f13.net forums - Chronicles of Spellborn

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July 19, 2025, 01:08:11 PM

we're back, baby

So, uh, the MMO "Chronicles of Spellborn" has set a launchdate for November 27th, which is not far away at all. Yet I haven't heard a bloody thing about the game? I personally think the combat and skillsystem seems great, and I'm interested in learning about the game, but there seems to be very few sources for it.

Is the game fun? Is it worth a monthly fee and my time? Will it be able to survive in the harsh world of MMO gaming?

Anyone out there who can shed some light on this game at all?

I've gotten some press releases. They're pretty....not great. >_>

Hence why I haven't posted anything about it.

Yes. It was one of my first avatars.

Pennywise -> Redhead smoking -> Red Meat/Earl -> Silent Hill Girl -> Tim Roth smoking

I just heard from a guy who came disenchanted from beta

he said it was pretty bad.

I bet they'll either delay the game or it'll just fade into obscurity right after launch

Sigh Ohhhhh, I see.

The combat system definitely looks good but there should be more to a game than just combat. If they can't offer more than that it won't do any better than Planetside. I personally love their art and sound direction.

I have this in my bag of things to watch along with Darkfall, Aion and Duke Nukem Forever. I think I left the bag on a plane going nowhere, though. Oh bugger.

Is the NDA still there? I hate not being able to talk about how awful games are because of NDA

Does it really matter? At this point most people, after you're done talking, would ask you what the hell you're talking about.

Quote from: Signe on November 15, 2008, 10:41:44 AM

I have this in my bag of things to watch along with Darkfall, Aion and Duke Nukem Forever. I think I left the bag on a plane going nowhere, though. Oh bugger.

I see what you did there. Ohhhhh, I see.

Quote from: NiX on November 15, 2008, 01:21:08 PM

Does it really matter? At this point most people, after you're done talking, would ask you what the hell you're talking about.

We should stick with the spirit of the NDA, even if it's indecipherable. We don't want to upset the Overlords.

Figures. I was looking forward to seeing this. They have some interesting lore and like has been said, the combat system looks interesting. Ah well. I'm spending all my free time in WAR anyways.

Oh, you never know, Brogarn. It might be wonderful. We're just mean to games here. It's our way. We loves our pussies though!

I've been following the game on and off for some time now, so I'd at least like to try it, even though Lich King is taking up most of my time.

Quote from: Signe on November 17, 2008, 06:55:34 AM

Oh, you never know, Brogarn. It might be wonderful. We're just mean to games here. It's our way. We loves our pussies though!

So, really, you just wanted to post that pic. Cute, though. Definitely cute.

I just wanted to reassure you that, regardless of how I might mock the game you want to like and you for wanting to like it, I think it would be lovely if some of these games turned out to be nice, too. Even though they all seem to eventually end up going pear shaped.

And kittehs.

7 days to release

still not a word of this game on the internets

No, today they announced that the closed beta would start on the original launch date, November 27, and that the new release date would be sometime in January. Or something like that.

Oh, and they dropped the NDA, too.

Excitement.

Only for the US, though, as far as I know.

The Europe launch seems to be going ahead as planned.

Europe is beta testing for the US for once? Awesome! awesome, for real

I'm curious now that the NDA is dropped. Someone spill.

Good old Europe, taking the fall. We'll be there soon, though. Just in time to take the credit for winning! awesome, for real

Here's the press release that says Europe is officially the US testing centre.

One positive thing is that Spellborn is launching with a free trial up to Fame Level 7.9. It's positive in that you won't have to buy the box to find out how it plays... I'm sure that's a good thing...

I like the free pricing model at first. Saves the cost of a box, and if I'm unsure, I won't feel bad about paying for only a month since it's still cheaper than the initial cost of most games.

Quote from: Lantyssa on November 19, 2008, 07:53:57 PM

Europe is beta testing for the US for once? Awesome! awesome, for real

I'm curious now that the NDA is dropped. Someone spill.

I had issues when I changed internet services so I didn't get to use the latest beta build.

The combat system is really good even if they annoyingly took out collision detection and height quantifiers. If it was a stand alone action rpg game or an MMO where you only pay for the expansions this game could sell really well just on the game mechanics alone.

But this is a subscription based model and it's difficult to say how it will do. All signs prior to the last beta build points to a sluggish start.

I participated in Korean mmo betas with more forum activity and in world activity.

