Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
[Column] General: Could The Chronicles of the Spellborn Return?
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
I was a huge fan of The Chronicles of Spellborn, an ill-fated (and ahead-of-its-time) MMORPG that semi-tragically disappeared a few years ago. I enjoyed its unique setting, art style and combat mechanics, but I also knew that it was never to be smooth sailing for the game. After all, it featured not only a grind and a challenge but could be hard to run on anything less than gaming machines (at the time) and characters had to hoof it from place to place.
Read more of Beau Hindman's Not So MMO: Could The Chronicles of the Spellborn Return?
)
Comments
In fact, the game’s lack of mounts is one of those initial design mistakes that modern developers still make.
What an odd thing to say.
I don't see a lack of mounts as a design mistake. One can feasibly have a game without mounts and have it be a great game.
You don't need mounts.
Though the game was beautiful, the tutorial was abysmal (I truth I was horrified that anyone of the developers thought that tutorial was good) and one of the first quests you get was to run around to some towers with some paperwork of some sort.
Perhaps at the time I was just tired of those types of quests and just decided "enough was enough".
I loved the idea of the game but it felt ill conceived. Still, exceptionally beautiful.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
It was a great game! There wasn´t much wrong with it. Especially comparing to some other AAA launch titles lately.
It had a huge and very involving community during beta.
Sadly, the studio made a HUGE error with Publisher before launch. Going for multiple Publishers, tearing the entire "GLOBAL" community apart!
A lot of the community had formed Guilds before launch and suddenly could no longer play with eachother anymore and so instanstly dumped the game out of anger and moved on! They pretty much lost almost their entire playerbase overnight!
They put UK and US players under publisher A, half of Europe under Publisher B and the other half of Europe under Publisher C.
All three Publishers also had a very questionable reputation.
The game was immediately doomed, before it even launched. Population on the servers was low. Publishers didn´t bother much. Hell, you couldn´t even buy the game anywhere. Only digital in most countries.
Studio went belly up shortly after. I think it was Frogster that bought the IP, forced shut Down at the other publishers and so took it offline.
Last report a year after that, is that they overhauled the game and try to launch it in Asia. Never heard anything anymore.
Such a shame!!
You stay sassy!
The game did have some really good ideas, but the combat system were pretty bad. The whole idea of a dynamic combat system where what you just did mattered is great in theory but here you sadly just rotated the same few skills over and over.
I think that if they actually put some more work in that part things could have been pretty different for it. Since one main part of almost every MMO is combat having a system that feels half done is really bad.
And they did use some anti cheating program that were bad, I remember several of my friends couldn't run the client at all. I didn't have any problems myself.
I loved the music in it.
I appreciate the shout out to City of Heroes. Thanks!
But what about the game was "too unusual"? I didn't try it. I hear players complain about a lack of innovation in MMOs and how games are a WoW-clone. Then a game that does something different comes along and fails.
LOVED it, was in my top 3 mmos of all time.
Problem was the game was ahead of its time and really did not get the press it deserved.
No - let your dreams live by leaving the game dead!
"Torquemada... do not implore him for compassion. Torquemada... do not beg him for forgiveness. Torquemada... do not ask him for mercy. Let's face it, you can't Torquemada anything!"
MWO Music Video - What does the Mech say: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF6HYNqCDLI
Johnny Cash - The Man Comes Around: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0x2iwK0BKM
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
My Review Manifesto
Follow me on Twitter if you dare.
I was hyped for that game before it was released and played it for a while with the usual bunch of online friends I play with. I remember that I liked the combat and art style in the game. Well, generally the atmosphere was nice. But for some reason we stopped playing quite soon after and I am not sure why. Maybe performance reasons, I don't know. I also don't remember what kind of questing system the game had.
So without remembering why we quit back then, I can't really tell if I would like to see it reappear.
Well, TCoS did some things right. It had a unique world a feeling to it but the reason it never became big was that it had issue.
The combat system as I said before were based on a great idea, dynamic combat. But it sadly felt like they bother to finnish it. You had your skills on a rolling bar and could choose 1 skill and then the bar rolled, but your last skill didn't matter so you couldn't really set yourself up for cool combo moves, you just got the next of the 4 different bars.
The idea tthat you could update your gear with sigils and keep your gear the entire game with good stats were also good but it too felt like they should have put some more work into it. Maybe adding some effects to the gear visually as well.
The gameworld looked very different from the other MMOs I seen, but it was far too small.
The reason the game failed had nothing at all to do with Wow, it was refreshing and we did like that but it still felt like half a game. It was still better than many F2P games that do fine for themselves though.
The music were made by some members of the Dutch band "within Temptation" and they set an excellent mood but good music and ideas ain't enough sadly. I think the right lead designer and a better budget would have made this a rather popular game, particularly if they would have started out as B2P or F2P.
The game was apiece of art despite all its fails ..... As what i do remeber from the game are its genious ideas.. The combat system with the rotating action bar and combos was out of this world..
to bad the world is empty, because as an early beta tester, i had a guard named after me (seriously)
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
-The combat system
- Being rewarded for staying alive.
"you are like the world revenge on sarcasm, you know that?"
One of those great lines from The Secret World
I enjoyed the limited time I was able to beta test TCoS. I really like the overall feel of the game (artwork, atmosphere, story) as well as the combat. I think the choice of publishers is what really doomed the game from the start unfortunately.
I was very sorry when this closed down so soon after launch. Great world with some fantastic vistas and settings. Unique combat system with the skill wheel and the fact you needed to aim and move out of the way of attacks. As others mentioned, the concept of PEP was ahead of its time and could make a huge difference in combat, given all the buffs and debuffs the skills created. The five factions were also interesting.
Alas, the population declined rapidly and most zones were a ghost town within weeks. I'd gladly play again if it manages to gain a second life.
What did it do that was so unusual? It used a physically rotating skilldeck (hot bar / tool bar). Each skilldeck has 5 slots and there are 6 rows in total, but only one row is ever visable and usable at any time. When you use a skill, the deck rotates to the next deck. So you had to remember your rotations based on the deck rotation, ex. 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 wait to rotate back.
I constantly read about there being no gear stats, this is not a lie but a misunderstanding. There are sigils, gear stat inserts. Weapons had sigil slots, armour had sigil slots, jewelry had sigil slots. Some sigils came in 10 teirs. For example the damage 1 sigil did +1 extra damage, and not 1d8 of extra damage. The max tier damage 10 sigil did +10 extra damage, and not 10d8 of extra damage. Sigils were not cumulative, and you couldn’t load up on one type. Your weapon may have 3 sigil slots but only one +damage type sigil could be loaded at a time.
Combat was FPS (twitch), like that introduced in to SWG by the Combat Update (CU). This combat mechanic is prone to cheating and hacking. It requires extra client-side anti-cheating software. The server side FPS algorithms are complex and time consuming. Most old MMOFPS used simplification techniques, to make calculations faster and less complex.
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
Why no mounts? Because the servers can’t keep up with an accurate location when fast mounts are used. Many game servers use entry level server central processing units, that perform well with RPG combat (tab targeting). But are arguably inadequate for FPS combat.
The so called skill is nothing more than exploitation of internet lag and server lag and inefficiency. I suspect that a twitch mmo couldn’t truly use the term skill for another twenty or more years. That's how long I expect server farms and the internet backbone to install equipment up to the task of a twitch mmo.Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
Within Temptation was involved in promotion of the game. None of their music was ever part of the game. It was all from Jesper Kyd. Beautiful music that fitted that strange world very well.
It takes one to know one.