Chronicles of Spellborn

[*CCCP*]

EDITED VER.

The Chronicles of Spellborn (TCoS) is an MMO using the renowned Unreal® Engine™ O.o

http://www.tcos.com

First post version (yeah I will fix more info as soon as I finnish eating my rice and fish...)

"In last month's Producer's Update we already hinted at a new release schedule for The Chronicles of Spellborn. Today the European publishers Frogster Interactive and Mindscape have announced that the game will be released in Q1 2007, with an Open Beta scheduled for early Q1 2007. We decided to not push the game out before the holiday season, but instead take the extra time to polish the game to ensure that we deliver on all the content and the features that were promised."

Ok let's break down that piece of information. This gives me enough reason to get curios about the game.

1) They seem to be a european based/western dev/publishing studio.
2) Beta will soon be released.

Yeah I know number 1 can seem to have abit of mild racism in it. If you compare it to the fact Im almost starts to hate korean mmo-devs/publishers. Altough I blame L2 for that... Furthermore theres other great aspects of having a western based mmo-game, the devs are hopefully listening more to there customers and can understand how they wants the game to evolve. For once EU/NA wont just be a 2nd market to make more $$ from. But this game seems to be designed for the european market.

The fact that they will acctually deliver open beta really soon, makes it even more interesting. Since I have been looking for another new mmo to get into ever since I got fed up with L2. So this is great news, and the fact that they seem to care more about customer satisfaction due to personal profit is always nice.

Ok from reading this games F.A.Q Im getting abit worried (at least when it comes down to the games looks) O.o

"...a balance of realistic vs. cartoon fantasy. This is the "European Style"..."

This better not be anyother world of warcraft look-alike, we have seen to many of those recentley and if I would have been into toys ' r us I would had been playing wow along time ago :P You can say that looks doesnt matter, but we all know that the first impression you get is always in 99% of the cases always based on how things looks.

[(\(*o*)/)]

western developers means this game will be fug :(

male dwarf vs hydralisk:

http://www.tcos.com/downloads/image.php?name=ormoburu_general2_big.jpg&preview=1

[*CCCP*]

continuation from first post...

Alrite my greatest fear of this game being another wow, has been reduced to practially zer0. Since looking at several screen-shots and one movie, this game delivers a nice graphical style that will suit most players that used to play L2.

Screen-shots can be found here:
http://www.tothegame.com/screenshot.asp?id=4904

http://www.tcos.com/downloads/?type=3&lng=en

Movies can be found here:
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm?loadNews=6559&bhcp=1

http://www.tcos.com/downloads/?type=5&lng=en

Altough it seems that if you look for little people (aka midgets) you are looking in the wrong direction. Great I say since every lamer from L2 that had a dorf was by 50% chance a EULA breaker and a farmer. So I have no respect for pink, short legged chars anymore. Which leads us into the next subjects - cheaters. So far I havent found that much info if you will be able to bot in this game or not. Kinda have to understand this games trading/market system abit more before I jump to any conclusions about this being another $$-making game. Altough I strongly doubt that this will be a game you can gain alot of $$ from. But who knows, during the recent years mmo-game have taken a downhill trip by the fact that if you have enough irl-cash you can buy almost anything from a mmo-game (yeye you get my point, Im sure you are familiar with ebayers/ige-buyers/itemgarden lovers, etc).

PVP

text st0len from official site...

" The most important thing for us in designing the role of PvP in the game was simply to make it have a reason. There’s no point in killing people for the sake of killing them. That’s an artificial thing which can only happen in a game. In reality the people playing those characters would most likely shy away from most fights, let alone shootouts. As such, we wanted to provide impetus to actually want to engage in PvP when appropriate. In addition, we wanted to make a reasonable system which penalizes inappropriate and asocial behavior."

"There will without a doubt be more than one type of PvP (player vs. player) available within the game. We will offer the ability to engage in arena battles (which, to be fair, should be seen as far more exciting than typical arena fares in other MMOs as we’ve taken measures to make them more interesting) as well as PvP during other times. The exact scope of PvP will be tested in Beta and may be server-dependant upon release."

Ok so you can say goodbye to you next door 12-year old kid neighbour, he wont play this game. Cuz as it seems to be designed now you wont be going around griefing/PK anyone you like to just like that (as you can in L2). Altough I myself have never been a big fan of totally open pvp, since its soo mindless just going around killing everything that moves with a name tag over there head. As you can read above "We will offer the ability to engage in arena battles...as well as PvP during other times" They have designed the game so that fully open pvp can be avaible, but you can forget about L2 pvp. It will be very interesting to see how they have made the arena grounds more interesting for pvps? Since I have only played L2 I cant compare that much with those kind of pvp setups. Since NC Soft really does suck at fixing cool pvp layouts for arenas, Im sure this game will be better on that aspect. We have to w8 until more information gathers up from the open beta, where they will test the pvp system intensely. Hopefully they make the so-called arena battles pretty cool, so it wont just be some lame shit as it is in L2 now. Would be cool if they was instanced so that you sign up to make a team and you get to fight during special rules/conditons (similar to the battle tournamnet, but avaible any day).