No one could beta test for over a year due to the devs taking the servers down to fix rubberbanding issues that came up in beta 3. During this period through specific channels they had announced Frogster was tapping Korean devs from other mmos to help them with netowrking so you can guess networking wasn't the original devs strong suit.

Expect to do a lot of fedex quests. That is the bulk of missions in the first two zones.

Their tagline is "What lies Hidden Must be Found" but they actually scaled back on any of the quests that required you to think in the first zone and my attempts to see if storylines changes a lot because you can make different choices at certain points hasn't gotten any results for the first 15 levels.

The artistic touches they put in sound and visuals have been impressive.

The collision detection and rubber-banding issues could well be related. Personally, I'm of the opinion that collision detection is not all it's cracked up to be. As an attempt to imitate reality it often falls flat on its face.

Quote from: mutantmagnet on November 20, 2008, 04:23:45 AM

The combat system is really good even if they annoyingly took out collision detection and height quantifiers. If it was a stand alone action rpg game or an MMO where you only pay for the expansions this game could sell really well just on the game mechanics alone.

I found it to be really poor. You are supposed to manually dodge npc attacks by strafing around them. It doesn't work very well due to poor animations, and the fact that npcs can hit you anywhere in their front 180 degrees. So every fight devolves into trying to run circles around the enemy so you don't take maximum damage. Also you do slightly more damage by hitting from behind, but it still takes forever to kill even the weakest npc. Don't expect to ever level on npcs in this game.

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No one could beta test for over a year due to the devs taking the servers down to fix rubberbanding issues that came up in beta 3. During this period through specific channels they had announced Frogster was tapping Korean devs from other mmos to help them with netowrking so you can guess networking wasn't the original devs strong suit.

Frogster? I think you have your mmos mixed up.

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Expect to do a lot of fedex quests. That is the bulk of missions in the first two zones.

Their tagline is "What lies Hidden Must be Found" but they actually scaled back on any of the quests that required you to think in the first zone and my attempts to see if storylines changes a lot because you can make different choices at certain points hasn't gotten any results for the first 15 levels.

The artistic touches they put in sound and visuals have been impressive.

Lets be honest. Fedex and kill quests make up the bulk of the game.

Quote from: Aldo;7919644

"Also, from today, NDA is officially dropped." Indeed.

Time to convey what I have already told some of you through PM.

This game is beautiful, it absolutely is. I've never played an MMO before with so much detail in the artwork. Combat is interesting, it kind of plays like a shooter without guns, long reloading time and stiff graphics.

This is where the fun stops. Quests, progression, community aspects and crafting/economy is all useless shit. Quests are more than 50% FedEx, progression only means you get some extra skills, it takes eons to get to a level where you can even start tweaking your gear. In fact, due to constant restarts and everyone starting at lev1 all the time I haven't even gotten anything that would improve my character beyond his level. I assure you I have played the game for at least 20 hours. Community will be weird, for some quests you need some help, because you're facing a lot of mobs at once, but there is no incentive to remain in a party much longer than needed for that one quest and guilds only offer a chat room and no other functionality. The game has some sort of crafting in that you can make fashion items when you dump your complete fortune in it. It is utterly useless. There is no auction house too. Most damning thing: there is no end game at all. No one in beta even managed to get to the highest level. The only fun thing they noticed is the arena where you can have pvp fights.

The beta has been an absolute disaster on a magnitude that is hard to describe. I think I can try by describing my beta adventures.

I got in beta after I pointed out a very stupid article in a national newspaper about Spellborn, the whole article was full of factual mistakes, they used a screenshot of Spellborn with the subtext "a picture of World of Warcraft" and it was just horrible.

The PC I had at the time (what I can remember GeForce4200Ti and everything else from that era) couldn't run it, so I was mostly lurking the beta forums. At that time there must have been roughly 100 testers of whom maybe 20 or 30 were active on the forums.

About a year ago - after the game had been postponed numerous times - I got a new PC and downloaded the game again. At that time the game was no where near finished, even the starting zone was nearly completely empty and the first serious mobs you fought were so strong that people had to fight in groups of 2 or more to even stand a chance. The community manager agreed with the complaints but it took about 3 months to tweak this mob, because they refused to roll out "small patches".
During that time there were large periods we hadn't heard a single thing from the company and many people had uninstalled the game because their character was stuck, they were told to wait for the next patch or they were out of content because there was no way to get off the second rock. After a lot of screaming and yelling we got another patch that fixed some problems but added a few dozen more. Since my previous character had been whiped I had to start over again, so I couldn't even see the changes they made to the second zone.

