According to the Dutch site Gamerz.nl Spellborn Works has filed for bancruptcy. As most of you probably didn't take Dutch classes, here's a translation:

MMORPG.com reviewed The Chronicles of Spellborn and gave it a score of 7.7.

All in all, I would say Spellborn is a must-try MMOG, if just to experience the combat and skill mechanics. The game is clearly incomplete, more so than most MMOG launches, but has content sufficient enough to take you to the level cap, and developers paying great attention to their players’ concerns. You won’t find the most engaging PvP experience, or even a fully realized endgame PvE experience, but the barrier to entry is also quite low. There is no box to purchase, you simply download the game, and should you be curious to see how far the rabbit hole goes you’re only out 15 bucks.

The Chronicles of Spellborn is a true-blue themepark MMOG, and I have no reservations recommending anyone to try out the rides at least once.

MIssed this one; the open beta of The Chronicles of Spellborn has started two days ago. More information can be found here.

The Acclaim Open Beta for The Chronicles of Spellborn has started 3/20/09
            To know more about it you can read Acclaims news
             

The Acclaim territory players will gain the ability to register and play on the European Spellborn NV (International, German and French) servers by visiting the Spellborn NV Player-Site, which has been highly anticipated by international guilds, clans and players.
On the same basis European players now have the possibility to play on the US Acclaim servers.
 
Acclaim will be providing a different version of the client on its US servers and players will be unable to join the European Spellborn NV (International, German and French) servers unless they download the Spellborn NV client on the Player-Site.


Acclaim provides Spellborn game service to players in North America, South
America, United Kingdom, Albania, Andorra, Australia/New Zealand, Bosnia &
Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece,
Hungary, Italy, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Moldova, Poland, Romania,
Serbia & Montenegro, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Turkey

Swiss site GBase has kicked up a review of Spellborn for those that can read German, with a score of 6/10.

According to my Google-fu, the lack of content, poor crafting, poor server populations and bugs are the main points.

An interview with Spelborn community manager Piere-Yves Deslandes can be found on the Italian Gamesource site.

GS: Are you satisfied about the launch of TCOS?

Mirage: Yes, the launch of The Chronicles of Spellborn went pretty fine. Servers behaved well, and we had good response from the players. Of course, this launch could have been better, as in we could have had more boxes put into the shelves of the stores in which TCoS has been released, but nevertheless, we are happy how the launch went.

 

GS: Why the game has been released without some important features like an auction house service for players or mounts?
 
Mirage: I am going to be honest here, we are a small development team. We would have loved to add the features you mentioned in the question in the release version, but should we have done that, it would have cost us time on developing other features or making them better. It was a hard choice to make, but in the end, it was safer and better for the game to focus on the core gameplay features, these that make Spellborn what it is, than to do too many things at once. But rejoice! A Marketplace, similar to an Auction House, but without bids, is being finalized as I speak!

In the first of what has to be come a series of developer blogs TCOS' sound dev Matthew Florianz is explaining the new tutorial feature and how combat changed over time.

Back in 2007, The Chronicles of Spellborn was in Closed Beta phase and was a much harder game to play. The bears in Hawksmouth had an appetite for new recruits and managing to kill one of these furry creatures was the stuff of legends. Although it was demanding, it did show people that Spellborn was very unlike ’Click & Forget’ MMOs where you are mostly clicking icons, then moving to the next target and then clicking icons again. I know that is a gross generalization but playing Spellborn like a ‘traditional’ MMO will for the most get you killed. That did serve a purpose though: it taught people, in the harshest way possible, how to play. It taught them the need to dodge. It taught them they needed to move while fighting. Yet the bears’ difficulty also scared people off as the game quickly became a death-by-bear simulation.

This was of course not exactly how we intended the game to be played; we ourselves could outmanoeuvre two to three enemies and still hardly get hit. Getting killed by a bear over and over again had made us better at avoiding their small 360 degree attack radius and their long frontal 90 degree claw attack. Death and perseverance taught us that a bear should be attacked at a certain range and that a dodo needs another tactic again. We had been taught such things because failing to follow those ‘rules’ would get us killed.

Mirage has given some more information about 2008 and what lies ahead in 2009 for The chronicles of Spellborn on the official site.

Hello Spellborn Players and Community Members!

Before starting this Project Update, I would like to wish all you a very happy New Year on behalf of the whole Spellborn development team! Best wishes of health and success in both your own and your Spellborn lives! ;)

So here we are; another year passed, but this time, Spellborn has been released. What a year 2008 has been, dare I say! From the massive crunch times before the various launches to the excitement and even sheer joy of the first players connecting to the live servers; the year 2008 will stay in our hearts as the first steps of this little game of ours called The Chronicles of Spellborn.

But that is all behind us already and we are now focusing on many things that you, the players, will be delighted to see when they make it into the game.
The year 2009 for The Chronicles of Spellborn can be summed up in a few words in fact: more fun, more content, and… more content!

The main goal is to provide content and features that will support the best replayability of The Chronicles of Spellborn while making sure that everything can be enjoyed to its fullest.

Over the past weeks and month, we have been closely monitoring the feedback from the community of players and have already been taking actions to make sure that the game experience is as perfect as possible.

A month after release, the first December content patch was shipped with bug fixes and content implementation, with hot-fixes in-between to take care of the urgent issues.

One thing is already sure: we will keep on updating the game as often and regularly as needed.

With regards to short term planning, a new content patch is going to be rolled out soon (we expect it for end of January), which, among many quests and bug fixes, will also introduce new unique outdoor monsters (called Menaces, from which you might already know the cuddly “Tiny Tyke”). In the coming week, we’ll reveal some of these new Menaces on our website.

But the biggest chunk of this patch is undoubtedly the upcoming “Tutorial”. After reading the various comments from the community, and also from the various press reviews about Spellborn, we decided it was needed to implement a tutorial explaining basic movements, camera control, NPC interactions and combat controls in a dedicated area of the game, before players set foot on Hawksmouth Square. With this new system, we aim to provide all the tools to newcomers to have a great first-time experience which will motivate them and allow them to play the game further with greater enjoyment.

Also, we will invite you, the players, to experience the new instance in the Deadspell Storm called Exarchyon. This massive dungeon will take the players inside the raftyard-based headquarters of the Brotherhood of the Glaive, a hostile faction where many encounters and challenges await. The instance is aimed at players of Fame Level 20 to 25.

Concerning the mid-term planning for 2009: we will be working on two main features that you have been waiting quite some time for, and by two features, I mean, the Market, where you can trade your goods and items with other players, and, for PvP-aficionados, the possibility to sign up for Unranked 2v2 or 4v4 Arena matches. Ranked matches will eventually also find their way to the game, but will be introduced at a later date. After rankings have been added we’ll continue to add more Arena features depending on how you, the players, experience it. Of course, many other additions besides these two features will find their way into the game mid-term wise, but these are simply the focus-point for now.

      As for the long-term planning of 2009, we would like to implement elements that would strengthen the feeling of belonging to the Spellborn world by, for example, allowing Guild Alliances. We are still finalizing the concepts for some elements of the feature which we want to implement at some future point in the year, so for now, hold your horses. Talking about horses, or rather, any potential mounts, they are also a feature that we will be working on. You know how much we want our world to be coherent in terms of immersion so who knows what mounts will be like…

    To conclude this Project Update, rest assured that even more content will be implemented to the game over the course of the year, parallel to the features I just explained, ranging from new quests and new instances to new zones and even more. Yes, there is a lot coming up, guys! So stay tuned and logged in!

    And that is a wrap for this update. We hope you will like the aforementioned details and features we plan to implement in the game over the course of 2009. We are already very excited about this New Year, and count on you players to join us for the ride!

The Free2Play client of The Chronicles of Spellborn can be downloaded now. it allows a free play on one of their servers until your character reaches level 7. It requires registration and can be played by players from those European countries in which the game was actually released, which are:

• Germany
• Austria
• Switzerland
• France
• Belgium
• Netherlands
• Luxembourg
• Scandinavian countries

First review I've seen, Rob Fahey weighs in at 8/10.

The result is an art style wildly different to other MMOs. The shards are enclosed worlds; when you look up, you see the roof of a stone cavern far overhead, with light streaming through holes in the firmament. Huge slabs of stone, tossed about casually in the Sundering, erupt from the landscape, while shards of glowing crystal provide ghostly illumination for the many forest glades. Combined with the truly lovely environmental art, the unique setting makes for a game that's a joy to explore. Soft edges and diffuse lighting abound, with beautifully composed incidental music and background sound giving the whole game an evocative twilight feel. On occasion, Spellborn tries to wow you with spectacle - the epic home buildings of the High Houses being a perfect example - but it's usually more interested in a delicately woven atmosphere, and it's all the better for it.

The Chronicles of Spellborn team have created a combat guide that offers some tricks and tips to better survive in combat.

Manual Dodging
Keeping your health level high enough to stay in combat longer
Spellborn features fast-paced, action rich combat. The need to aim to hit a target is generally well understood. The fact you have to dodge is not. Most new players will stand their ground, exchanging blows with an opponent and whilst the opponent goes down, so does the players health. These players generally fight a single mob, retreat from combat and then sit down to regenerate their health. Although it certainly works, it is not what we had in mind with fast paced combat.

Spellborn offers a more fun solution: manual dodging! You can evade attacks of enemies if you maneuver your character out of the way fast enough.

Humanoid Opponents
Get the casters first
Humanoid opponents in Spellborn are not stupid. They generally know very well how to strafe and operate in groups. Like yourself, they have the exact same restrictions with regards to aiming and have cooldowns on their Skills. If you encounter a group with a caster in it, you can generally recognize what type it is from the skills they use. Different casters will use different tactics, some come a bit closer to you.; others keep their distance. What they have in common however, is that they will support their group. They can keep the health levels of their own group up, while you exhaust yourself on it.

