes all I wanted to do was level my character to 50.

Its a sad day but it was expected, the development company went broke and then were bent over by Frogster. I really don't have much enthusiasm for fantasy based mmos after this.

sad sad day:)

Sad, as Spellborn was quite fun. I'd be playing it now were the launch/login bugs not there.

Hopefully someone will take care of the game and rerealse it :) I ve always liked this game alot. 

Originally posted by astrob0y

Hopefully someone will take care of the game and rerealse it :) I ve always liked this game alot. 

I doubt it, anyway....RIP TCoS. It's been fun knowing ya.

Was waiting patiently for when they released the new version sad they gave up =/

The game wasn't released too early. If anything, it was released too late. The publishers could leave the game's developers alone and three years later we'd still not have a finished, content-rich game.

Anyone who was in the beta from the very early stages knows how slow the developers were  in implementing new stuff and adding content - we went months before even a simple thing high on their list would get implemented. In fact, the beta itself went into months and months of interruption and came back without enough progress to show for it. All the signs said that these developers just didn't have the finances and/or manpower to fuel the development process of a game like this, and sadly that turned to be true.

It was a pity, because they had some refreshing ideas. I loved how the spell deck worked, and the world design was beautiful - same goes for the music. It was a world I loved stepping into, exploring and even grinding mobs for some time (who can forget those vicious low level bears, lol), but I always felt a lack of content and more importantly a lack of overall vision as to what they wanted their game to be other than a straight out quest-a-thon. All the ideas about the Houses and PVP felt more like sketches, early concepts never fully tried out. 

No, if they'd waited for this game to be really ready, they'd probably not launch till 2012... Whereas this is the sort of game that should have come out around 2006, in my opinion. It would pique one's interest with its fresh ideas and compelling world, and the playerbase would be more forgiving of its mistakes.

Now that I think of it, Fallen Earth has similar problems to this game due to scope versus finances, but it's at least got the crafting system and the not-overly-saturated post-apoc setting to keep it afloat... for now. Let's hope that one manages to stay alive.

Maybe future devs will start to think twice before releasing unfinished garbage, doubt tho.

Originally posted by jokuvaan

Maybe future devs will start to think twice before releasing unfinished garbage, doubt tho.

 

Devs don't release ... publishers do.

And it was unfinished, but not garbage. It might have had a chance if it wasn't for the silly ip-separation.

Another great game gone...

As someone else said, it was a diamond in the rough.. The promise was there but it really needed another year of dev.

Of all the failed games out there, this is the one I feel most unhappy about dying because it had it's own 'soul'.

Not many games can say that.

This is what happens when you dare to be different - This game was amazing.  I really hope Someone will resurrect it and publish it properly.  Greedy publishing deals and stupid ip bans were the ultimate death of Spellborn..  Such a real shame it never even got a chance.  Though i enjoyed every second playing this game..

meh the game was garbage from the start, thats what happens when you hype the crap out of a game and then release it half finished just to get it out the door.  I am not surprised.

This is what happens when you don't know how to run a mmo. The game might be good but mmo is a service and if you don't know how to run it then you deserve to go bancrupt.

I also followed development of this game for years until Beta began. The failure of TCoS can be pinpointed to the publisher choices the management of this MMORPG made. Without much marketing and odd release stages for different countries, the game never had a chance to really grow a playerbase. I think the next big thing on the market will be Star Wars: The Old Republic by Bioware. At least this game has an experienced development studio and huge support by LucasArts behind it.

I have read this now for the 2nd time and it makes me chance.... that this rough diamond didn't get a 2nd chance.

I am sad to see it go but it was flawed, the combat whell was a good idea but hard to understand, the effects of combos was hard to understand or clarify, you got acess to the full wheel way to late. On top of that the itemization of the game totally blew (there was almost none) the much hyped sigils had effects that was at best minimal and the biggest grip of all no endgame and a lack of content in some levels. I remember how everyone was excited when the pics of the house armor was released and the one House guild became common, unfortunately the house armor was never wearable by characters. The game had lots of problems like that and everyone should remember that for all the anger directed against Frogster and Akklaim the game had a pretty solid playerbase for about 5 months, then people left. The game itself had way to big problems for it to be successfull.