The last time I played was around 21/10/2008, it was around that time that the community manager had acted like such a wanker that I had given up all hope for this game.

I made a thread explaining thoroughly to them why their game would not have anyone playing it for more than a few hours and what they could do to stop this from happening, to summarize:

* The starting area is one big grind consisting of dozens of FedEx quests and a few combat quests tossed in for good measure. You will be delivering dinner invitations half the time in this game.
* The hype had been created years in advance, they had Within Temptation sing a song about the game and they had invited a few magazines over for a hands-on. Now that the game is almost coming out they have stopped with any and all marketing attempts.

The community manager replied to my topic, first he changed my title because I had the quote "fun, fuckers, FUN" in it and he changed it to "fun...FUN" which was just ironic but shows how serious they take their beta testers...

He did not reply to my feedback on this shitty quests, but instead went for the marketing abortion, it can be summarized as "There are plenty of games out there that did not have a huge pre-release hype and still, they are profitable games". I told him they were lying to themselves, no game has ever gotten popular without some sort of effort to get the news out that there is this fun game people can play.

His reply: "As always, you are more than welcome to apply for our marketing job openings, since we are still looking for the people with good marketing credentials."

I just refused to reply past this point. This much passive-agressiveness from a fucking community manager I could not stand. The alternative is that they are really desperate for employees and are willing to take anyone. undecided

I'm not sure what should be more worrying.

Anyway, if anyone will be able to have fun in this game I will be highly surprised. I guess this is the correct time to show screenshots.

review by a beta tester

Quote from: LC on November 20, 2008, 06:22:50 AM

This wasn't always the case. Before beta 3 I could anticipate NPC movements even boar animations and dodge. Somehow things got messed up on that front. It's sad how I had an easier time backstabbing mobs with collision detection on in beta 2 than I did in beta 3 once rubberbanding was fixed and CD removed.

Regardless of the removal of combat depth there, the skills you get as you level up are a lot of fun. Though things get absurd once you get body slots. Before I got them I thought grouping was necessary if you want to take on packs of mobs. Then I got body slots and the multi target affects just racked up massive kills.

I don't get how you could call backstabbing insignificant. It's not worthwhile because of how much harder it has gotten to hit mobs from behind without a teammate, but going from 79 damage to 119 isn't insignificant.

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Frogster? I think you have your mmos mixed up

. THey are the publishers distributing to most of Europe and Asia.

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Lets be honest. Fedex and kill quests make up the bulk of the game.

True but early on it was so lopsided in favor of fedexing the devs decided at the suggestion of other testers to make combat more prominent. Instead of making new quests they just increased Fame (aka XP) gain from mobs.

I'm no where near as angry but the above review is another good reflection of the game.

This game releases in Germany/Austria/Switzerland today

It'll release on the 5th of December in France and Scandinavia, and the other countries can buy and download the client, I guess. It's not really very clear. In any case, it seems like a bad way to launch an MMO.

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Germany/Austria/Switzerland: Tomorrow 27th of November.
France: Friday 5th of December.
Benelux/Scandinavia: Friday 5th of December. (Read more about this change in this forum thread)

The Free2Play Client Download will be opened on Friday 5th of December.

Free2Play players and Box owners will play on the same servers of their choice.

Quote from: Zzulo on November 27, 2008, 09:02:12 AM

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Is there a frakkin free trial?
Free2play simply denotes no monthly fee correct? We must still purchase a box?

I recall a CM saying a box has to be purchased.

I thought there was a free few levels you could play just to check it out.

Quote from: UnSub on November 19, 2008, 08:12:30 PM

Here's the press release that says Europe is officially the US testing centre.

One positive thing is that Spellborn is launching with a free trial up to Fame Level 7.9. It's positive in that you won't have to buy the box to find out how it plays... I'm sure that's a good thing...

Cool, so I guess come December 5th we'll all be foolin around with this thing.

Free2Play client available today. Client is about 3GB, DL speeds are variable - it's a bittorrent DLer unless you use something like filefront, etc. The DLer is averaged about 150k for me (shytty). If you register on the site, pay no attention if your browser locks up. It gave me no confirmation I was in the system, but when I checked my Acclaim account I was listed as "active." Supposedly there's a "closed beta" for Acclaim customers, whilst the rest of the world plays the live version. I could care less either way... both are free. I just want to take a look-see.

edit:
I suggest using filefront/shack, etc. instead of the torrent. Seems no one is really DLing this thing so there's bandwidth aplenty... while the torrent seems to be struggling (likely for the same reason)