Jon Wood of MMORPG.com comes back this week with the second installment of his Spellborn previews. This time its about the his in-game experience.

Especially wtih this part I found myself nodding in agreement:

I found that jumping into the game took a little bit more practice than it would for your average, run-of-the-mill MMO. The twitch combat wasn’t too bad. You just had to get used to making sure that you were standing where you needed to be standing and swinging when you needed to be swinging. The spinning UI bar on the other hand, takes a bit more getting used to. I think it’s going to be a warm-up period for players. It’s one of those, once you get the hang of it, it’s fine, but you’ll have to spend some time learning.

On that note, I’m a little bit concerned that the game doesn’t really seem to ease you in to its little idiosyncrasies they way that you might like. I may have missed it, or it may not be in the beta version yet, but a solid and detailed tutorial on how to use these systems is going to be needed if the game is going to appeal to “the masses”. Hardcore players, on the other hand, are probably going to enjoy the challenge and the fact that between the learning and the execution, the combat really is a skill-based experience.

The Benelux and Scandinavian publisher Mindscape does not have enough boxed games ready in order to be able to get things ready for the 28th. As there are no issues in the German speaking countries and they will be able to have the game in the shops this week, it must be a "mistake" made by Mindscape, causing a delay of a week.

On the forums Mirage had this to say about it:

Hi guys,

It came to our knowledge some moments ago that Mindscape Northern Europe (Publisher for Benelux/Scandinavia) was not able to have enough Boxes produced/shipped to retail for the 28th of November.

This is the reason why some of you guys had their pre-order cancelled.

This was totally out of our control, and worse, was even out of our knowledge until some of you forum members pointed it out.

You can understand how extremely sorry we are, but also how "surprised" we are to hear about it just now.

Really guys, I'm even lacking words to express how I feel right now.

The game is ready, Germany/Austria/Switzerland (Frogster Countries) will see the box on the shelves tomorrow on time, it is just a Mindscape box production/shipping issue, unfortunately out of our Developer's hands.

Yet, on the bright side of things the game will be released for Benelux/Scandinavia on the 5th of December (one week delay).

On Friday 28th of November, Spellborn will be attending the HME Event in Utrecht, where 300 boxes will be available for purchase by those of you who are willing to go there.

International Servers will be opened on 27th of November, so those purchasing Boxes on 28th will be able to play.

Again, I'm very sorry about this turn of event guys. I wish I would have been informed about that with more time to update you accordingly.

I really understand some of you are really disappointed, yet, hang in there, there is only a week until the 5th.

MMORPG.com brings you more insight on the unique character creation of The Chronicles of Spellborn.

The first thing that you’re going to be asked to do is to choose your character archetype. There are three: Warrior, Rogue and Spellcaster. These archetypes aren’t full-blown classes just yet though. TCoS lets players get comfortable with their Archetype before asking them to settle on a more specific class. This happens only when the player is at level five and to keep it in the context of the game, it happens at The Academy rather than through a single dropdown menu.

The release date for Chronicles of Spellborn in North and South America, UK and Australia has been announced:

Acclaim Games Announces New North American Release Date for “The Chronicles of Spellborn”

Acclaim plans Closed Beta for end of November with an official release in January 2009

Los Angeles, CA (November 18, 2008) – Acclaim Games officially updates the release schedule for The Chronicles of Spellborn MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game). With additional testing and ongoing game improvements, Acclaim’s release schedule has been updated with Closed Beta testing to begin on November 27 and a new release date scheduled for January 2009. Acclaim’s licensed territories for Spellborn will include North America, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and South America.

When the European countries go live on November 27, Acclaim will simultaneously start Close Beta testing in its territories and then go live in January 2009. Both launches will have the exact same product versions featuring identical Freemium models but with a different release date to accommodate additional testing for a smooth official release. Extensive testing of the game will ensure players receive the highest quality gaming experience at launch.

With players around the world eagerly anticipating the launch of Spellborn, the game has undergone some key upgrades to allow more players to participate and enjoy the various features of the online game. In all regions, Spellborn will be a “Freemium” game, with a Free to Play zone and a required premium subscription service in order to access the full game past the Free to Play zone.

The Spellborn game client will be completely free to download and install, and will feature the special Free to Play zone with no time restrictions (only level limit). Key features of this Free to Play zone include the following:

• Free players are limited to the starting zones Hawksmouth and Aldenvault.

• A gameplay limit occurs at Fame level 7, when free players have progressed approximately 90% towards Fame level 8.

• Upon reaching this limit, all character progression is blocked and the player will receive a pop-up informing them of this block and what is obtainable beyond this with a premium subscription.

The following elements will be explicitly blocked:

• Players will be unable to gain Fame in any way or form, frozen at a fixed amount.

• The player will be able to accept quests, but not able to complete any objectives/quests.

• Able to kill mobs, but the player will receive no kill credit. This means, no fame reward, no pep reward and no item reward.

• Unable to travel beyond the zones Hakwsmouth and Aldenvault.

Players who want the full game experience and wish to go past the zone restrictions must purchase a premium subscription option priced at $15 per month to open all game content. This Freemium model will allow many more players to experience the gameplay before choosing the premium subscription to access the full array of game features and content.

Initial feedback from the MMORPG player community has been excellent, and the development team is taking this feedback to make various improvements to the game.

The registration for the open beta for Chronicles of Spellborn has started today. It is however limited to players from a few European countries.

The Closed Beta is coming to an end, and it's time for the European Open Beta test to kick in!
Starting today, Thursday the 20th of November, you can register on the Spellborn Player-Site at https://eu-players.tcos.com for an Open Beta spot and download the game client.
The European Open Beta test of Spellborn will start on Saturday the 22nd and will end on Monday the 24th of November. This Open Beta test is only available to European Players from the following European countries:

•    Germany
•    Austria
•    Switzerland
•    France
•    The Netherlands
•    Belgium
•    Luxembourg
•    Sweden
•    Norway
•    Denmark
•    Finland

Current European Closed Beta testers of The Chronicles of Spellborn will be automatically granted access for the Open Beta test and will not need to download a new game client nor sign up for Open Beta. The Closed Beta test will officially stop today, Thursday the 20st of November at 10pm CET.  A Closed Beta Closure event will take place from 8pm CET to 10pm CET. The characters created during Closed Beta test will be wiped in preparation of the Open Beta.
 
The Open Beta test will start on Saturday the 22nd of November at 12pm CET and end on Monday the 24th of November at 10pm CET.  After the Open Beta, all characters will be wiped to prepare the game servers for the official launch of The Chronicles of Spellborn.

Please note that the Player-Site will be taken down tomorrow Friday the 21st of November for a hardware maintenance and upgrade in preparation of the Open Beta. This downtime is scheduled from 11:30am CET until 2:30pm CET.

The chronicles of Spellborn will be available in two versions from the 27th of November.

Regular version:

• DVD box
• A world map in A3 format
• One month playing time
• Manual on the DVD

Premium edition:

• Flap-box
• 3 months playing time
• 84 pages printed manual
• 152 pages artbook
• A world map in A3 format
• An (at this time unknown) ingame item

At this point in time we are only aware of a release in Germany, where amazon.de has the two games listed for 16.99 and 39.99 Euros.

Images of the boxes and the artbook can be found in our gallery. There you can also find an image of the map.

After the release the client software will also be available as a trial version that is restricted to the start region of the game and stops functioning after the character reaches its seventh level.

The monthly fees are 12.99 Euro, 11.99 Euro for a 3 month period and 10.99 for 6 months. Besides that game cards can be purchased for 25.99 Euro with which it is possible to play for 60 days.

Rob Fahey from Eurogamer previews The Chronicles of Spellborn. Something on AI:

It's also worth mentioning the game's AI. After a few hours of play you notice that Spellborn's foes don't behave like anything else you've seen in an MMORPG. For a start, they dodge and weave to avoid your attacks, which is understandable given the game's decision not to have any dice-roll based avoidance. And there are other, subtler things going on here too. We noticed this first when a wolf started running away even though we'd only hit it a couple of times. Suspecting a bug, we ran after it. We blundered through a bush after the wolf - only to discover ourselves surrounded by four more wolves, to whom the original target had deliberately led us. Clever girl.

When The Chronicles of Spellborn is launched there will be 4 shards available (which is where the game takes place). An explanation of these shards can be found on their site.
In addition a video of a ship travelling through the deathspell storm surrounding the shards can be found here.

 We've uploaded several images to our gallery from The Chronicles of Spellborn showing the high houses Rune, Maul, and Shroud. In addition there are also some images of the shops where the bodyslots related to your discipline can be purchased.

On The Chronicles of Spellborn site you can also find a video showing Hawksmouth, the starting city of your adventures. And finally some halloween wallpapers can be found on their site as well.

The Chronicles of Spellborn website has been revamped and as a bonus a new video is available as well. The video shows and explains PvP combat in combination with the skill deck.

Acclaim has announced they will be releasing Spellborn in NA, using a free-to-play, buy-premium-content model:

The Chronicles of Spellborn is scheduled to be released on the 27th of November 2008 in Europe. A US release date has not been set yet. The game will be available in English, German and French languages.

In preparation of the release, the innovative fantasy MMORPG has started into the next phase of the closed beta tests along with a large content patch Wednesday, 17th of September.

The update brings along substantial advancements in the class system, the quest architecture, the fame system and the combat gameplay as well as improvements on art and general game mechanics lifting the game onto a new level of gameplay experience. During the upcoming weeks, developer Spellborn NV and publisher Frogster will invite more selected registered community members into the closed beta tests. A detailed beta and release schedule for The Chronicles of Spellborn will be announced shortly. Interested fantasy adventurers can register via the brand new beta registration on www.tcos.com to get the chance to have a look at the game before the actual release.

