No other game looked like Spellborn

The Chronicles of Spellborn seemed to provide a wish list of what people want in an MMO. You could look cool from day 1; the gear you chose at character creation could be upgraded by slotting in runes to increase their power. You could still find or craft items with more or better slots, but there was never a time when your character would have to look anything but cool as sheets.

Combat was tactical on many levels. You could not access all your abilities whenever you liked; not only were most of them on cooldowns, but you could only choose from the abilities that were showing on a scrolling deck wheel that would shift whenever you used an ability. The abilities themselves were fairly weak alone; but if you built your deck well and arranged the combos in logical ways on the wheel, abilities could build upon each other to become truly devastating.

The art was state of the. Rendered in a uniquely European style, Spellborn looked like no other game. The lore told a story of a shattered world, populated by survivors rescued from the planet just before it went boom by benevolent godlike beings. The shards of the planet still swirl in winds of the Deadspell Storm, and the people live inside caverns carved within them. Voyages between them are only by taking passage on shard ships, which might themselves be attacked by denizens of the Storm as they make their way.

Players want combat mechanics that are more than “Press 1, 2, 3, repeat”? Spellborn had it. Unique world, graphics, and UI? Spellborn had it. Some of the coolest looking gear in any MMO? Nailed.

So, what happened?

Though the Spellborn devs had a long relationship with Frogster to publish the game in Asia and in parts of Europe, they had no American publisher. When they eventually made a handshake agreement with one, they were barred from revealing it for months, while they did some retooling on the game. After months of no news, the publisher was revealed to be Acclaim, a publisher most noted for its free to play games.

The game then went into further hiatus for five more months.

Eventually, in February of 2009, Spellborn went live in the US and the rest of the world. Instead of a standard subscription plan, players needed to by Acclaim’s cash shop currency, and then redeem that for play time. It was fairly complicated, and since people would be spending different amounts to play the game depending on the deals they got for the cash shop currency, it was hard for people to figure out just how much the game cost, and whether or not they were getting a decent deal.

Acclaim promised heavy support for the game, but when it became clear Spellborn was not a hit, such support dried up. In just a few months, rumors arose that the developers, Spellborn N.V., had all left to find other work, and that the game would be moving to a F2P model with an item shop (for a game without a focus on items!) and other such paraphernalia. The game was to be relaunched to begin again as a MMO like most of the others in Acclaim’s stable, but instead, was just set to be free and left alone, patchless, until the decision came to close the game down.

Spellborn Lead Developer El Drijver has posted a complete (and more correct!) timeline on the Acclaim Spellborn forums.

Even aside from Spellborn’s issues with its publisher and the game’s lack of heavy promotion, the game itself may have taken too many chances.

Though soloing was an option in the game, the game itself was fairly hard to play. Having to keep good aim on an enemy while avoiding enemy special attacks (most enemies had a unique ‘tell’ you could use to determine when they were about to unleash a heavy attack) meant it played far more like a third person shooter than an MMO. Slow travel times meant it could take a considerable amount of time to get somewhere new; shard ships ran on their own schedules and were sometimes dangerous to boot. There were no gates, hearthstones or teleports; it was a worldy-world.

Aimed directly for hardcore players, Spellborn had very little to recommend it for casual players, and this was probably its biggest mistake. By basing its combat on an intricate combat mechanic that demanded the player’s full attention, Spellborn shut out the 90% of casual players that are absolutely necessary to populate the world. Without the casual players, even the hardcore players noticed the world was fairly empty. The PvP clique soon moved on to other games; the hardcore players leveled to the end game and then, with nothing left to do, departed; and the few casual players had already gone.

Hundreds of MMOs, it seems, are released every year, but few of them take as many chances and are as filled with new ideas as The Chronicles of Spellborn. Out of all the hundreds of MMOs, it seems, that FAIL every year, I’ll miss Spellborn the most.

If Tycho didn’t put you off with his description of Acclaim’s Coin-based subscription plan for the Chronicles of Spellborn, this weekend it is slightly cheaper to buy the Coins if you buy in bulk, as the bonus Coins given for bulk purchases are doubled this weekend!