Originally posted by Knytta

I am sad to see it go but it was flawed, the combat whell was a good idea but hard to understand, the effects of combos was hard to understand or clarify, you got acess to the full wheel way to late. On top of that the itemization of the game totally blew (there was almost none) the much hyped sigils had effects that was at best minimal and the biggest grip of all no endgame and a lack of content in some levels. I remember how everyone was excited when the pics of the house armor was released and the one House guild became common, unfortunately the house armor was never wearable by characters. The game had lots of problems like that and everyone should remember that for all the anger directed against Frogster and Akklaim the game had a pretty solid playerbase for about 5 months, then people left. The game itself had way to big problems for it to be successfull.

I agree and disagree with what you're saying.  I never had any trouble understanding what the moves or combos did, and the wheel coming in as it did was a good idea to ease you into the system, although I would've liked the finished thing earlier, by say the mid-20's.  Also, as far as the solid playerbase goes, what server were you on?  I was on the international PVE server from Frogster and it was dead from the beginning.  I would player for several hours a day and be lucky to see one to two other players during that time.  The staggered release is what did the game in.  The people that were excited for the game were locked out by Acclaim and got bored waiting so they moved on to other games and when everyone could play there was no one left to do so.

The game definitely needed some work though.  A bank would've been great and seems ridiculous that there wasn't one from the beginning and there needed to be end-game content for sure.  The few dungeons they did were cool though, with interactive enviorments and such.  Oh well.  I'm sad to see it die.  I was hoping they were going to finish their re-release as f2p and I was going to go back and try it out again.  I guess that'll never happen now, though.  It's a shame is all.

I was on Akklaims US PvE server that had a good population for some time.

Just found out that before all this happened, Disney bought out Playdom. So maybe Disney has something to do with this.  http://corporate.disney.go.com/news/corporate/2010/2010_0727_playdom.html

Originally posted by solarine

The game wasn't released too early. If anything, it was released too late. The publishers could leave the game's developers alone and three years later we'd still not have a finished, content-rich game.

Anyone who was in the beta from the very early stages knows how slow the developers were  in implementing new stuff and adding content - we went months before even a simple thing high on their list would get implemented. In fact, the beta itself went into months and months of interruption and came back without enough progress to show for it. All the signs said that these developers just didn't have the finances and/or manpower to fuel the development process of a game like this, and sadly that turned to be true.

It was a pity, because they had some refreshing ideas. I loved how the spell deck worked, and the world design was beautiful - same goes for the music. It was a world I loved stepping into, exploring and even grinding mobs for some time (who can forget those vicious low level bears, lol), but I always felt a lack of content and more importantly a lack of overall vision as to what they wanted their game to be other than a straight out quest-a-thon. All the ideas about the Houses and PVP felt more like sketches, early concepts never fully tried out. 

No, if they'd waited for this game to be really ready, they'd probably not launch till 2012... Whereas this is the sort of game that should have come out around 2006, in my opinion. It would pique one's interest with its fresh ideas and compelling world, and the playerbase would be more forgiving of its mistakes.

Now that I think of it, Fallen Earth has similar problems to this game due to scope versus finances, but it's at least got the crafting system and the not-overly-saturated post-apoc setting to keep it afloat... for now. Let's hope that one manages to stay alive.

I was in the closed beta pretty much from the start, and I agree with you fully. I can remember leaving for 3+ months when it was taken down to make a new build, then coming back to see if it was up again only to find out they STILL hadn't mmanaged to get the build up they took it down for 3 months prior. Devs were pure amateurs.

this was by far the best game 

that artwork, the athmosphere, the different way to use skills, and far far far more..

i definitely hate peopel who shut down such games, cause there are thousends of clones of clones, TCOS was NOT one of them.

