It turns out it would be sooner, rather than later, that I approached the delicate matter of just how these weird but cool classes work in Chronicles of Spellborn.  After all, I have some altaholicism to settle, and so close after release this is an ideal time to figure out this little enigma.

Quick Summary

Those are the quick and easy summaries based off of some rather painstaking evaluation of off the Wikia that wasn’t quite covered to my satisfaction in the understanding classes page.  Overall, just looking at those descriptions and knowing what I went through to get them, I should be able to make an easy decision on which class I want to invest 50 levels in.

How did I derive this?  Detailed information follows after the break.

When breaking down an understanding of Chronicles of Spellborn’s classes, there’s a few tricky things to understand.

• The traditional roles of healer, tank, and damage-dealer are more or less null and void.   Everybody can be a healer, tank, and damage-dealer.  Although some classes have more affinity to it than others simply based on skill availability, Chronicles of Spellborn emphasizes being a better player, perhaps working along with other good players, much more than leaning heavily on others to support a critical weakness in your character.  No character really has a weakness unless the players chose to put it there based off of skill selections.
• Because players are allowed to pick and choose skills as they level up, and build custom combos, you can’t very well look at the skills for a character class/discipline and say that a character will definitely be able to do something.   Instead, you can only say that they may do this or that, depending on what choices the player makes when picking their skills.  Skill point availability is actually pretty broad, there’s only some 40-ish possible skills and you get nearly that many skill points, but how you slot them on your combos, and which you get first, will make a big impact.

These and other aspects changed the rules a bit and required a rethinking of classes when I was painstakingly crunching the various information on the Chronicles of Spellborn wikia.

The following are notes of what I came up with by simply evaluating, skill by skill, what the various classes are capable of.  I know this is not all-inclusive – but remember, the purpose here was to simplify in order to better determine which class I want to play.

Everyone:
Gains Hack, Shoot, and Slash skills.  These provide basic weapon attacks which may be useful for chain advancement, but should be swapped out as soon as better skills come available.

All Warriors:
Have mostly melee-based skills which do damage based off of the Body attribute.
Adjust physique and inflict “crushing” damage which does bonus damage based off the difference.
(Physique state affects movement speed over land.)

Early Skill Possibilities (1-10):
May increase their general resistances to damage.
May choose from several melee attacks, some of which ignores resistance/affinities.
May temporarily increase their physique.

Middle Skill Possibilities (11-23):
May choose from among four melee attacks which cripple, daze, disarm, or piece an enemy.
May choose from among two ranged attacks which pierce an enemy or inflict minor AOE to up to 3 enemies.

Late Skill Possibilities (24-34):
May choose from three melee attacks which do heavy damage to an enemy in front or behind, deal extreme crushing damage, or which heal yourself and surrounding party members while removing expose.
May choose a ranged attack which inflict heavy crushing damage to a single target and exposes it to melee.
May choose a magic attack which causes the target to lose physique and become exposed to melee while infusing melee damage in you.

Ultimately:
Warrior’s resistance-enhancing capacity coupled with their ability to slow an enemy to a crawl while boosting their own speed gives them everything they need to assure they will be able to shield their allies from opponents.
Their largely brawn over brains approach allows them to power through defenses if resistances and affinities are so heavily stacked against them as to require it.

All Rogues:
Have mostly melee-based skills which do damage based off of the Focus attribute.
Have a higher than usual selection of ranged-based skills which do damage based off of the Focus attribute.
Adjust concentration and inflict “calculated” damage which does bonus damage based off the difference.
(Concentration state affects attack speed and skill deck rotation speed.)

Early Skill Possibilities (1-10):
May reduce the concentration of two targets.
May wound and reduce the concentration of a single target
May backstab a foe for increased damage.

Middle Skill Possibilities (11-23):
May blind a target.
May increase ranged damage inflicted over the next 3 seconds.
May apply a life tap (heals melee attackers) to a foe.

Late Skill Possibilities (24-34):
May inflict calculated damage on 3 targets at range.
May expose a target to ranged attacks.
May hamstring a melee target, causing it to lose health when moving

Ultimately:
The Rogue class is unusually heavy on the maneuvers which shift concentration and exploits it, perhaps more so than the warrior shifts physique or the spellcaster shifts morale, making them deadly high-speed combatants who can apply either damage or a number of negative affects very quickly.

All Spellcasters:
Have mostly magic-based skills which do damage based off of the Mind attribute.
Adjust morale and inflict “heroic” damage which does bonus damage based off the difference.
(Morale state affects all types of damage inflicted.)

Early Skill Possibilities (1-10):
May apply a life tap (heals melee attackers) to a foe.
May heal themselves through performing magic-based skills.
May reflect melee damage.
May do some area of effect damage.

