INsanityDesign » tcos http://insanitydesign.com/wp The Imagination Enhancer Sat, 31 Dec 2011 22:14:05 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 The Chronicles of Spellborn – Free to play begins now! http://insanitydesign.com/wp/2009/08/20/the-chronicles-of-spellborn-free-to-play-begins-now/ http://insanitydesign.com/wp/2009/08/20/the-chronicles-of-spellborn-free-to-play-begins-now/#comments Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:15:53 +0000 NeA http://insanitydesign.com/wp/?p=460 TCOS is coming F2PTwo days ago, the USA version of The Chronicles of Spellborn, published by Acclaim went F2P. Today they made this step official. You can go to their website, register a free account and download the about 3GB, install and start playing. I recommend it, as TCOS features a new, active and live fighting system (which I like very much). It also has a very believable world, which does not follow any large license but cooks its own soup. Something I like, as it also encourages you to explore. Now, you can make up your mind yourself as it is free! For those that already played TCOS at the beginning, please note: It has changed nearly completely in my opinion! It is far more user friendly, the interface got better, the guidance, the environment more lively…
It was announced some weeks ago that the European Servers shutdown and The Chronicles of Spellborn will nevertheless continue as a F2P, beginning from next year. This is fantastic, as so many good but not great MMOs (like Tabula Rasa) just get lost in the Windows Trashcan because of shutdowns. The European servers have been shutdown already, but now Acclaim announced that the US Version is F2P from today on but will not feature any updates or patches until the official relaunch. In my opinion it is worth it. And as it is free now it has enough content to keep you playing for a while. And let’s see… maybe you like it!

The Chronicles of Spellborn
TCOS

TCOSThe Chronicles of Spellborn was a bold try to do something completely out of line from UO, Everquest or World of Warcraft. The studio from Netherlands licensed the Unreal 2.5 engine and created their own story, their own environment, their own world! Main focus was put on the fighting system, which features a complex looking but very special and good kind of active and live fighting, with skill-based tiers. Moving, jumping, attacking from behind gets more interactive and it encourages to test your skill-tiers, similar to Guild Wars, because of the alignment and limitations in the slots.
Unfortunately TCOS could not fully keep up to the (and my) expectations. It was polished but too little content was available. Some people also argued that the quest descriptions were missing concrete directions. I liked that, as it was no following arrows and points but really reading the quests, the logs, the text. As the quest and discussion system also features some kind of answer selection, sometimes you can change your stand and the mood of NPCs to you. Something I also like.

So, just head over to the official website and download the game. It is worth at least a quick look and maybe the community will bring Spellborn back to live, somehow like Ryzom.

The Chronicles of Spellborn – Trailer

Pictures taken from the official Website: http://spellborn.acclaim.com/

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