The Chronicles of Spellborn has undergone some changes in thier gameplay features as explained in heir annoucnement:

During the Games Convention in Leipzig, we announced some changes in specific gameplay features of The Chronicles of Spellborn. In order to make sure everyone is aware of them, let’s recap what has happened:

1. PvP Servers. Yes, Spellborn will be released with 2 different ruleset types of servers: there will be PvP servers and PvE Servers.
2. Fame Increase. We decided to increase the amount of fame rewarded by killing hostile NPCs or animals.
3. Furyhammer name changed to Adept. You knew the Furyhammer. Well, now meet the Adept!

More info can be found here.

And now it's time for some music.

A while ago, the gothic rock-band Within Temptation made 3 songs for The Chronicles of Spellborn; The Howling, Hand of Sorrows and The Heart of Everything. These songs will now for the first time be part of an album; The double CD and DVD "Black Symphony", to be released in October. The trailer for Black Symphony can be found on the band's site and YouTube. The video of the Spellborn song The Howling is still available at the howling website (registration required).

Myrthos had the opportunity for a little hands-on time with The Chronicles of Spellborn at the recent Leipzig Games Convention.  Here's a snip from our preview:

In the game I played a level 15 deathhand trickster, which is one of the different rogues. I was accompanied by a character controlled by Pierre-Yves - or actually I was following her (yes he played a female character), as I didn’t have a clue where we were going. Besides, this support kept me from dying, which turned out to be a good thing. Pierre-Yves kept me alive by making sure I was buffed. In Spellborn, health in a fight is always gotten by buffing yourself, de-buffing enemies or by putting a specific spell on an opponent where health is gained by the user every time the opponent is hit. You don’t get health in the game by potions or anything like that.

Read it all here.

We've uploaded the media from the The Chronicles of Spellborn GC press kit, that Myrthos received whilst visiting the GC. Be on the lookout for an article about his impressions of Spellborn from the GC too, that will be published soon.

The press kit contains screenshots, artwork, a wallpaper and some music tracks from the Danish composer Jesper Kyd's soundtrack for Spellborn.

Especially this song is worth highlighting.

According to a press release we just received; Acclaim will be the US publisher for The Chronicles of Spellborn.

I would cut and paste the press release here, but its in German as we got it from Forgster the German publisher, so I'll just skip it.

FileFront offers some new screenshots of the in-development MMORPG, The Chronicles of Spellborn.

Loads of screenshots posted on the offical site from the beta test.

Fresh out of the Spellborn oven comes this new batch of Screenshots taken by some of our Community Beta Testers.

In these shots you'll see different areas of the game such as zones located on the Shard of Parliament and Quarterstone as well as some hostile humanoid factions which are scattered all over these Shards.

You can find these new shots in the Screenshots section on our website.
Let us know what you think in the forum thread linked below! Enjoy!

Video preview of the PeP system and combat in general. The offical site is here the dowload link here.

Some time ago, you had the chance to meet Raznilof, the powerful Runemage, during one of his first adventures in the world of The Chronicles of Spellborn.

Today, he's back in business, being higher-level and he's setting foot in the Midlands, zone located on the Parliament Shard. In this video, you'll get some information on the PeP System (Personal Experience Point), which is different from the Fame, used for leveling up.
PeP is gained through combat (PvE) and grant permanent buffs to your character (making it faster, stronger and more resistant), providing you don't die.

A batch of new Chronicles of Spellborn screenshots are up at Blue's News.

The Chronicles of Spellborn has been delayed once again. The new release date is Autumn 2008 due to having partnered with a publisher for the US market, who will need additional 6 months to prepare the game's launch:

Berlin, 10th of April 2008: After a first review of the beta tests of The Chronicles of Spellborn, which began at the beginning of March, the Dutch developers have decided to make a revision to the server infrastructure. At this time, the game-play mechanics and graphics of the game client have already matched the high demand for quality. These have been mostly completed and will now be thoroughly optimized and polished. In reworking the tools and the network code, Spellborn NV now wants to ensure that the flow and performance of gameplay live up to the general expectations. At the same time, the developer will lay the foundation to allow for quick expansion of the game, with new content and updates, once it is released.

Meanwhile, Frogster Interactive has found a renowned MMOG publisher to be a potential partner for the release of Spellborn in the USA and has already signed a letter of intent. For a successful market introduction, the potential licensor will require a lead time of six months at least. As a consequence, both Frogster and the developers of Spellborn NV have decided to initiate the revision of the server architecture and to use this time to prepare for a coordinated worldwide release of the game. Considering the new strategy, Frogster assumes a launch of The Chronicles of Spellborn in autumn 2008. Nevertheless, the developer will continue the current closed beta tests for the time being. Just yesterday, Spellborn NV has expanded the circle of accredited testers by one hundred committed members of the community to balance and optimize the gameplay even more.

Some nice screens of Spellborn up at TenTonHammer.

For those gamers that have gotten tired of the bright, cartoony graphics you see in many of today's most popular MMOGs, your gaming messiah may have finally arrived. In The Chronicles of Spellborn, the atmospheric intensity has been ramped up to a level that hasn't really been displayed in other massively multiplayer games. With their recent set of released screenshots, the Spellborn developers have once again exhibited some uniquely moody images, and the Ten Ton Hammer staff is happy to display them for you to see!

A batch of new screenshots are viewable at GameInfoWire.com

New screenshots of The Chronicles of Spellborn have been published on Filefront.

Describes the progress of the creation of Shorath Mesa, the most recently added area in the world of Spellborn.

Demo of Spellborn's combat system here. 

Keith Cross takes a look at Spellborn.

I’m not going to say anything here about the game’s graphics and style. If you want to know more about that, just look at the screenshots. I have no idea what the specs were on the machine that was running the demo, but the graphics were of the same quality as the many screenshots that are already in our TCoS screenshot gallery. One thing about the games visuals that Pierre mentioned that you won’t get out of the screenshots is how they handle body slots. The Spellborn enhancement system is similar again to City of Heroes. When equipment has no stat value, it makes sense that enhancements to the character would come in the form of enhancement slots. Body slots work in more or less the same way as the item sigils for gear, except body slots have a graphical representation on you character depending on your class. For example, the rune mage gets tattoos, the blood warrior gets scars, and the ancestral mage gets pets. Each of these scars/tattoos/whatever is an enhancement.

Reported on the offical site OnlineWelten have a 40min video demo of Spellborn.

Head over to the official site of The Chronicles of Spellborn for twelve new pieces of concept art.

The Spellborn team has released some new screenshots into the wild.  The official site has the links you need to hunt them down. 

A new developer journal on combat testing has been posted at the official site of The Chronicles of Spellborn.

Of course this important feature of our game has to be thoroughly tested in any way we can to make sure that it not only works but it is also fun from a player perspective. This is why testing the combat system is not only performed by QA itself, but also by the combat designers and AI programmers themselves. A lot of systems have passed the review since design pitched the first idea, and the current system is still open for improvement and added functionality. However, the fact that QA has reached combat testing phase 3 by now means that a lot of basics have been established and most of what is being done is fine tuning before we get to combat balancing (although balancing is done all the time by Combat system specialist El “Selachii” Drijver).

MMORPG.com has posted the transcript and a summary of its recent chat session with the developers of The Chronicles of Spellborn.

With Michael Wolf at our disposal, many of last night's questions concerned the story and storyline of TCoS. One of the most interesting topics to me was the TCoS method of allowing users a permanent change on the world.

"There will be events that have an impact on the game." Wolf told us. In fact, these effects will be permanent - things can be altered in ways that are never undone. The players and guilds who first complete these tasks are rewarded sometimes with monuments to them: "We've already told everyone that we will have the Statues there for certain guild events and such...and those will be unique...there will be unique things for players and guilds to have...and people will look at that statue going 'Damn, they beat us to it!'"

The Spellborn dev team answer questions that weren't covered during the recent MMORPG.com dev chat session.

MMORPG.com: Wolfsheim asks: Are there status effects like being blinded, confused, charmed, feared, poison, etc?

Spellborn: Yes, but none take/remove control of your character. Unlike traditional root, stun, fear and polymorph effects, you will always have some control and be fighting back, until you or your target is dead. You might loose combat effectiveness, but it will never be ‘zero’.

Michael Visser, Lead Content Designer for The Chronicles of Spellborn, shares some insight into how ideas make it from mind to paper in a new game design journal.

There are numerous examples of what comes into your mind and what makes it to paper in the Shards of Spellborn. The main idea and story line is so befitting freedom of thought and implementation of the weird and wonderful twists of a human brain that whatever you can think of can be accomplished.

This is also true for The Green District of Quarterstone, and this district will be the main focus of how some of my ideas became reality... to some extent of course.

Head over to the official site of The Chronicles of Spellborn for some new screenshots featuring the Green District of the city of Quarterstone.

Among these point of interests, you'll discover the former verdant Maze, different views of the District, as well as some shots on the narrow alleys where the Shunned are eargerly waiting for the adventurous players.

MMORPG.com has posted the transcript and a summary of their recent chat with the developers of The Chronicles of Spellborn.

Our first question of the night was about body slots, part of TCoS’s innovative subclass system. Starting at level 5, players are allowed to choose a subclass. This subclass has its own skills, but it also has a unique feature called body slots. Players can purchase (yes, all body slots are purchasable) body slots that are unique to their subclass, which change character appearance and add abilities. For example, the Blood Warrior body slots are scars, which actually appear on your character. Most of these scars are self buffs with a beneficial and detrimental effect; one of the first scars Blood Warriors will receive is called Magic Repulsion and it raises magic resistances, but lowers melee resistances.

The official site of The Chronicles of Spellborn has been updated with a new art journal.

Slywood is a dark place amidst the lush and green lands, which compromise most of upper Ringfell. Ringfell in the old times was a coastal area. What is now called lower Ringfell (one of the three areas) was then a bottom of an ocean, which now is long dried up.