Have to say that I'm a little surprised to hear it's closing down, given that it was relatively new in the MMO world.

While the player-base is a key componant, I bet the economy doesn't help much, either.

The players of The Chronicles of Spellborn were recently informed the game will be closing at the end of this month.

Since Acclaim sold out to Playdom months ago our community has been ignored by all administrators/moderators/support team and have been fighting keep the game going by contacting all the companies involved.

Acclaim did not reply to any e-mails.
Playdom replied stating they have no involvement in the game.
Spellborn NV did not reply.
Frogster directed us to their German site even after being told the correspondent was English and therefore unable to use a German site.

This latest news about the game's closure was not received by Playdom, but by a Games.com writer who received an e-mail from Playdom informing them of this decision, this seems strange as they informed us they are not involved in the game.

We love this game, and do not want it to end.

The players have created a petition here to keep the game online - http://www.petitiononline.com/tcos/petition.html

We have appealed to Playdom to review their decision but are not hopeful of a reply.

We think the online gaming community has a right to know about how these companies treat their players.

thank you for reading this

player name Debbilicious
Michelle Dodds

Unfortunately it could be seen coming from the moment asia gave up on redeveloping the game.

Spellborn was a brilliant game, with great potential. I would have given a lot to see it prosper even through all the other problems. I wil mourn the loss of this great and original game for a long time to come.

My suspicions about ack-lame only seeing the game as a potential milk cow seem to have been right. Cut the losses by giving it to someone they know will shut it down. So they don't look quite as horrible.

Shame how it only makes them look a million times worse now, after all the trouble the seperate publishers caused from the start. I have been suspecting this was all on purpose. Not so much by the people who loved the game and dedicated so much time, effort and love into the game, but from somewhere higher up. Suspicions however will be just that, suspicions.

I wish I had the funds to make the game stay myself.

I know there will be many that gave up on the game just over a year ago, upon the notice of the bankrupcy of spellborn N.V. (even though but weeks earlier we had been told there were still plenty funds) will mourn this. Our hopes and love for the game never did die, even if most of us did not wish to play a poorly moderated F2P version (which is what Ack-lame turned it into)

Chantal van Dijk

A.K.A.

Chista of the Forsaken Prophets

A.K.A.

The one who brought cookies.

For those who understand: I never stopped working on that dream of mine. I just need to work on the skills, they are hard to get a hang of for me ^.^;

si i really think.. 

yo uwere one of the developers who started that great game originally, true?

if yes: congratulations for doing so many great things

It's sad to see a game that wasn't a blatant WoW clone fail. Someone finally tried to think outside the box and this is the outcome. It will shy some devs away from doing the same.

thats what i am afraid of..

most game look more or less the same, and at least PLAY like that.

TCOS was different, but very very playable.

i think its really big fail of the PUB. not the DEV.

Nice game but it has been in trouble since day one. Had some good ideas going for it though. 

so lets resurrect it!

there are dozens of f2p publishers out there

(publishing dozens of dumb games)

if anyone knows how to start a campaign.. (including holy facebook or whatever)

plz do so..  the whole world of tcos lovers will appreciate it.

mm why did playdom buy the game if they wanted to permanently shut it down !i dont buy it .they ll polish it and rerelease it

graphic engine?it is dated!

oh acclaim was baught not just the game but the full corp

oh then it make sense for them to shut down stuff lol!

i thot they had baught cosb just to shut it

Originally posted by drbaltazar

mm why did playdom buy the game if they wanted to permanently shut it down !i dont buy it .they ll polish it and rerelease it

graphic engine?it is dated!

The last the TCOS needs is a graphics overhaul at this point. The game may be dated but it still can look very nice from what I remember.

dated.. but much more beautiful then most recent games..

even the huge world..

btw: playdom is only hosting horrible silly nonsense games