Middle Skill Possibilities (11-23):
May do more single target damage
May do more area of effect damage
May burn an enemy
May heal a party member

Late Skill Possibilities (24-34):
May temporarily boost body and focus core attributes by 25% of the mind core attribute.
May do even more single target magic damage
May do even more area of effect magic damage
May heal several party members

Ultimately:
The spellcaster affinity to boost the damage per attack, combined with their area of effect damage skills, give them all a “big punch” effect ideal for clearing out clumps of enemies.
Spellcasters have a greater than usual selection of party support spells.

Rune Mage:

Theme: Fire and Ice
Focuses on Rune attacks, countered by Rune Affinity.
Inherited spellcaster morale shifting focus joined by rune mage physique shifting focus.
Tattoo bodyslots mostly focus on altering the effectiveness of spells in various ways.
Runes are 12 seconds of persistent area effects, offensive or defensive.

Early Skill Possibilities (5-10):
May shift physique
May freeze (slowing attacks and movement) a single foe
May draw ruin which burns up to 3 foes within a rune placement.

Combo Openers (11)
Affinity-increasing opener with area of effect based physique shifting damage.
Mind-increasing opener rune which heals party members each time they take damage.
Magic damage-boosting opener which boosts physique and burns a target.

Combo Closers (16)
May perform physique-shifting heavy damage closer that effect 3 targets at range.
May perform heavy burn damage inflicting closer that affects 3 targets close to the caster
May perform fury-granting closer Rune which greatly accelerates party damage at the cost of making healing detrimental.

Late Skill Possibilities (24-34):
May take runes which boost rune, soul, or spirit resistance of party members by 15%
May freeze and deal moderate damage to a single target.
May draw a rune which freezes all targets.
May wound (unresistable damage over time) up to 8 targets at short range.

Ultimately:
Though closest to the traditional offensive spellcaster, the Rune Mage’s runes can briefly divide a battlefield into places where combatants can be healed or protected versus places where they will burn or be frozen.  They manipulate not only the Spellcaster’s realm of courage but also the Warrior’s realm of physique.

Void Seer:

Theme: Foresight
Focuses on Soul attacks, countered by Soul Affinity.
Maintains inherited spellcaster morale shifting focus.
Void Sphere bodyslots focus on adjustment of Infused states, buffs/debuffs, and physique/morale/concentration adjustment on self and enemies.

Early Skill Possibilities (5-10):
May silence 3 enemies at range.
May reflect ranged and magic damage.
May doom (reduce healing and increase soul damage taken) and inflict damage over time on a ranged enemy

Combo Openers (11)
Focus-increasing opener which pauses combat by silencing and rendering immune 3 nearby enemies and party members for a short duration.
Mind-boosting opener which reduces a target’s mind by 75%.
Magic damage-boosting opener which damages nearby enemies 3 times and heals party members for each hit.

Combo Closers (16)
Damage-over-time-dealing closer to an enemy with nearby enemies affected.
Cursing (PeP and physical damage reducing) closer which also sets party to reflect physical damage.
Greatly dooms and exposes to magic a single target.

Late Skill Possibilities (24-34):
May curse and silence a single target.
May deal major damage to a target and heal nearby party members based off of the target’s health.
May buff self magic damage inflicted.
May inflict soul hook on 3 enemies in front of you linked to a single nearby enemy.
May inflict life tap on 3 nearby enemies and party members.
May expose enemies to magical damage.

Ultimately:
The Void Seer is an expert in manipulating the odds, making sure only friendly combatants get much needed healing and buffs while making it difficult for the enemies to damage anyone but themselves.

Ancestral Mage:

Theme: Lightning
Focuses on Spirit attacks, countered by Spirit Affinity.
Maintains inherited spellcaster morale shifting focus.
Spirit Cage bodyslots focus on providing an AI-driven pet which functions as an extra party member of varying specialties depending on which pet is summoned: damage, heals, buffs, debuffs, ect.

Early Skill Possibilities (5-10):
May teleport behind pet, shock (deal conducting damage) to nearby enemies.
May expose pet to damage in exchange to healing nearby party members when it is hit.
May siphon health from pet to the caster.

Combo Openers (11)
Affinity-increasing opener that does heavy heroic damage and builds morale and buffs pet morale.
Magic damage-increasing opener that teleport pet to self and infuses it.
Mind-increasing opener which does moderate damage to pet in exchange for heavy damage to enemies near it.

Combo Closers (16)
Food for Thought (buff damage and gain health per combo point) closer with heavy single target morale adjustment.
Shock-enhancing closer which clumps enemies at target, inflicting damage on the process.
Haunt-enhancing close which greatly infuses spirit and causes enemies to lose health and morale on movement.