Slywood though hasn’t always been quite as dark and gloomy as it is today. There have been times, very recent times even, when it was as bright and fertile as the other regions. That’s not to say it wasn’t always a bit peculiar. The crops growing on the fields were known to be different from crops growing anywhere else. Not even three mills could handle the amounts produced each year.  

A new game design journal at the official site of The Chronicles of Spellborn takes a closer look at mob behaviour.

First some goals must be set, what do we want to achieve when a player fights a non-player (mob). Should the mob fight back or maybe run away in fear? If there is a fight, what should the player experience?

A challenge? Okay, but easier said then done, challenge because? Mob hits hard or mob is hard to hit, mob heals itself or does the mob have a couple friends waiting around the corner? Besides, making something a challenge doesn’t necessarily make it fun. So, the goals will have to be thought through and might evolve a bit during the early stages of the project to achieve the desired ‘vision’ which they all contribute to.

The official site of The Chronicles of Spellborn has been updated with a new game design journal which looks at the game's system of sigils.

A well known fact about Spellborn is the non-stat armor and weapons. To make sure players can still customize, tweak and tune their fighting characteristics whichever way they like, we have a wide variety of Sigils. These can be collected from different sources in game like quests and loot.

Sigils are items with ‘magical effects’ which can be used when they are equipped one way or another. There are three types of sigils: Skill-, Jewelry- and Weapon sigils. I will handle the Jewelry- and Weapon sigils first as ‘item sigils’ and conclude with the Skill sigils  

RPG Vault talks to Pierre-Yves Deslandes and Aurelija Drevel about the current status of The Chronicles of Spellborn.

Jonric: What kind of online world will The Chronicles of Spellborn be? When did the project get started, and how did you pick the distinctive elements to incorporate?

Pierre-Yves Deslandes and Aurelija Drevel: It's hard to describe a project as huge as an MMO in only a few sentences. ;) The Chronicles of Spellborn is a game that takes place in a shattered fantasy world - shards of ancestral world floating in a storm of deadly magic. Besides the beautiful scenery, players are presented with a unique combat system, skilldeck, manual aiming, and a "dress to impress" concept, which means the gear has no stats and is purely cosmetic in function. We also emphasize the importance of the questing experience above pure mob grinding; most leveling experience is granted through quests rather than kills.

A new tech journal examining the content system has been added to the official site of The Chronicles of Spellborn.

Quests are one of the defining elements that make a game a roleplaying game. Character advancement is another. These things are naturally tied into each other. It is no secret that especially computer games put the focus on character development and online roleplaying games even more so. The most obvious reason for this is that the character advancement provides the game with a very easily obtained longelivity. When the two pillars of roleplaying are too out of whack, this creates a problem. The storylines that provide the means for the player's progress are stretched beyond a healthy limit for providing an engaging adventure. Instead of supporting each other they become competing goals.  

A new design journal at the official site of The Chronicles of Spellborn examines the tricky problem of combat balance.

Basic balancing
There are a lot of variables and factors influencing all these values, changing one value has influence on a variety of others. We use several charts to check which other variables will get changed when changing one variable in particular.
To check how we need to change it, however, we use graphical representations in general. Several graphs showing the current situation and some showing the new situation, if changes have been entered. What we have, is a feeling of how the game actually plays with the current values and a representation of these values in the model. If we want to change something, we start pulling the appropriate strings and check if the graphs are shifting in the correct direction, the direction we feel the game should be changed in.  

A combat stress test video has been posted at the official site of The Chronicles of Spellborn.

A week ago in our project update we have mentioned our internal combat stress test. Our developers, busy as they are, have made you a small Video Diary from this stress test.

The video shows an internal Combat Stress Test. All characters are level 1, with a few basic skills. You can find this video here !

Ten Ton Hammer catches up with Spellborn Community Manager Pierre-Yves Deslandes for a Q&A session.

Ten Ton Hammer: For the last few weekly updates and developer journals, we've heard mention that many of the developers are "polishing" the work that's already been done. Does this mean that the game is getting closer to an actual release date or an open beta testing event? Can you give us any dates or is it still a secret?

Pierre-Yves “Mirage” Deslander: We are indeed in a polishing and optimization phase at the moment. All our departments are making sure all their respective assets are in a “ready-to-release” state. This goes for Art, Gamedesign, and of course Tech.

MMORPG.com has posted seven new images from The Chronicles of Spellborn.  

A new game design journal focusing on heroes and villains has been added to the official site of The Chronicles of Spellborn.

Where would a post-apocalyptic fantasy world be without its share of Heroes and Villains? Well I reckon it would probably exist, but that world would be either filled with fluffy little bunny creatures gallivanting through stretch after stretch of meadow filled with white flowers or it would be a rather dull place where nothing happens. Come to think of it, those two are identical!  

The official Spellborn site has been updated with a new developer journal that examines organic programming.

So far my dev journals have concerned the process of game development. The intention is to explain something about the human side of making games. As representative of the tech department I should really be talking about technical stuff. Boring stuff. Well of course I don't find it boring, but for you, the gamer, it usually has little relevance. Art, content and sound are the aspects of a game that need to be noticeable. Tech is at its best when it is not noticeable. Tech needs to make sure the art, content and sound is delivered without glitches, without delays and without obvious trickery that breaks the suspension of disbelief. Finding out how it is done can be like finding out the trick behind a magician's performance. A programmer is cursed when playing games, because he'll see through the tricks faster. Explaining here how we are going to trick you with spellborn is something I'd like to avoid. Luckily there's a class of trickery, which is so mysterious that I'll make an exception for it.  

Spellborn Community Manager Pierre-Yves Deslandes talks to MMORPG.com about arena and PvP combat in The Chronicles of Spellborn.

MMORPG.com: Well, I suppose we should probably start at the beginning. Will The Chronicles of Spellborn have PvP, and what kind of system do you plan on using (ie: arena only, open PvP, zone PvP, consentual, duels, etc.)

Pierre-Yves *Mirage* Deslandes: Yes, The Chronicles of Spellborn will feature PvP for it plays an important role in the game. Although all the landmass is not “PvP-flagged” there are many “world-PvP” zones scattered around the Shards of the Enclave. These zones are the large and complex underground caves and mines network (known for being the places where ore and different ingredients needed for the players’ crafting needs can be gathered) as well as the outdoor Green District, like mentioned in the MMORPG.com video preview from GC.

A new art journal at the official site of The Chronicles of Spellborn looks further at the creation of High House Torque.

The basic model of the High House was fairly easy since, as described in the concept art blog, the building needed to reflect a certain characteristic and a more robust yet simple architecture suited the characteristic of Torque just fine. So we started of with a simple mockup of the building. Using mockups is a great way of testing a design. A mockup is a very, very simple version of a design and mainly consists out of cubes and cylinders and basic colored materials (in our case… one of the default materials is a very, very bright pink texture. If you don’t already have a headache, you’re bound to have one real fast). We then placed that mockup in the environment to check if it would fit. We can see the composition of the area; does it fit within the rest of the environment and if not, what do we need to tweak to improve it? But we can also playtest it. For example we can check if it’s not too big or too small, if the chairs are not too steep or too long, and do all the gameplay elements work out as intended? In the case of Torque, it all worked out just fine.  

The official Chronicles of Spellborn site has been updated with a Q&A on skills, combos and body slots.

Q: How many different combo effects will each class generally have? Will some classes have more options for combos then others?
A: All classes have an equal amount of combo possibilities, 3 openers and 3 finishers.

Q: Will there be arch type based combos used only with arch type skills and sub-class combos special for each of the nine classes?
A: The openers are based on archetype; the finishers are based on subclass.

The official site of The Chronicles of Spellborn has been updated with a game design journal taking a closer look at quest chains and side stories.

The Quest Chains are the main hooks. These span multiple level-ranges and tell of the more profound events happening within the Red Rim and bring a conclusion to the first part of the Chronicles of Spellborn; they form the spine of the game.

Side Stories provide more colour and details; they are small chains focussing on everyday life. They can still have some profound events within them but they are less likely to be earth-shattering (hmm, shouldn't that be shard-shattering?) events that impact the Enclave as a whole. They fill in the gaps in the story and deepen certain aspects.  

A new developer journal by Matthew Florianz introduces the sound of The Chronicles of Spellborn.

Working on the track and putting all the elements together, I began thinking about using this track not for SlyWood, but as an ambience for the Deadspell Storm. Currently, the sound in the Deadspell Storm is literal with lots of thundering roars, whale like high pitched notes, passing rocks and wind…a lot of wind. It fits the visuals and works well as such, however, it doesn’t do much more than to re-enforce what you already see. Given how important the phenomenon is for the current world and our future extensions/expansions plans, the aforementioned approach began to feel a bit flat. Certainly this new track has put things into a new perspective (what we call a happy accident).

A new tech journal at the official site of The Chronicles of Spellborn looks at how the design team reconciles conflicting ideas.

Competing ideas, designs and approaches bubble up in the primordial soup of a game and it is no easy trick to make a good healthy meal out of it. Ideas blink in and out of existence, often annihilated by vicious predators like logic and time constraints before they are even voiced. Sometimes a particularly resilient strain pops up. Is it the new paradigm? Or is it the new parasite that will leech resources from beautiful but fragile ideas. Who decides these things anyway? Who plays god over this wondrous realm? Why, it's mister Pipeline!

The official site of The Chronicles of Spellborn has been updated with a new design journal featuring the arena area.

I expect a lot of players to be leveling towards this end-game feature. Access to the Arena system is granted at level 40 via NPC’s, not earlier, and only in Quarterstone. The Arena will come with a wide variety of features on release, but will receive a lot of content from future updates as well. In this journal I will handle the basics of the current features, post-release features and reveal images of two ‘new’ maps.

First I’ll discuss the options players will have available on release. There are two distinct types of arena games that can be played; Battles and Challenges. Both can be fought on either ranked or unranked level. The difference is that Battles are matched randomly, while Challenges are specifically requested fights from players.

