Chronicles of Spellborn

Some trufen managed to reverse engineer a beta version of the super-innovative MMO Spellborn enough so that folks can run around in the setting – no NPCs or mobs at the moment. More information on the video’s YouTube page, and at https://www.facebook.com/selachii/posts/10202890513584115, where Spellborn lead dev El Drijver reminisces about the game.Reversing Spellborn - Hawksmouth Finally we can enter the Deadspell. I think every single spellbornfan looked forward to this moment. ...

No other game looked like Spellborn The Chronicles of Spellborn seemed to provide a wish list of what people want in an MMO. You could look cool from day 1; the gear you chose at character creation could be upgraded by slotting in runes to increase their power. You could still find or craft items with more or better slots, but there was never a time when your character would have to look anything but cool as sheets. ...

Adventuring after a mysterious apocalypse forever changed the landscape, with strange creatures everywhere and a refugee populace just trying to survive in a mutant world overrun with danger…. I didn’t even know I’d gotten into the Earth Eternal closed beta. Tails Tales of my chubby little rat rogue, the kind that Cinderella did NOT want helping make her dress, once I’ve seen more of the game. Back in EverQuest, unexpected adds usually meant a group wipe (unless you were specifically doing an AE group). Crowd control or a puller who knew how to split was really important. Modern MMOs ramp down the difficulty quite a lot, and Spinks wonders if specialized crowd control has any sort of place in World of Warcraft, given the tendency to just gather up a room and kill everything at once? And this is why WoW can’t have nice things, like enchanters and bards :) ...

Wow, can’t believe it’s almost autumn. Summer came so late to New England; cool and rainy through most of it, a couple of hot and humid days, and now the cooler days are back. It’s like living in Seattle. Played a bit of Champions Online over the weekend. I take a character to level 10, start them in on the Hero Games cage matches, see how well they do and take what I learned to the next character. My most recent character was the Green Reaper, a character with all of Green Lantern’s abilities without the power ring. Custom framework of supernatural + telekinesis, allows for a ranged power builder, ability to make ego weaponry from thought alone, and the ability to toss heavy objects at people – with her mind! Travel power is green fire flight. ...

Having heard about the EVE Fitting Tool from a helpful commentator, I spent a lot of time last night working some Battle Clinic builds into viable builds for me. VERY happy. Later on, the corps went on an impromptu trip through a wormhole, where we were relentlessly shadowed by the corp (Bones) who had staked it out. They allowed us to take on a Sleeper cell before we left. We got some T3 loot, but since we’d all brought expendable ships (that’s my Exequoror “The Liberator” hovering outside the wormhole), we weren’t up for taking out the second wave, which included a battleship. (Drew at Wizard of Duke Street has a little more about wormholing). ...

[slide width=“640” height=“480”] Just got back from Virginia yesterday afternoon (you’ll be seeing some pictures from my trip on my ShutterCal widget to the right in the coming days) and am still catching up on all the blogospheric happenings of the past few days. Reason enough to show off some 3D images I’ve been making. A few weeks ago, I got wondering how I could turn game screenshots into three dimensional images. MMORPGs would be a lot more immersive if we could see the game world in the same number of dimensions as we see the real world. ...

According to news sites T-Online and GameZone, Dutch-developed Fantasy MMORPG Chronicles of Spellborn will be shutting down the Frogster-operated European servers at the end of July. European players may have their characters transferred to the Acclaim-operated American servers by filling out a form on the Acclaim site. The article goes on to say that Spellborn will be relaunched in 2010 as a Free2Play game, funding itself with a cash store that will sell gear and character services. Upon relaunch, Frogster will again operate the European servers.

Okay, THAT was a day of good discussion, so thanks, Wolfshead :) Why did I feel your “first impressions” article needed rebutting? Well, SOMEONE had to stand up (and thanks to Hudson, who did!). I couldn’t say that stuff about WoW and expect to come away without comment. In grand blogging tradition, Wolfshead now has a rebuttal to my rebuttal :) ...

Like an ebbing tide, the weekend slowly recedes, leaving behind the flotsam and jetsam of yet another Monday. Only a few years too late to knock ’em dead in Mrs. Moran’s 3rd grade English class on similes. Are the World of Warcraft’s raids too dependent on scripting to be done by unaided humanity? I haven’t played WoW in a few years, but it’s sounding more and more like WoW raids are just a multiplayer, more colorful version of the old “Dragon’s Lair” video game, where you had to move to lit-up squares in a room to defeat monsters. Actually it sounds EXACTLY like it, as Copra found out to his dismay. WoW raiding – an update of a classic 80’s video game for a new generation. ...

Yesterday, EverQuest launched its new 51/50 server to rave reviews, and this morning, Wizard 101 launches its latest expansion, Grizzleheim. So many cool things happening, but who has the time to play them all? Inspired by the Star Wars: Galaxies news out of SOE’s Fan Faire last weekend, Werit jumped into the game after some time away and found a lot to like with the new battlegrounds, player-created content and factions wars. He even has some video! ...