Death in Spellborn
"At this time we have no plans to penalize death. There is most likely to be a "travel time" penalty of some short amount (assuming you wish to return to the location you died at)...Instead we intend to put a system in place which rewards good play and not dying."

Another thing I dont like with L2 is that they dont contribute a skilled good player, but punish him if he so dares to die and looses alot of time (since xp = time at least after lvl 75). So by Spellborn having a concept of no xp-penalty for dying is fine by me. I guess we also have to w8 until OB before we know more about this reward system for good play style.

Grouping/Parties
"With the multiple levels of advancement inherent in the game, contributions made by individuals help the groups as a whole. Working together will be the only possible way to accomplish some goals within the game, and in some cases this will require large numbers of players."

Not much info there so far, its very easy for a game dev to just say that so booth the party players and solo players wont be dissapointed. A more important question now is if you have to have certain classes/chars/players in a group to be able to xp good (cuz nobody wants gimp xp). Ok, lets move on...

Character creation
"The game allows a choice between human and daevi....In appearance, they are somewhat similar to humans. They tend towards more alien skin tones and have rather distinctive horns as well."

Ohh only two races? Ahh well fine by me, less classes to balance in pvp. Only problem is that you wont be seeing any dark elf with a massive upper chest.

"We have a very broad range of appearances that should appeal to just about anyone. If you’d like to be bald, no problem. Huge as well? Also not an issue. Carrying two swords? Check. Wearing armor only on your legs and arms, leaving that massive chest bare? Sure thing. Why not add a tattoo while you’re at it?"

If they hadnt had a great wide range of character customization, this game would had been abit boring (I have enough traumatized memories from L2 when all the buffers wore banana suits/karmien set). Hopefully it will be enough options in the intial setup so we dont see 200 using the exact same setup with there chars, cuz the other setups wasnt cool enough.

"You have the option to wear different clothing and wield different weapons. Unlike systems in which you’re stuck wearing that "ideal" armor when out and about, we let you dress in the style that you want at any time. Bare-chested brawler one day to axe-wielding armored menace the next . . . it’s all in what a player finds fun."

Thank you mr Dev for that, I got so f0cking fed up with my plated leather set I used while xping my way up to lvl 75. And it makes pvp abit more interesting since you cant really know what weapon or armor the opponent are using (but Im already getting ahead of myself already, we was talking abut character creation not armors and weapons).

"...the feeling you can get while playing other games that x, y, or z race is so much better because they get the power to <insert cool thing here>. That is really counterproductive, and with only two races the game it would quickly become clear that only a daevi of a certain class was really good."

So there wont be any diffrences between the two races in abilities by normal attributes. Fine by me, this also means less stuff to balance for pvp.

"If we went with a strictly skill-based game, there’s a good chance that TCoS would be quickly infested with FotM (Flavor of the Month) disease, where periodically someone comes up with the new "best build" and a ton of players then copy that idea. By dividing characters into classes, we restrict the possibilities in this regard."

HAHAOMGLOL no more fotm-rerolling thank you mr Dev for that kind setup. Ehhuum so what kind of system will this game use?

"Instead of the standard "ranger" or "wizard" often found in other games, we’re going with new classes that work in the context of our world."

Hmm ok, I guess we wont see any pure buffers (think prophets from L2 during the early chronicles, all they did pretty much was buffing every 20 mins and sitting medding MP).

Alrite that was enough for now to be continued...

[Tarun]

Weapons and armor will have no effect in tCoS. It's purely visual.

Fighting is sorta like in GW where you load up a skilldeck before fighting, only the skilldeck "animates" as you use it. You build a certain amount of skilldecks, and as you use a skill on deck 1, the deck will rotate and you can only use skills from deck 2, and so on. Considering that there are some skills that can only be used in combos, it gets pretty intricate.

I was pretty excited about it for a while, but the "no weapons or armor" sorta turned me off it. I quite like achieving and upgrading my gear in rpg's.


If you wanna try another european mmo, you could check out Ryzom. They have a free unlimited trial that doesn't need a CC. You can play it for free as long as you want, but you're stuck on a newbie island about the size of Talking Island.
The support in it is pretty good. Several times I've asked a question in shout chat, and a GM pm's me asking if I've had it answered and if I need further help.
The skills are pretty fun too. Instead of learning "power attack 1", you learn building blocks which you can use to create your own skills. Obviously you need to balance them out with stamina cost and such. For example, I have a skill that can only be used after a successful parry (+50 credits), takes 25 stamina (+30 credits), and has a chance to degrade my weapon's condition (+50 credits). Using the 130 credits, I added ++damage, ++accuracy, and armor piercing.
This gets pretty interesting once you get building blocks like aoe, ricochet, HP drain, heals, etc. You can make your own aoe stun or "chain-lightning-heal".
Armor and damage is locational. I can aim for your head and do more damage if you're not wearing a helmet. If I crit your hands, your accuracy will be lowered, if I crit your legs, you will be slowed, etc.
There are different skill trees and you earn xp in them individually. Heal someone who's fighting and you get defensive magic XP, forage for materials and you get harvesting xp, craft a gun and you get ranged weapons crafting xp.
I haven't seen any bots in it yet.