A new art journal at the official site of The Chronicles of Spellborn takes a look at how world assets are created.

Right, so let’s start with a peak in the kitchen of modeling and texturing. I’m going to use a large Demon Wall as an example. We wanted to add some extra flavor to the world, by adding more ancestral remains. Remnants that hint back to times long gone and which give the player a better sense of the history of the world. It can also help placing things in perspective or act as points of recognition after… an Ancestral Quest for example. 

A new developer journal from Sebastiano Mandala, Graphic Coder for The Chronicles of Spellborn, is available at the official site.

When I got hired, the cheering people here in the office told me that they were working with a not so new 3D engine only used to run indoor games with not more than 8 players or something like that. I thought: poor guy who is in charge of making a heavy outdoor level based system in a MMO environment working on such an engine. Well, that poor guy was eventually me.

Let’s say that the Unreal Engine, as it was originally conceived, was completely unable to render our game on a system (I use to work on a dual core, with a geforce 6800), at a frame rate greater than 10fps.  

The official site of The Chronicles of Spellborn has been updated with a new art journal.

This week I’m going to write a bit about the first phase of the Art production pipeline. I will try to give you a bit insight in how we translate a design provided by the Gamedesign department into final concept art.

The Art production pipeline basically starts with a document that we call an FD, which stands for Functional Design. It’s written by the gamedesigners and it contains lore, background information, motivation, design specifications, quest and/or game assets etc etc. It gives us their brilliant vision on the matter. It is in essence a manual with the details how it should be build. It’s the blueprint. We think more of it as… a guideline.  

Head on over to MMORPG.com for a Chronicles of Spellborn trailer and music video.

A new developer journal at the official site of The Chronicles of Spellborn explains the origin and function of the game's High Houses.

I'd like to start off with a little bit of history where the context of the Houses is explained. In the years after the Awakening, some 600 years ago, there were eight High Houses, Pale, Onyx, Void, Maul, Torque, Rune, Silver and Shroud, that vied for power and control over the combined might of the Human and Daevi survivors. The indifferences from before the Great Collapse, the destruction of the Ancestral World, had not diminished in the slightest and the struggle for dominance continued. But as time progressed it became clear that some of the Houses had similar goals and as such started to form allegiances. Pale, Onyx, and Void became what history refers to as the Traitor Houses whilst Shroud, Maul, Torque and Silver opposed their ideas with such vehemence that war was inevitable.

MMORPG.com caught up with The Chronicles of Spellborn team while at the Leipzig GC and manged to get them to answer a few questions about this upcoming MMO. 

The latest developer journal to hit the official Chronicles of Spellborn site takes a look at factions.

It's pretty nifty to roll up a new player character, take your first steps upon some unknown Shard, learn how to point your bow in the general direction of (preferably) an opponent and actually hit him with an arrow. In fact, it can be pretty mesmerizing. Maybe even more so, if you do it again and again, with a sword or spell. But it's all kind of useless if you're just shaving off life force of some random bloke, who happened to be within the range of your weaponry. Imagining him to be a part of some smuggler's organization, which was peddling illegal wares into town, now that's already a bit more enticing.

To prevent you, the player, from getting tired thinking up all these kind of jobs and associations with other characters, and then having to decide how they should react to your advances (or stray arrows), we have factions. This is basically just a fancy way of saying that there are multiple character-groups within the game, each with their own history and associated goals. Some of these factions are friendly, but others are hostile enough to reward those stray arrows you expelled with a blunt object to your cranium.

A new developer journal from Niel Vredeveldt, the Interaction Designer for The Chronicles of Spellborn, is available at the official site.

Because Spellborn has a distinctive art style, I also try to capture this in the GUI. The easiest way is to achieve this is to use the twirls and bends that are frequently seen in the Spellborn universe, for it makes the GUI rich with detail. There is one downside to this though: the earlier design I have made proved to be heavy on performance (beta 1) and we ended up redoing it all, for playing the game when your machine renders at 5 frames a second did not seem a very good option. You still can see some parts of that design version in the TCOS website layout.  

The official site of The Chronicles of Spellborn has been updated with a new developer journal.  The subject this time is the game's wildlife.

In the “real” world, most living creatures on this planet are animals so naturally they should form a large part of any virtual world as well (let’s ignore the 99 percent of animals that are almost too small to see for the sake of this article).

Having established that we need a bunch of creatures to fill our world, the next step is to determine what kind of creatures and where to put them.

Sound is the focus of the latest developer journal at the official Chronicles of Spellborn site.

In The Chronicles of Spellborn music plays an important role in establishing moods for area’s. As those of you who played the beta have found out a little (and a lot more had I done the volumes right ), music plays very seldom. Most of the time, you simply hear the ambience of an area. If you are in a forest, you’ll hear forest sounds, on the road next to the forest there is a road ambience and once you go out into a field, it’s different again. All of this is heard in gradual motion, as you move between the area’s.

Every so often, the music belonging to that particular shard comes in and plays. At the moment this happens every hour or so, though we plan to make it such that people can change how often this happens.  

The technology of looking cool is the focus of the latest developer journal at the official site of The Chronicles of Spellborn.

“When I play an MMO, I want to be a standout. Thousands of players were there before me, but I want to be recognized for my deeds, gazed upon for my good looks, and envied for my awesome appearance”.

Many MMO players must have thought this, I reckon. And when they set out to explore new magical worlds for the first time, they probably had nothing else on their minds. But after plowing through many levels and many quests, the above remained nothing but a dream. If you want to look good and cool in other games, the average critter will be stronger than you. But if you want to be strong and dangerous and have all folk fear your presence, your looks will resemble what Jimi Hendrix sang about in Purple Haze.

A new developer journal at the official Chronicles of Spellborn site takes a closer look at boss encounters.

Boss encounters, maybe the most important aspect of the game for some players. Whether it’s fire breathing dragons (which we don’t have) or waves of demonic little creatures (which we sort off have), boss encounters form the cornerstone of instances and pinnacle of achievement... for some.

Boss encounters is a term I’m using loosely here, it doesn’t stand for something necessarily big and dangerous. It means the encounter is unique, typically harder then the encounters before it and usually marks an achievement of some sort. We have bosses of level 4 and bosses of level 50, some are tiny, some are huge, it’s all there.  

Another day, another developer journal at the official Chronicles of Spellborn site.  Today's installment takes a closer look at the game's art.

To start of this week art journal I’ll introduce myself. I’m Frank “noz” Bakker, one of the level designers / environments artists on The Chronicles of Spellborn. I’ve been working on TCOS for almost 2 years now and the Athenaeum is my latest creation.

When you get a concept from a concept artist there’s two ways to approach it. Do you model, texture and light it exactly the way it’s drawn or do you use it as a rough guideline, as a base to work from. I prefer the latter. When I get a concept I’ll use it as something to hold on to, not as a blueprint. This gives me a lot more freedom and joy in my work because I get to decide many aspects of how the environment should turn out.  

Another developer journal has been posted at the official site of The Chronicles of Spellborn.  This time the author is game developer Maurits Fassaert.

When you ask a game developer about their job, either in a social setting or to put it down in a journal, the first thing he will think of is to tell you about the cool things he created. Those fruits of his labour are recognizable for anyone with some knowledge of gaming and at the same time they are something to be proud of.

A new developer journal at the official site of The Chronicles of Spellborn takes a closer look at the development of the Trial Caves.

At first the Trial Caves were used as a place where players could battle each other in mining caverns that were PVP flagged. At level five you would be forced to venture deeper into the mines and find an NPC in an instance that would teach you something about the enemies of the world. At the end of that challenge, you would be given the choice of which subclass you wanted to play during the remainder of your adventures. If you chose not to undergo this, you would be stuck at level 5 for eternity! How lovely!  

Cuppycake.org talks to Pierre-Yves Deslandes and Chris Nengerman of Spellborn International.

1.) 2007 is a big year for MMOs, how do you expect Spellborn to fair in this competitive environment?

Spellborn is created by a team of avid MMO players. Many of the designers aren’t all too happy with a lot of the current MMO conventions. With Spellborn, we want to create a game that has a new take on these conventions. We focused on player skill, player freedom and immersion and we are confident that there will be many MMO players looking for a game that offers more than the tried and tested MMO gameplay formula in a new setting.

A full overview of the skills and classes available to player characters in The Chronicles of Spellborn is available at the official site.

Part 5 of MMORPG.com's preview of The Chronicles of Spellborn is now available.

Last time around, we talked a little bit about the classes that will be available in the upcoming MMORPG, The Chronicles of Spellborn. This time, I wanted to devote some time to the idea of player attributes.

With the help of the Spellborn team, I was able to get to the bottom of their system. You see, the player attributes are made up of three main attributes: Body, Mind and Focus. Each of those attributes, in turn, is tied to one of the three character class archetypes that were discussed in the last article: Warrior (Body), Spell Caster (Mind), and Rogue (Focus).

MMORPG.com has the latest on the attribute system in The Chronciles of Spellborn.

Last time around, we talked a little bit about the classes that will be available in the upcoming MMORPG, The Chronicles of Spellborn. This time, I wanted to devote some time to the idea of player attributes.

With the help of the Spellborn team, I was able to get to the bottom of their system. You see, the player attributes are made up of three main attributes: Body, Mind and Focus. Each of those attributes, in turn, is tied to one of the three character class archetypes that were discussed in the last article: Warrior (Body), Spell Caster (Mind), and Rogue (Focus).

MMORPG.com examines the races and classes that make up the playable characters in The Chronicles of Spellborn.

In many fantasy-based MMORPGs, players are faced with a broad selection of character races. At the very least, you usually get the basics: Human, Elf, Dwarf and some kind of Halfling-type race.

