The Chronicles of Spellborn Invites You to Tea

[Signe]

They're having a dev chat thingymajingy on MMORPG.com and I remember a couple of people being interested in this game a bajillion years ago.  Hoax or someone had it in their sig even.  Maybe not Hoax.  Somebody did though.  ANYWAY... sheesh, do I get sidetracked or what?... At 1PM today they're having this thingy and thought someone might go listen to it and say stuff about it.  I can't because we'll be traveling to pick up a treadmill we bought.  I've been wondering if a treadmill is a bad idea with my pussies... especially the black one who is very naughty.

I hope someone read all the way down to the important bits.   

[NiX]

I'm sure everyone will read about how your black pussy is very naughty and that makes you worry about getting a treadmill.

[Signe]

I really am worried she could get sucked under or something.  I'm not worried about the ginger as he is afraid of mostly everything that makes a noise.  ALSO!!!  I call my kittens pussies or kitties as a term of affection.  Sometimes I call you a pussy, too, you know. 

[Hoax]

Yeah I had/have it in my sig, though I've sort of decided its going to be too much like Fury to be worth playing.  Also I've been slowly giving up on the medium for the last year.  I'm almost over it once I go sub to EVE for another fling and get tired of that for the fifth time.

[UnSub]

The devlog is up:

Devs say, "Our game will be awesome with awesome lore!".

Just like movies, MMOs need to show, not tell. Still no release date, though it is allegedly in closed beta.

(I've just noticed that devchat itself was only meant to be about in-game lore. Is there any kind of dev chat that says less than lore chat?)

Following this, there was a follow-up Q&A. My favourite from a quick skim read:

<scaphism> how is healing handled. Is it a targeted heal or an area of effect?
A: There are multiple types of healing effects. Some well-known basics are direct healing, healing over time and taking life on hit. However, there are also AoE’s like poison gas clouds, which have a healing effect the first 5 seconds they’re inhaled, but turn into a deadly poison afterwards

Spellborn - the game where even dedicated healers can grief you.

[NiX]

Yeah, that sounds pretty fucking stupid. "Alright, I'm healing. Count to 4 and fucking run like hell!" Or the griefing as mentioned above. What's an MMO without griefing? Especially griefing the devs knowingly added themselves.

[sidereal]

I've been cautiously optimistic about CoS for a while.  One of the ways I maintain my optimism is by completely avoiding any news or information from the devs.

[Mrbloodworth]

Yeah, that sounds pretty fucking stupid. "Alright, I'm healing. Count to 4 and fucking run like hell!" Or the griefing as mentioned above. What's an MMO without griefing? Especially griefing the devs knowingly added themselves.

Your assuming that the poison part, still is targeted at friendlies. Eather way, is it to much to ask for others to manage there attacks and watch the friendly fire, if it does still target everyone?

I don't think so..more like a FPS that way.. Sounds cool to me.

Really Early Combat Vid.

[Signe]

Thanks for the linky to the thingy.  The thing I dislike about these sorts of dev chats as opposed to interviews is that they just ask questions from the punters.  If a dev says something interesting, chances are it'll go ignored.  Not that they said anything very interesting in that chat, but still... It sounds like they MIGHT (following up on this might have been interesting) have bits of the game to open up in the future.  One of the things I did enjoy about Horizons was how opening new areas and getting new races or stuff would be a community thing.  If that's what they're planning, it's not a bad thing.  I guess I'll give the Euro release a go, just to see.

Also, I don't mind the chance to grief my own party.  Those are usually the people I WANT to grief!

[Hoax]

For people who don't know shit about CoS, you can see in that video the ability bar in the bottom-middle of the screen.  It spins as he uses skills.  Basically the design is, you setup your attacks like a CCG deck, with a finite # of slots.  You only have X available to you at a time, and when you use one the bar spins to the next line.  Some skills are combo openers, some are continuations and some finishers.  Some skills are defensive.  Basically this is a much much much more twitchy, much less auto-attack + hotkey form of combat. 

Can they avoid the stuff that keeps me from playing GW and Fury?  Dunno.  If they do though this will be a pretty cool game.  I haven't been following it closely since the euro game show thingy news splurge, as everything has been very lore heavy or lame devchats with "punter questions" as Signe saiz.

[Nonentity]

I heard this game was being developed by fat people.

That's just the rumor, but you know. It's probably true.

[Draegan]

Necro'd

Couldn't find another thread for it.  Anyway  Acclaim to publish Chronicles of Spellborn.

http://tcos.com/news/?id=1018

OPEN LETTER FROM DAVID PERRY TO THE SPELLBORN COMMUNITY

Hi,
My name is David Perry, and I’m the Chief Creative Officer of Acclaim Games (the new Acclaim) that is now the #1 American publisher of Free-to-Play Online Games. Some of you “old school” gamers might remember me from the old Sinclair Spectrum/Amstrad CPC/Commodore 64/Amiga/Atari ST days, back before the MMO concept even existed!

The CEO of Acclaim (Howard Marks) was the Chairman of Activision Studios through their massive growth during the 1990’s, and together we travel the world in search of the best new games that we can possibly find. Right now we’re tracking over 400 MMO games (yes it’s insane!). My poor old gaming PC is literally peppered with games in every conceivable language, and I’ve just kept playing, patiently waiting for that WHOA! moment. The game that finally got us there is Spellborn. When we saw it running, our jaws literally dropped to the floor. “Who the heck made this? We need to talk!”

