For those curious about how subscriptions will work, TCoS will be utilizing a "Freemium" model. The client will be completely free to download, with players allowed to play the game for free within the starting zones until just before they reach Fame level 8, at which point they will be blocked from progressing any further. An interesting choice. Hit the jump for further details.

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. According to MMORPG.com’s list of the most popular games in the last 30 days, Spellborn is ranked at #3 (while World of Warcraft is at #8)! With hype for the game increasing steadily by the moment, players should be extremely excited to participate in the upcoming Closed Beta so they can see exactly what the Spellborn excitement is all about!

What Lies Hidden, Must Be Found

In The Chronicles of Spellborn players enter an impressive online game world containing scenic landscapes, majestic cities and the remnants of a shattered world. Alone or with a party of friends, PC adventurers step into a fantasy realm consisting of varied shards: habitable pieces of the destroyed world floating in the magical Deadspell Storm. Those who want to prevail in the involving combat of The Chronicles of Spellborn need to apply their mighty arsenal of skills actively with mouse and keyboard. Battles with bloodthirsty creatures, intelligent hostile factions and other human opponents in Player vs. Player battles are waiting. An innovative and tactically challenging combat system with third-person shooter-like controls and a unique rotating Skill Deck provides a breath of fresh air amidst the more traditional MMORPGs. Thanks to a largely extended Unreal Engine 2.5, The Chronicles of Spellborn boasts stunning 3D graphics, spectacular effects and countless elaborate details. More information, images, videos and a beta registration-form can be found on the official website: http://spellborn.acclaim.com

Great! Now when are we getting it in the states? I'm not flying to Germany again until I finish digesting all the sausage I ate last time, and that was a total sausagefest that will rest heavily on my stomach for quite some time.

The Chronicles of Spellborn [Official Site]

As an example, the warrior I played had one of the slots filled with ranged attacks, so I selected that slot, targeted an enemy spellcaster, and left clicked through the powers to take him out. When the melee classes got in range I would select my main melee slot, target the closer enemies, and cycle through those powers until they died horribly.

In your more standard MMO, everyone winds up with a combination of powers they use on a regular basis. The Chronicles of Spellborn is set to have a great deal more powers than average, so the skilldeck is an elegant solution to organizing them and using them effectively. Looking forward to fooling around with the feature more as soon as I get the chance.

Character Creation: My first stop was character creation. The team had already generated pre-made characters for the combat walkthrough, but you can't truly know an MMO until you've crafted the shoes you plan on walking a mile in. While Spellborn only has two races – the humans and the demonic daevi, the variations you can generate are nearly limitless. The body sliders in this game are not screwing around. Hitting the random button a few dozen times led to countless varieties of humans and daevi – long and lithe, grossly overweight, short and stumpy – anything is possible here.

Next you can select your clothing, which means a great deal more in Spellborn than most other MMO games. Clothing in the game has no stats, with attributes added by way of mystical sigils, so you never need to change your clothes if you don't want to, maintaining your own unique look throughout the length of the game. You can choose to be a mage in full armor, or a warrior wearing nothing but a codpiece, and people will be able to identify you by your particular style.

Finally you choose your archetype – warrior, spellcaster, or rogue, each having three disciplines they can focus in. I would have further explored character creation, but this demonstration wasn't about navigating menus. It was all about ...

Combat: This is where Spellborn really sets itself apart. Instead of clicking on an enemy and hitting the attack button, players actively target their enemies using the mouse cursor. If the enemies move, you need to follow. If you want to dodge, move out of the way of their attacks. If you are firing a bow at the caster in the back of an enemy group, make damn sure there aren't any mobs behind him, cause a miss with a ranged attack could very well strike another mob, pulling a whole other group down upon your head.

Spellborn also features a unique way to organize your combat skills as well. Dubbed the skilldeck, it consists of five rotating slots, in which you can place six skills each. It's up to the player to place six skills in any single slot that compliment each other, creating combos and effects that stack or amplify damage. As you fight, you can hit the 1 through 5 keys to make a slot active, and left clicking activates them in order. Think of it as five different revolvers with highly specialized bullets.

The warrior that the team provided me came complete with a melee slot that stacked attacks with bleed effects, a debuff slot that basically leeched life from our enemies, and a ranged slot, useful for taking out casters, especially with enemies as smart as these.

They're Thinking: In the combat demo I played through, my spellcaster companion and I faced groups of three mobs, generally consisting of a rogue, a warrior, and a spellcaster each. When we engaged in combat, the warrior and rogue immediately closed, blocking our path to the mage, forcing us to dodge around them to take him out with ranged attacks. If we tried to charge the caster, he backpedaled while the group's rogue slipped behind us to deal more damage and the warrior attempted to stay in our way. The enemy groups basically react like an adventuring party themselves. They'll attempt to dodge, slow you down, or even position themselves so a miscast spell will aggro other groups, forcing you to keep moving in order to avoid adds.

While we only fought human enemies in the demo, the team did mention that packs of wild animals had their own advanced pack behavior as well.

It took a little bit of getting used to, but soon I mastered the combat system, longing to get into my skills to see what combos I could create on the skilldeck, but we were on a timetable here and had to keep moving.

Quests: Spellborn has plenty of quests, each one mired in the story of the area you are in or the NPC you are helping at the time. You will find fetch quests, FedEx quests, and kill X number of mobs quests, but each one will have an underlying reason behind it. If you're interested in game lore, Spellborn is completely drenched in it.

The NPC I was currently assisting sent us off on a quest to set fire to an enemy commander's tent, forcing him out in the open in order to separate his life from his meaty bits. My mage co-pilot and I managed to take out several patrolling groups in no time flat, and I took out the commander on my own while she waited to recharge. Obviously I had gotten the hang of things, so it was time to move on to something more challenging.

Don't Touch The Egg: One last task lay ahead of me. The team teleported me onto a shard ship - a special sort of craft used to navigate the magical energies that suspend the shattered remains of a planet – where an ominous looking purple egg was sitting on deck, ignored by the crew. I noticed the slight grins on the faces around me as I clicked on the egg, only to be swarmed by various creatures that might not have defied description had I been paying less attention to staying alive. As this was a developer trap for unwary journalistic types, I died rather quickly.

What Lies Hidden: The tag line for The Chronicles of Spellborn is “What lies hidden must be found...”, and it applies just as readily to the game itself as it does the storyline. Hidden beneath the unique art direction, intriguing characters and flashy spell effects is an MMORPG that doesn't play quite like anything I've seen before.

New Release Schedule for Spellborn

Results of closed beta and potential US publisher

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 recently, 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.

What lies hidden, must be found
With The Chronicles of Spellborn players enter into an impressive online scenario with scenic landscapes, majestic cities and the remnants of an ancient civilization. Alone or with a party of allies, PC adventurers step into a huge fantasy realm consisting of varied shard worlds floating in the magic Deadspell Storm. Those who want to prevail in the grippingly staged combats of The Chronicles of Spellborn need to apply their mighty arsenal of spells, melee and ranged attacks skillfully. Battles with bloodthirsty creatures, hostile peoples and human opponents in PvP battles are waiting. An innovative and tactically challenging combat system with shooter-like controls and rotating skill deck provides a fresh breath of air for the dusty MMORPG genre. Thanks to the largely extended Unreal Engine 2.5 The Chronicles of Spellborn boasts stunning 3D graphics, spectacular effects and countless elaborate details. More information, images and videos can be found on www.tcos.com.

Check out the latest set of screens from the game below, which showcase some of the higher level areas and creatures in the game. Michael Fahey