The Chronicles of Spellborn offers only two races. Both of these races were once servitors and slaves to the "Eight Demons" (the bad guys who ruled over the world before it broke into small shards). Now that the Eight Demons aren't such a direct threat, each race is coming to their own.

Spellborn International has posted an overview of the full skill sets for caster classes in The Chronicles of Spellborn.

We updated our skill overview with the full skill listing for the three Spellcaster classes; The Rune Mage, The Ancestral Mage and the Void Seer.

You can find the full overview here.

MMORPG.com has nine new Chronicles of Spellborn screenshots on offer. 

Part two of MMORPG.com's report from the Spellborn studios is online. This installment examines how sound will be handled in The Chronicles of Spellborn. Catch the first part of the report here .

The most important thing, I was told, is that players should be able to ignore the sounds in the game (or any game, really) if they want to. According to Matthew, sounds in a game should be, "present, but not irritating".

It's happened to all of us at one point or another, we've been playing a video game and the sounds are jarring enough that you're always aware of them. Not sub-consciously, but right there, annoying us and tending to force us to turn the volume down or off entirely. It can be a frustrating experience for the player.

So, how does Spellborn handle its sounds so that they are "present, but not irritating"?

The official site of The Chronicles of a Spellborn has a preview of the full Warrior class skill sets.

Today we are proud to unveil the full skill list for the three warrior classes; The Blood Warrior, The Wrathguard and the Furyhammer. You can find the full overview here.

The Chronicles of Spellborn offers a unique skill-based combat system with FPS-style manual targeting. You can find more general information about the combat system here. And you can find a detailed overview of Spellborn's statistic system here.

MMORPG.com's Jon Wood visits the Spellborn International studios  and reports back on his findings.

The Chronicles of Spellborn is not your average, run-of-the-mill, fantasy MMORPG. Rather, the game is set in what Lead Game Designer Chris Nengerman described during an interview for our podcast, Game/On, a "post-apocalyptic" fantasy world.

According to the official lore, the game world was once full and whole, and more closely resembled the kinds of worlds that MMORPG fans are used to. A tragic set of events saw the game world literally explode, shards of the former world (which serve as playing areas for the MMO) float inside of a storm, its people magically frozen until they could live again on the shards of their former world. This story line allows for a refreshing diversity in the play areas of The Chronicles of Spellborn, with each shard being different from its fellows.

Stratics speaks with Marco Van Haren, Marketing and PR Manager for The Chronicles of Spellborn.

Stratics: What lead to the lore and development of "The Chronicles of Spellborn (TCoS)"? Whose dream was it? How did the design for the post-apocalyptic world? Who created and designed it? Where did the idea for the artwork and music come from? What separates you from the other MMOs that are coming out: Conan, Vanguard, Warhammer for example? How long has the game been in development?

Marco: The whole idea for The Chronicles of Spellborn is based on the fact that we weren't happy with the current MMO landscape. Especially since the release of World of Warcraft, many new and upcoming MMOs try to copy the success of WoW. We have seen few tries at an original approach. The good thing with World of Warcraft is that it brought the MMO genre to a much larger audience. With Spellborn we want to create a game that offers a unique approach on MMO gameplay and the tried and tested Elf and Orc fantasy setting. Another trend that we aren't all too fond of is the move towards 'realistic' graphics. We think that things don't have to look realistic in order to look real. We wanted to create a world that is both fresh and immersive and that requires good art direction instead of all the latest graphic card features. Being a European company, we opted for the European cartoon style blended with Jesper Kyd's unique take on fantasy music.

The official site of The Chronicles of Spellborn directs our attention to Gamona.de.

Last week-end, TCoS was presented at the Role Play Convention in Münster, Germany. Among other events, it was the occasion for Gamona.de to interview our Lead Game Designer Chris Nengerman for a 7 minutes video interview, dealing with the story, art-style and many other topics related to The Chronicles of Spellborn.

You can give a watch to this video interview in English by following this link. Note that this interview is also available to download (click on "Jetzt downloaden").

WarCry talks to Marco van Haren of Spellborn International about work on The Chronicles of Spellborn.

WarCry: Spellborn has an extremely distinct art style. How did that style evolve and what do you believe it adds to the game?

Marco van Haren: We wanted steer clear of the current trend in MMOs that tries to offer realistic graphics. We wanted to create a graphic style that oozes atmosphere to create a stronger feeling of immersion. When you create an MMO that you want players to enjoy for many years, you need to create a style that isn't too dependent on the current trend in graphic technology since these types of graphics tend to age less forgiving. We used the European comic style as a basis for our graphics. Our concept artists have a comic background resulting in a more organic style and more coherence. Of course our graphic coders came up with some interesting modern graphic effects, but these are only used when they enhance the atmosphere.

Chris Nengerman, Lead Game Designer for The Chronicles of Spellborn, kicks off a series of developer journals at MMORPG.com.

Hi, my name is Chris Nengerman and I am Lead Game Designer for The Chronicles of Spellborn. Over the coming weeks I would like to tell you about the process of game design. To give you a broad insight on how the Spellborn team is working, we will take a step by step tour through the design process of the Green District zone and the connected instanced dungeon called the Citadel of Ail. During this tour you will discover all about creation of lore and how it translates to actual locations. We will also take a look at the design of monster encounters and the implementation of quests. In this first episode we take a look at what the original goals were for these areas and how these were translated into actual lore, quest lines and setting descriptions.

Ten Ton Hammer has an interview with Spellborn's PR head, Marco van Harem.  Here's the opening question to set things off:

Micajah: It’s been awhile since we’ve had any major news coming from The Chronicles of Spellborn (at least from the North American press)…what sort of state is the game in currently? Are you just putting the final polish on the game before it goes into open beta or are there still a few design schematics that have yet to be permanently set in stone?

Marco: All major features have been implemented that we have planned for release and we are now busy with balancing and polishing the game. The third and final closed beta phase recently started and we are using this phase to unlock all the features to get feedback from the players. These last few months are going to be extremely important since the last 10% of development has the most impact on the actual "feel" of the game.  

1Up has previewed The Chronicles of Spellborn; here's a snip:

The battle system in Spellborn also strays from the beaten MMO path. Instead of the usual auto-targeting and skills system of most MMORPGs out there, Spellborn is going with a more action-oriented approach. A player's attacks won't automatically land just because that enemy boar is targeted. If the boar moves out of the way, the player's hit will miss. Likewise, players can actively dodge enemy attacks. This is true not just for melee combat, but for magic spells as well -- say goodbye to homing fireballs.

Strategy Informer has a number of new screenshots from The Chronicles of Spellborn available for your viewing pleasure. 

Spellborn International has announced that phase three of the Chronicles of Spellborn closed beta has begun.

Closed Beta Phase 3 of The Chronicles of Spellborn has started last Wednesday as planned. Beta testers are already eagerly testing the game and experiencing their first adventures on the Shards and in the Deadspell Storm of the new Beta version.

Next week we will start sending out further invitations for travel in the Enclave.

To all the testers, have a lot of fun finding bugs, and to everyone else, good luck in getting your boarding pass for the next shardship full of adventurers leaving for the Deadspell Storm!

IGN updates its impressions of The Chronicles of Spellborn.

Spellborn tries to further distance itself from the standard MMORPG mold by stripping armor and weaponry of statistics. Modifications, called sigils, can eventually be affixed for bonuses as you level up to the cap of 50, but otherwise aesthetics are the only reason to discriminate between armor pieces. When creating a character of either Human or Daevi racial persuasions, you can slap on a wide variety of stylish armor pieces. Hair styles and facial features can be tweaked, color customized, tattoos inked, and body type determined, all of which are in no way limited by your choice of class. If you wanted, you could create an impossibly buff Human male with heavy plate armor, yet he's a caster. Equally unlikely contrasts can be accomplished with the other class arch-types, rogue and warrior. Once created, you'll be able to go back and reorient your character's appearance in shops littered around the game's towns.

The official site of The Chronicles of Spellborn directs our attention to ForceFeedback.nl.

The Dutch folks of ForceFeedback.nl attended the Spellborn Press Event held last week in The Hague and have recorded parts of the presentation given by our Lead Game Designer Chris Nengerman and Game Designer Coen Neessen. In addition to that, they had the opportunity to test the game by themselves and took some footages of their in-game adventure. You can check the two videos by following the links below.

Character creation, combat & PvP
Hands-on with game & Interview (Dutch)

The Chronicles of Spellborn team direct our attention to ToTheGame,  WarCry and Worthplaying where a selection of new screenshots are available.

Nine new screenshots taken from the current internal build of the game have found their way to the press today. This new internal build will soon be shifted to our closed beta servers for testing in our third and final closed beta phase. Until that time, enjoy the new screens!

You can find the new shots here:

TOTHEGAME.com
WARCRY.com
Worthplaying.com

Gamesplanet.be talks with Marco van Haren, the Marketing and PR manager for The Chronicles of Spellborn. English translation generously provided.

We’ve seen that players will be able to choose out of two races, the Humans and daevi. Will there be certain restrictions when you choose a certain race, for example the magic you can wield or the pledge of loyalty to a certain House?
At release the game will indeed offer two playable races. Together these two races form The Enclave of the Five Sacrifices and both races are seen by this Enclave as equals. Digging deeper into the lore there are some striking differences found between these races, but ever since the great cataclysm that resulted in the destruction of the known world, the two races became more alike. From a player perspective both races have no racial differences at all besides having a different body type. The difference in body type does have some effect on some of the armour sets and weapons since some armour pieces and weapons can only we worn by a Daevi or a Human in the beginning of the game. Later on players will find means by crafting to adjust these armour pieces and weapons to be used by both races.

The Chronicles of Spellborn team have compiled all of the pieces of game lore released to date into one cohesive timeline.

Ever since The Chronicles of Spellborn was officially announced, pieces of lore have been published on the website and in our newsletters. We have compiled all these pieces, together with unpublished stories, into an easy to read timeline. This timeline gives you an overview of all the events that shaped the current world of The Chronicles of Spellborn.