You can potentially get nine months of Spellborn for $8.89/month… if you do the math!

Just finished listening in on the Spellborn dev chat/’webinar’. Lots of interesting discussion, some of which is after the break.

While the devs were talking, I was programming. I went through everything on the Acclaim website, trying to figure out what combination of memberships, terms of subscription, and quantities of coin bought would combine to form the cheapest monthly cost?

They will be, at some point, adding a set price of $15/month (for now, possibly rising to $18/month when they end the introductory price), but I thought we could get it cheaper.

I’ve plugged all the numbers into the equations, exhaustively tried all the combinations, and the cheapest (in the long run) way to get coins is to buy a Silver membership for $10. This gives you a 30% discount on Coins purchases for a month, but you only need it for one purchase. Buy 10050 coins for $70 (with the 30% discount). This nets you 11555 coins with the bonus coins, or 13060 coins with double bonus coins when they run that promotion.

A 180 day premium Spellborn subscription costs 7800 coins (for now). That will cost you $13.33/month if you play for that term and then never play again. You’ll have enough coins left over for two more months (at 1500 coins/month). So 180 days plus two times 30 day premium subscriptions — eight months total — comes to $10/month on the nose. If you bought your coin during a Double Bonus Coin weekend, you can squeeze an extra month out for $8.89/month — and that’s not bad.

Or, you could just pay the $15/month when they offer that option.

The Webinar software let us see El (Spellborn Lead Designer) Drijver’s computer, and he casually dragged several sets of new armor onto it for us. I was pretty darn quick on the Print Screen button, and got pictures of them all to share. All of them are, I believe, High House specific armors. The black set is for House Shroud, and I don’t know about the silver and the red sets. Click on the pictures for a slightly larger look.

Full dev chat transcript (the typed portion, anyway) after the break.
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Announced today, and thanks to Tierrunner for catching this, the Acclaim hosted Chronicles of Spellborn is now in open beta. Also announced is their pricing plan, which is managed via Acclaim Coins, their RMT currency, to tie it in with other Acclaim games.

The game is available for free download, and lets you go to the first two zones and reach level 7 before being asked to pay. I’d urge prospective players to use the free download and level a char or two to 7 before deciding whether or not to subscribe to the game.

The subscription rate, being based on the variable price of Acclaim coins, ends up being slightly cheaper than the normal $15/month MMO subscription, which is admittedly still more than, I believe, most people want to pay for an indie MMO. But it depends upon how you acquire your Acclaim coins; buying enough of them at once could make the end cost substantially cheaper.

I don’t know if players will be charged to level past 7 in the open beta (if they are, just what is the difference between open and the live game?). Acclaim has added a PvE server along with their already existing PvP server that was wiped at the end of Closed Beta. I am currently playing on the PvP server because lead designer El Drijver made it very clear that a lot of the Spellborn lore would be revealed through PvP objectives. We’ll see how that works out.

***UPDATE***

Here’s the official announcement from Acclaim:

The Chronicles of Spellborn Open Beta Begins March 20, 2009

To join the Open Beta for The Chronicles of Spellborn, players can activate their Acclaim accounts on the activation page located at:http://spellborn.acclaim.com/ActivateGameTracker.html

If you haven’t already, click this link and download the game client: http://spellborn.acclaim.com/downloads.html

Once you have downloaded the game client activate your account and start playing the game.

For the Spellborn Open Beta, a new PvE (Player vs Environment) server called “Dorzhan” will be opened. Meanwhile, players who want to experience PvP (Player vs Player) action can join the “Deiquonril” server. And with the transition from Closed to Open Beta, all player accounts will be wiped so everyone must start their characters again from scratch.

In addition, Premium Subscription service will be enabled allowing players to experience the full game past the Free to Play zone restrictions. Premium Subscriptions will be available for purchase from the Spellborn website, with a special limited-time introductory pricing offer on 30, 90, and 180 day subscriptions.

Have Fun!
Acclaim Games, Inc.