There’s two MMOs out there you have probably not heard of. There’s HUNDREDS of those, right? Once you get out of the calm, safe, bathwater-warm surf of the current crowd of big budget MMOs, it’s a wild tide of MMOs with names you can’t remember and details you can’t recall.
None of them will challenge WoW, so you WoW-ians can get back in your chairs. I am not going to say anything negative about the current crop.
I’m just really fugging tired of the same old crap coming out year after year. And so my quest to find the next MMO that is different enough so a jaded MMO vet like myself can enjoy it. I think I may have found it in the Dutch MMO, Chronicles of Spellborn. They have a real-time, deck-based combat, full PvP and decent PvE, a unique graphic style, full character customization, an interesting and unique world and all that. I was so happy when I heard that they had signed a preliminary deal with a US publisher, though they were cagey about exactly who that would be.
A couple of months ago, their European publisher, Frogster, started talking about a Chinese MMO they had acquired – Runes of Magic. This had been written by (IIRC) some Chinese developers who played World of Warcraft in the US and when they returned to Shanghai, were determined to make an MMO inspired by WoW. Frogster got it a new, Western soundtrack and said they had done various other things to make it more acceptable to the west. (The soundtrack, btw, is very good).
So now Frogster has Spellborn and Runes of Magic. It has said it has a potential US publisher, but now it has two 3D MMOs to push into the US somehow.
While working on an article about Frogster’s new European releases, which include both Spellborn and Runes, I noticed they are also publishing StoneAge 2, a Pokemon-ish MMO, which is being published in the US by Aeria Games, who publish a LOT of free to play MMOs here.
If they are the potential US publisher for Spellborn, they may be hesitating to announce because all their games are based around RMT, and Spellborn was to be a subscription game. Runes of Magic, however, was always built to be free-to-play, and would fit very well into Aeria Games’ lineup.
So that’s the shaky stack of Jenga blocks I’m using to wonder: Is Spellborn being held back in the US so that Aeria Games can fasttrack a WoW-like into release? I dunno. I hope not, but I fear that is the case.
Just to re-iterate: 1) I don’t know if Aeria Games is the intended US publisher for Spellborn. 2) I have no idea if Aeria Games is considering publishing Runes of Magic in the US. 3) This is all based upon the one near-meaningless fact that Frogster is publishing SA2 in Europe and Aeria is publishing it in the US, implying, to me, a relationship.
So, actually, this is my heartfelt letter to Aeria Games. If my disjoint chain of reasoning has any reality to it, and you are now deciding between Spellborn and Runes of Magic – let it be Spellborn? Please?