A "Spellborn goodie bag" of unknown contents is up for grabs in a new contest at the official site of The Chronicles of Spellborn.

Have you seen this child?

The Enclave is missing Uhriel! The young Daevi girl was last seen at the Parliament docks near Hawksmouth. You will find the place on the map on square I8. Questioning the citizens present at the time revealed that Uhriel must have been playing when she suddenly vanished from one moment to the next. During a search of the area a note with encrypted clues was found, mentioning that there would be three more notes.

Please help us and read on to solve the riddles and find Uhriel!

The artwork section at the official site of The Chronicles of Spellborn has been updated.

We updated our artwork section with new art from our concept artists Romano Molenaar and Chris Evenhuis. You can find sketches detailing all kinds of props for the different factions in the Spellborn world and you can find full colour art for the Temple of the Oracle and a not so friendly new creature.

The Chronicles of Spellborn team are holding a Christmas competition.  Head on over to the official site for the full details.

The contest is really simple. What we want you to do is send us something that represents Spellborn and Christmas. In other words, come up with an idea that revolves around Spellborn and Christmas in any way you want.

The official site of The Chronicles of Spellborn is sporting a new project update.

It has been a few months since our last project update, and again a lot has happened. In this update we want to inform you about the current state of the project and all things coming in the near future.

Last weekend we ended the second closed beta phase. Our QA department has gathered all feedback that could be gathered from our current beta build. In the meantime our development department has finalized some of the game's last large features such as the tournament system and the guild system. These big features have a big impact on all basic systems of the game, so we decided that it would be best to work towards a stable new build that contains all these features before starting our third final closed beta phase. This last close beta phase is planned for early Q1 2007.

The Chronicles of Spellborn team have released a new game trailer entitled The Howling.  The official site has the details:

Spellborn and Within Temptation today released 'The Howling' to selected music and game websites worldwide. 'The Howling' is a 6 minute long gametrailer for The Chronicles of Spellborn featuring a song written exclusively for the game by Within Temptation. You can check out a 1 minute preview on the websites listed below [link to news item] or you can surf to www.the-howling.com to register for the full 6 minute version. Enjoy! 

Ten Ton Hammer is hosting a new developer diary by the Chronicles of Spellborn team which takes a closer look at travel and exploration in the DeadSpell Storm.

Are you one of those people that likes to go where no man, or Daevi for that matter, has gone before? Do you like to climb to the highest reaches of a mountain range or explore the vast tunnels of an underground cavern system? If you are then The Chronicles of Spellborn has a lot in store for you!

The Chronicles of Spellborn allows players with an explorer’s heart hidden within their chest to go out and explore the many unique areas of the different shards. Using the handy minimap in the upper right corner, players can find their heading and location by simply looking up. The entire minimap functions as both a map and a compass, where the top of the minimap always points north and the bottom always south. This way it doesn’t matter if the forest you are in is dark and scary, you can always find your way back to safety.

The official site of The Chronicles of Spellborn directs our attention to several of its fansites which are hosting a new video developer diary. 

Spellborn International has released a new Chronicles of Spellborn gameplay trailer featuring footage from "some of the game's unique locations and heavy group action shot in the game's starting areas."

 Spellborn International has announced that The Chronicles of Spellborn will be delayed until the first quarter of 2007.  Here's the official press release.

Berlin, 24.10.06: Spooky Bob has made the Quarterstone Graveyard his regular haunt spot. Not because it is such a nice place, but because Spooky Bob needs to get some issues solved in the grand city of Quarterstone before he can enjoy his well deserved eternal rest.

The Spellborn developers have started a contest in which community members can send in a quest that will grant Spooky Bob his final rest. The best, most fun quest will be integrated into the retail version of The Chronicles of Spellborn.

To provide a perfect gaming experience, Frogster Interactive announces the release of The Chronicles of Spellborn for the 1st Quarter of 2007. In the recently started final development-phase, the Spellborn NV developing-team will apply a final layer of polish to the expansive game world and the innovative gameplay features.

The final Alpha version of the game will be finished on the 15th of November after which a final Closed Beta phase will start. An Open Beta phase with Fileplanet is planned for early Q1 2007.

Marco "Freeze" van Haren has discussed the combat in The Chronicles of Spellborn with Ten Ton Hammer.  Here's an excerpt:

Ten Ton Hammer: Chronicles of Spellborn is using a more "first person shooter-like" style of combat. No doubt we're in store for some intense action, but will the pace of combat be slow enough that players can coordinate their actions when working as a group? Or is this one of the "skill" factors?

Freeze: The key to success in Spellborn will be to know your skills, those of your party members, and those of you opponents. The combat in Spellborn is intense and frantic and players will need to learn to depend on each other. While this might make some of the encounters difficult, the feeling of accomplishment is a lot bigger. Each player in a group will have the feeling that he is an essential member of the group which gives the game much more of a dungeon crawl feeling then just another quick run for items.

Of course things start out easy to give players enough opportunity to grow into the game. New players will start with a skill deck that only offers room to four skills. Once a players starts to gain levels, the number of skill slots on the skill deck grows and the number of skills grow. Some of the more complex skills will need to be obtained in special ways, so each players can define their preferred level of complexity.

The combo system used in Spellborn allows experienced players to make chains of up to eight skills long. Again this system is designed in such a way that it is completely optional. While combos will give players an advantage, the advantage is not so big that players can't win a fight without them. Using combos in PvP though, will typically be something that can tip the scale.

Spellborn International has released a number of new screenshots showcasing its upcoming MMORPG the Chronicles of Spellborn.  First to post them is ToTheGame.  Keep an eye on the official Spellborn site for additional postings throughout the day.

RPG Vault's fifth Spellborn Peek "takes us deeper into its upcoming persistent state game to learn more about the adventures that await us":

In this series of articles, we are taking an in-depth look at the world of The Chronicles of Spellborn. Players are part of a civilization struggling for survival after the destruction of their world. What is left are the hollow rock-realms known as shards, floating in the magical Deadspell Storm. Each of these shards offers a unique set of themed environments, dungeons and creatures. In this fifth and final episode, we explore the areas that lie deeper within the shard, hidden beneath a thick fog.

RPG Vault has kicked up their 4th Spellborn Peek, which sees them travelling to the Ringfell Shard:

In this series of articles, we are taking an in-depth look at the world of The Chronicles of Spellborn. Players are part of a civilization struggling for survival after the destruction of their world. What is left are the hollow rock-realms known as shards, floating in the magical Deadspell Storm. Each of these shards offers a unique set of themed environments, dungeons and creatures. In this fourth episode, we will explore the Ringfell Shard, which is home to the Speyrfolk, a rather strong-willed and stubborn group of people with an extraordinary history.

In this series of articles, we will take an in-depth look at the world of The Chronicles of Spellborn. Players are part of a civilization struggling for survival after the destruction of their world. What is left are the hollow rock-realms known as shards, floating in the magical Deadspell Storm. Each of these shards offers a unique set of themed environments, dungeons and creatures. In this third episode, we will continue exploring the Parliament Shard, the starting one for all new players entering the world.

In this series of articles, we will take an in-depth look at the world of The Chronicles of Spellborn. Players are part of a civilization struggling for survival after the destruction of their world. What is left are the hollow rock-realms known as shards, floating in the magical Deadspell Storm. Each of these shards offers a unique set of themed environments, dungeons and creatures. In this second episode, we will continue exploring the Parliament Shard, the starting one for all new players entering the world of The Chronicles of Spellborn.

How many players are currently testing the game? When are you shooting for more invites to go out?

During the first phase of beta testing we had more than 800 testers in the game. We recently fired up the second phase of Beta testing, and in addition to the 800 testers from phase 1, new waves of beta invites are being sent out to fill in many additional slots.

Are you still on track for an October release? Will there be an Open Beta or public stress test prior to release?

We are committed to release the game in Q4 2006. Before release an Open Beta phase is planned allowing more people to access the Spellborn universe. For the Closed and Open Beta phases we will work with Fileplanet exclusively.

Episode 1 - The Parliament Shard

In this new series of articles we will take an in-depth look at the world of The Chronicles of Spellborn. Players are part of a civilization struggling for survival after the destruction of their world. What is left are the hollow rock-realms known as Shards, floating in the magical Deadspell Storm. Each of these offers a unique set of themed environments, dungeons and creatures. In this first episode we will take a look at the Parliament Shard, the starting location for all new players entering the world of The Chronicles of Spellborn.

Name: Marco van Haren
Nickname(s): Freeze
Position: PR Manager

Background:
Back in the old days I was working for MTV and had to do some research on online communities for a new project. Since I already was a happy gamer, I decided that buying an MMO was a good place to start. Now 6 years later I'm still a very active member in the Everquest guild I joined the day I bought the game. Although most (if not all) TCoS colleagues don't understand my love for Everquest, we do all share the love for MMOs and the intense process of creating them.

Name: Brian Wren
Nickname(s): Ladyboy
Position: Programmer

Background:
Born & raised in the UK, in south Essex (the "English Riviera"). After university, I decided to chance my arm in the Netherlands (of all places). Here I found myself doing a succession of jobs, working my way up from pond scum before I applied for the post of "software engineer" at a large IT company, despite having no programming experience. Video games have been a worringly large part of my life since the early 1980s (yes. I'm that old) and I always thought it would be mad to be able to make my own game. After a couple of years of doing a proper job, I thought "why not?" and tried for a job at Khaeon in early 2003. This ended up being a Nayim-like shot from the halfway line. I would like to think that I got the job through my good looks, charm and sheer ability, but I think it was more due to the fact that a good friend of mine was working there at the time...

Today Asian Frogster Studios announced that they signed a publishing deal to publish The Chronicles of Spellborn in Asia. The deal ensures availability of the game in Korea and options on licensing for other Asian countries. The full press release can be found here.

