By Jim Rossignol on February 29th, 2008 at 11:04 am.
So there’s a new MMO coming up ["Gasp! No!" - Incredulous Audience] and it’s called The Chronicles Of Spellborn. Not sounding good so far, but it’s actually not looking too bad. The Unreal-powered visuals have some interestingly trippy aspects, and the game itself has a complex deck-based combat system that relies on combo systems to deliver its punch. Rather than simply being able to unload your skillset, as in WoW, you’ll have to work up to the really big hits. Additionally the game is set “within hollow rock-realms known as Shards, floating in the confines of the magical Deadspell Storm”, which sounds like a fun time to me.
There’s also some weird magical spaceship stuff going on, but I can’t find any more information about that. After the jump: the (long) GDC presentation, and Gothic rock-opera, featuring the aforementioned spaceships.
Check out this GDC presentation (recorded in the noisy exhibition hall). Skip to 5mins in to see the character creation, and 20 minutes in to see some of the outside world.
There’s also this dodgy glossy-goth rock video over on TenTonHammer. Not quite sure how it’s promoting the game, but there we go.
It also has bears, natch:
LEAVE THE WILDLIFE ALONE kthx.
New fantasy MMO has bears, stabbing shocker.
*sigh*
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I have been keeping an eye on this game for years, but mostly because it has a set of Fighting-Fantasy style stories you can go through. It’s what I did before I had a computer fun.
http://www.tcos.com/en/gameworld/?id=scrollsynopses
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That scenary looks exactly like pre-searing Ascalon (Guild Wars). I can haz another fantasy moomoo clone?
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When a WWII MMO comes out, then I’ll be interested – appalled, but interested (it could feature collecting twenty SS ears as an intro quest.)
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Wasn’t there a WW2 Online at some point?
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…and still is.
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Devs: Nerf Hitler kthx.
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The only WII Online games I can find are either harrowing historical recreations, firmly in the edutainment cupboard, or FPSers.
As meat circus suggests, I was thinking more along the lines of an accessible RPG style grind-fest. High level magic could be a ‘reap the whirlwind’ style firestorm, T34s could be epic mounts, instead of healing potions, sweet, sweet morphine – That sort of thing.
If one genre can abuse history – why not another?
As a side note, trench warfare lends itself to puzzle gaming.
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I really dislike the bizarre proportions of their characters.
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Hmm. The overuse of compound proper nouns (Spellborn, Deadspell), the word “shard,” the word “Chronicle,” and a few other things gleaned from the background page have already raised huge red flags for me. Generic Tolkien-clone fantasy this isn’t, but it IS Contemporary Generic “Reimagined” Fantasy. Eberron style. Which is even worse.
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That bear fell out of the blocky geometry tree and hit every branch on the way down. Seriously, fugly. Looks like something from n64. In fact, everything in that screenshot looks pre-Morrowind.
Also, I hate all MMOs, despite never having tried any. I can hardly stand having to see idiotic comments in online FPS games, so the idea of that x1000 makes me want to hurl. Eve looks like a cool setting though, and if a Fallout-based MMO came out, I might actually have to play it.
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