[Nonentity]

Acclaim is the fucking elephant graveyard of Korean F2P MMOs.

[AcidCat]

Good news. I still have hope that this game can be good. The art design makes me want to hope anyway, and the description of the combat system.

[mutantmagnet]

Considering the last time the talked about their negotiations with an NA publisher they implied the game will be released in the fall as long as the publisher signs up by September.

I'm still looking forward to this game but I'm going to have serious issues now because WAR has been gaining a lot of my interest and Darkfall might be relatively playable by Winter. The only way this MMO contrivance could be any bigger of a bloodbath if CCP announced they will releas their anti-nano patch with highly improved PVE by October and Blizzard announced WOTLK will be in available by December.

Oh wait isn't Stargate also coming out this fall?

[Bungee]

Good news. I still have hope that this game can be good. The art design makes me want to hope anyway, and the description of the combat system.

I don't know, that combat sounds to be a little like rock-paper-scissors with more choices per "round". And the combatants are out of sync, too...

[mutantmagnet]

What do you mean by out of sync?

[schild]

What do you mean by out of sync?

Damage is dealt at odd times during combat. Sometimes before your animation even fires. The entire experience there - PARTICULARLY WITH MELEE - just feels sluggish. I've heard it's getting better though.

[Nonentity]

But guys!

It is a CHRONICLE! 

[AcidCat]

What do you mean by out of sync?

Damage is dealt at odd times during combat. Sometimes before your animation even fires. The entire experience there - PARTICULARLY WITH MELEE - just feels sluggish. I've heard it's getting better though.

Hmm, hopefully they can tighten this up. Sounds like a problem with the implementation, not the actual concept.

[Slyfeind]

Wow, I remember the name David Perry. I can't remember what from, and I'm too lazy to look it up right now.

I had a kernel of a thought that maybe Spellborn would be the bridge between Eastern and Western MMOs like some hybrid that takes the best of both worlds, but their screenshot page crashed my browser so I went back to playing Ultima 2. My morning is full of symbolism!

[UnSub]

Dave Perry.

Shiny Entertainment.

Project Top Secret, the player-developed MMO.

Currently trying to convince people to play translated MMOs for Acclaim.

[schild]

As I said on gaf, David Perry is a fruitbasket.

[croaker69]

Hoax's sig is now the gold standard for games to avoid. How is Huxley coming along?

[Lantyssa]

It is, but when the sig only contains MMOs, it's fairly likely to be a list of disappointing games.

[Mrbloodworth]

Hoax's sig is now the gold standard for games to avoid. How is Huxley coming along?

Closed beta starts in September.

EDIT: Quoted the wrong person.

[LC]

[Righ]

Hoax's sig is now the gold standard for games to avoid. How is Huxley coming along?

And he's still looking at AoC in the radar despite the fact that its now in visual range and it turned out to be a decoy.

[Brogarn]

New video and site revamp.

http://tcos.com/en/downloads,id10,pvp.html

[Mrbloodworth]

New video and site revamp.

http://tcos.com/en/downloads,id10,pvp.html

Yeah that new vid is really insightful, i like the combat style (on video...).

[PalmTrees]

I've been interested in this one since I heard them describe their equipment system. Equipment and stats aren't linked, so you can wear or weild whatever you want. I've always hated having to wear mismatched or just plain ugly armor sets because of stats. Hopefully they'll have something cool looking.

[NiX]

That combat just looked messy to me. I also have a huge hate for the cock rocket that decided circle strafe was a good idea.

[Checkers]

I've been interested in this one since I heard them describe their equipment system. Equipment and stats aren't linked, so you can wear or weild whatever you want. I've always hated having to wear mismatched or just plain ugly armor sets because of stats. Hopefully they'll have something cool looking.

Whatever is wrong with this genre, the fans are at least as responsible as the developers.

[Krushchev]

The combat looked decent. I just have a bone to pick with the walking animations.

[Ghambit]

The combat looked decent. I just have a bone to pick with the walking animations.

I second that.
I've been following this game for a LONG time and am happy they're finally in CB.  BUT, I was always a bit disappointed they went with a 3rd-person perspective.  The game screams to be in 1st person.  If they made it 1st-person we also wouldnt be subjected to the crumby animations (which are 3rd-rate overall involving pretty much everything).

I also thought it wouldve been a good idea to make the skill deck a part of the economic system.  Would've been nice if you could trade/sell/apprentice skills out to other folks (assuming they had enough skills).  Making a strategic CCG out of it.  This forces people to mind their wallets and invest in their gameplay.  Other systems that generated revenues on top of this would've been a lot more meaningful as well (i.e. crafting).

My favorite part of the game though is that you're SUPPOSED to be able to travel through time effecting the "chronicles" themselves.  Rewritting history so to speak in an effort to change the landscape to your liking and perhaps gain some notoriety (namely memorials, etc. in your honor).  I'm a bit confused at how they intend to implement this system but I'm pretty sure aside from combat was their major hurdle.

I wouldnt doubt if they took it out.