MMORPG.com: In recent articles there has been talk about pets, can you tell us more about how players will be able to use pets in the game?

Marco van Haren: At release Spellborn will not feature pets as seen in some other MMOs. We do however have 2 classes that have the support of other beings. The first of these two classes is the Ancestal Mage. These mages can use 'spirit cells' to capture the spirits of fallen heroes in the Ancestral World. The Ancestral Mage can release these spirits in combat. Each of these spirits has its own unique skilldeck which allows the Ancestral mage to choose the appropriate spirit depending on the fight he is in.

The other class is the Champion. Like the Ancestral Mage, the Champion can capture spirits and unleash them in combat. The spirit won't fight with the Champion, but will posses the Champion. Depending on the spirit used for possession, the effects of many of the Champion's skills will change.

The seventh in our series of public Dev Chats will be held on Sunday the 3rd of September at 20:00 CEST. The upcoming chat will have no specific topic, so you will be able to ask all kinds of questions in this session. The chat is expected to run an hour or so and will be done in Question and Answer format, so make sure to drop in a bit before the chat starts to begin submitting your questions.

You can stop by our irc server (irc.tcos.com) and join the #spellborn-QA channel in order to read or take part in the Q&A. Detailed instructions how to use IRC are available here. Afterwards we will be making logs of the event available for those who cannot attend but are still curious as to how the system will work.

Lead Game Designer Chris 'Crowbar Alpha' Nengerman and members of the Community Relations team will be around to answer your questions.

See you on Sunday!

Jonric: To get us started, what's distinctive about The Chronicles of Spellborn compared to other online worlds of the current generation?

Marco van Haren: When we set out to create The Chronicles of Spellborn, we wanted to create a game that we would like to play ourselves. The setting and story for the game had already been created during many tabletop role-playing sessions, and they formed the basis for all the design that followed. By making no concessions to the lore of the world, the gameplay designers were able to craft a game that offers fresh approaches to elements found in many MMORPGs, with the added value that everything the player does in The Chronicles of Spellborn has a reason and a meaning.

With a unique graphical approach, a unique setting, an interesting story and an innovative combat system that allows for manual targeting and skill-based combat, we are sure that The Chronicles of Spellborn is a fresh breath of air for anybody looking for something new and interesting to play online.

MMORPG.com: Tell us a little bit about your life growing up. Where did you live, what did you do, did you go to school?

Chris Nengerman: I was born in Cologne, Germany but my parents moved back to Holland when I was 2, of course taking me along. I grew up in a small town in the northern Holland, called Groningen. Her I rode my first bike, got my first kiss from a girl, got into fights with the kids at school and build my first star destroyer from Lego. In other words all the important stuff. I finally ended up in Amsterdam where I studied philosophy at the University of Amsterdam.

Rorschach: How will you be able to distinguish guilds from other guilds, and factions from other factions?

CrowbarAlpha: Guilds will have their own color combination, defined by the guildmaster at guildcreation. As players are free to change the color of their clothing and armour, choosing the guildcolors for you armour will most likely be the way of recognizing a specific guild. Ofcourse guilds will also be able to choose a guildlogo which can be displayed on a specifically designed clothing or armour chestpiece.

Why did you go with Fileplanet for your upcoming Closed and Open Beta?

Although there are several parties able to host a client and offer it to the masses, we choose for Fileplanet for several reasons. The most important ones being their ability to offer tried and tested processes that go beyond simple hosting and the fact the Fileplanet is part of a large entertainment network. And there is nothing wrong with The Chronicles of Spellborn getting some extra attention.

Thee Nailros: How did you first hear about about The Chronicles of Spellborn?

Wickens: I was getting bored with WoW's grind, and constant item grab so I was browsing mmorpgdot.com for a new game; That's when I saw TCOS. After a few hours of poking around on various websites, I was in awe. It sounded like someone finally took out the parts of the game that were both fun/annoying, then created a system that's just fun and gives you actual control over your character.

With the game nearing completion, the pressure on the Beta is getting higher and higher. Open Beta is getting closer and plans for a first of its kind end of Beta event are well on their way. Because we want the Open Beta available to as many people as possible, we looked for a partner that is able to make it all happen; Fileplanet (insert cheer noises here).

The good thing is that we can trust Fileplanet to arrange the entire Beta process giving us the space to focus on finishing the game. Their Beta experience and reliable servers will ensure the Open Beta can be enjoyed by anybody that wants to be part of it!

Recently we kicked off by starting the first of many Focus Tests using 500 testers selected by Fileplanet. Of course this process is spied upon by a number of our hard core community testers :)

Jewals: The primar attribut for the mages is "mind", one spell named for that is "healing touch", so all mages are able to heal the group?

Co-N: Yes, all mages will be able to select a healing skill that heals allies from the start. Most other classes get their healing skills a bit later.

mitsuhito: The healer in other games like World of Warcraft is only a heal and support class. Will the Oracle Disciple be able to play alone or will he do damage?

Co-N: The Oracle Disciple will absolutely be able to play alone and do damage, just like any other class. You will be able to 'save' three skilldecks. So if you enjoy healing and buffing during group-play you can create a group-deck and save it for later. For solo play you will most likely choose a skilldeck which is more focussed on buffing yourself and dealing damage.

Switching between these skilldecks can be done quickly, but is not possible during combat.

The fifth in our series of public Dev Chats will be held on Sunday the 25th of June at 21:00 CEST. The subject of this chat is the caster classes in TCoS. The chat is expected to run an hour or so and will be done in Question and Answer format, so make sure to drop in a bit before the chat starts to begin submitting your questions.

You can stop by our irc server (irc.tcos.com) and join the #spellborn-QA channel in order to read or take part in the Q&A. Afterwards we will be making logs of the event available for those who cannot attend but are still curious as to how the system will work.

Expected Dev attendees for Dev Chat #5 include game designer Coen 'Co-N' Neessen and community manager Andreas 'Thee' Bettermann.

Hello all,

Summer has hit Holland. While I am writing this letter, the beach outside my window is flooded with people enjoying the thirty plus degrees. Around me a large group of very dedicated people is hard at work at finalizing what must be one of the most amazing projects I have ever been part of. When we set out to create The Chronicles of Spellborn many years ago, none of us ever expected that we would actually end up creating a game that will potentially cause quite a revolution within the MMO genre. While my pc is hard at work at creating a new internal build of the game, it seems like the perfect time to share my excitement with you all by giving you a big update on where the whole project stands and what you can expect the coming weeks.

We have just finished and activated another new feature on our ever-growing website: The Devtracker is a new tool that allows you to track down the latest postings made by members of the Development and Community Relations team on our own forums. The link is available in the navigation menu on the left side.

What are you waiting for? Go and have a look what we have been talking about lately!

Last time (Klick) I explained that the arena creature's impact sounded good, though it is lacking depth and power. There are several ways to get that extra "umpf" into a sound effect and it has been quite a long journey to work out an approach that actually works.

When I was creating the sounds for our very first end-boss, animator Michael Perdius would constantly say he didn't hear the impact. This was odd as I knew it was in there, as a matter of fact; every time he said it, I would add another type of impact just to make sure. Several explosions, door slamming shut and bodies dropped to the ground all layered together. I tried eq-ing, adding reverbs even bribery at one point but Michael wouldn't budge. What I was adding wasn't what he was listening for.

Jewals: The Face Dancer is able to shape change, but it is mentioned that the illusion will break on fighting. Why and what is the shape changing then good for (e.g. being a cougar makes him running faster?)??

Co-N: I'll kick off with a question relating to the rogues and Stealth, because that seems to be on everybodies mind when thinking about rogues. Rightfully so, so I'll deal with that first. So we all get a clear view on that.

The chronicles of Spellborn handles stealth a bit different compared to other games. All rogues use deception and trickery to get the upper hand but none will be able to go invisible for an undetermined duration.

Hello folks!

I am Andreas "Thee Nailros" Bettermann, Community Manager over here at Spellborn HQ. One of my tasks in this position is to keep our ever-growing community up to date about all the latest happenings to ensure everyone knows what's going on in the world of TCoS. To do so, we decided to introduce a new regular feature: the monthly Community Summary. The idea is to give everybody a short (Okay, I will TRY to keep it short...) summary of things going on over here.

Enjoy the read!

We have added some new concept art to our artwork section! Amongst these new images you can find designs for the Trial Caves and the Quarterstone Arena entrance.

How do you decide what a monster will sound like?

It's the one question I am asked most when showing animations with the sounds I made for them. For a question that is asked so often, I always find it very difficult to come up with a suitable answer.

How do I decide indeed?

The problem in answering the question is that "decide" assumes a conscious process; that there are few options for me to pick from. Since most of the monsters and creatures from The Chronicles of Spellborn do not exist in our world, I cannot fall back on using samples of these.

The third in our series of public Dev Chats will be held on Saturday the 27th of May at 21:00 CEST. The subject of this chat is the Quest system in TCoS. The chat is expected to run an hour or so and will be done in Question and Answer format, so make sure to drop in a bit before the chat starts to begin submitting your questions.

You can stop by our irc server (irc.tcos.com) and join the #spellborn-QA channel in order to read or take part in the Q&A. Afterwards we will be making logs of the event available for those who cannot attend but are still curious as to how the system will work.

Expected Dev attendees for Dev Chat #3 include content lead 'Lady Landmine', community favorite Andreas 'Thee' Bettermann and PR manipulator Marco 'Freeze' van Haren.

Each fansite that is part of our Official Recognised Fansite Program features a exclusive blog maintained by a TCoS developer. The blogs contain a all revealing look behind the TCoS development scene and a sometimes too revealing look in the devs' personal lives (yes, some have one). Click 'Read more' to find out more about Pestibug's poly-boobs and ChrisN's Vailyrian bootcamp. Enjoy!