I have just added The Chronicles of Spellborn to our list of MMOs on the side. (They’re hiring, by the way, if you want to head to The Netherlands.) I have had some interest in the game, especially since reading that they planned to deal with weapons by giving you the stats and letting you pick the weapon appearance you want (i.e. Warrior 20 does 50 DPS; do you want that to be a blue sword, a green spear, a red club, whatever). Or maybe I have that wrong. Rather than display further ignorance (or do any research when I am already running on caffeine tonight), I thought I would punt this one to our readers. Have any of you been following the game and wish to introduce it to the rest of us in the comments? Heck, if the developers have a 1000-2000 word intro that they would like us to post, we can do that.
: Zubon
I’ve been following it and I think it has potential. The most significant bullet point to know is that it’s built on an Unreal engine and is making an aggressive push towards twitchier game play. They have a novel approach to how your in-combat abilities are accessed, hopefully combining tactical depth with a simple interface appropriate for 3rd-person shooter play. Their recent video on mob AI also shows more commitment to skillful combat than the norm.
It’s a small company and it seems inevitable that content will be thin compared to the other games on the horizon. I think it has potential because I don’t see anyone fundamentally challenging the treadmill model in the next few years, so in the meantime more interesting combat mechanics seem like the best bet for something more satisfying.
It will be interesting to see how the modified combat mechanics turns out in practice – I am not convinced that it will work out well, but good to see alternative approaches.
I do like that they seem to have a similar approach to the enhancements in CoH/CoV when it comes to boosting stats, with “sigils” that you can put into slots. And also related to this, that you will have a lot of flexibility in modifying your character’s appearance.
It does indeed us an FPS control for even melee combat, which is novel, but a little daunting in my mind. I suck at FPS and I hope that doesn’t mean I’ll suck at Spellborn. If it ever manages to come out (wasn’t it due out in the fall of last year?), I’ll likely be all over it to see what a game with new ideas plays like.
Apparently avatar customization is meant to be on par with CoH/V, there are NO raids whatsoever, and as they work on their endgame, there will be entirely new continents “shards” discovered and fought over by the players.
In all, it sounds promising.