Acclaim is hanging out their "Please Pardon Our Re-Development" signs on their MMO The Chronicles of Spellborn, transforming it into a free-to-play, transaction-based game by next year.
We've heard of patching, or major content updates...heck, we've even heard of an MMO game getting Star Wars Galaxied, but re-developed? That's what Acclaim is called the process The Chronicles of Spellborn is going to be going under for the next year or so. The original developer of Spellborn, Dutch developer Spellborn NV, will be working together with Runes of Magic developer Frogster Asia, with the Korean studio bringing its expertise in the field of free-to-play and microtransactions to bear on the project. Once the re-development is finished, all current subscribers to the game will be switched over to the new free model.
It's actually a bit bizarre, isn't it? I've seen many Korean MMO titles come to the West, but to take a Western MMO to Korea for fixing? Interesting.