Late Skill Possibilities (24-34):
May destroy pet in exchange for major damage to each nearby enemy.
May share damage between you and controlled spirit.
May heal controlled spirit.
May deliver a moderate heal to nearby party members in exchange for taking moderate damge from each enemy in range.
May boost party and pet health and attributes in exchange for assigning a blood hook to each party member from the pet.
May deal heavy damage to 3 enemies, damage will jump up to 3 times from enemies, but it exposes you to melee.

Ultimately:
An Ancestral Mage’s diverse pet-handling skills allow them to cleverly slingshot their many-talented pets in such way that the Mage or their party can get exactly what they need.

Blood Warrior:

Theme: Blood Pacts
Focuses on Rune attacks, countered by Rune Affinity.
Reinforces inherited warrior physique shifting focus with their own.
Scar bodyslots focus on exchanging one aspect of the Blood Warrior’s statistics for another (e.g. higher regeneration for less resistances or increased Body at the price of Mind).

Early Skill Possibilities (5-10):
May form of a Blood Bond with a party member (part of damage received in transferred to the Blood Warrior).
May moderately damage and Blood Hook a single target (receive damage each time the Blood Warrior is damaged).
May boost the melee resistance of all targets with a bloodlink to the Blood Warrior (enemies included) in exchange for boosting the Blood Warrior’s resistances.

Combo Openers (11)
All-attacker-damaging opener which also forms a blood hook on a target.
Healing-effect-increasing opener which forms a blood hook with up to three and takes minor damage for each hook established.
Body-increasing opener which distributes a major heal between yourself and all bloodlinked targets.

Combo Closers (16)
Burn-enhancing closer which burns 3 active bloodlinks, including the Blood Warrior, while increasing the Blood Warrior’s melee damage.
Burst-and-Steadfast-enhancing closer which increases melee resistance at the expense of attackers.
Healing-closer which not only heals the target but forms a Blood Bond with it.

Late Skill Possibilities (24-34):
May cripple a target while bestowing Fury on self.
May establish blood link with three enemies in front of the Blood Warrior.
May perform minor damage to two enemies in front of the Blood Warrior with additional damage for each bloodlink.
May do moderate crushing damage to three enemies in front of the Blood Warrior.
May link Blood Bond on up to 3 party members at the expense of 1 physique.
May transfer health from 3 active Bloodlinks to self.

Ultimately:
By linking their health together, the Blood Warrior has an incredible propensity to shift life between themselves, allies, and enemies.  This makes them an interesting machine of potential area effect damage and healing in addition to their damage resistance warriorly roles.

Adept

Theme: Adaptability
Focuses on Soul-type attacks, countered by Soul Affinity.
In addition to the inherited Warrior physique-shifting, Adepts have a high degree of concentration-shifting and calculated damage.
The Stance Body Slots allow the Adept to choose their own strengths and weaknesses, mitigating one form of damage in exchange for another, or choosing bonuses and penalties to the ways they attack.

Early Skill Possibilities (5-10):
May build physique while making a calculated attack.
May build concentration while making a calculated attack.
May disarm while building concentration.

Combo Openers (11)
Healing-effect-increasing opener which teleports the Adept to the enemy while increasing melee and ranged resistances.
Attacker-damaging opener which buffs concentration and infuses melee attacks in exchange for being blinded and unable to use ranged attacks.
Body-increasing opener which damages up to 2 enemies up to 3 times and lands a minor party heal for each hit.

Combo Closers (16)
Concentration-building finisher which deals heavy damage to a target in melee and then teleports to a random target nearby to inflict more damage.
Calculated-damage-inflicting finisher which silences the target.
Health-recovering-finisher which drains physique from up to 3 enemies in exchange for health.  (Zero physique enemies actually cause severe damage to the user).

Late Skill Possibilities (24-34):
May teleport to a location and do heavy calculated damage to a nearby enemy.
May deal major crushing damage to 3 melee-range enemies, who are blinded, but at the cost of being disarmed.
May inflict heavy calculated damage which is also piercing (ignores resistances).
May perform a 5-step attack and instills ranged resistance and builds physique with each attack.
May convert 50% of Body to Mind.
May convert 50% of Body to Focus.

Ultimately:
The Adept straddles the line between Warrior and Rogue well, with potential access to the skills to max physique and concentration.  Such an adept would be the most maneuverable Warrior on the battlefield, running when physique is high or teleporting when physique is low, thus landing crushing or calculated damage to whoever they see fit.

Wrathguard

Theme: Ghostly Chivalry
Focuses on Spirit-type attacks, countered by Spirit Affinity
In addition to the inherited Warrior physique-shifting, Wrathguards have a high degree of morale-shifting and heroic damage.
Wrathguard Crests have a heavy party supporting focus, acting as auras which enhance certain aspects of the Wrathguard and nearby party members while weakening others.

Early Skill Possibilities (5-10):
May inflict heroic damage that also boosts a party member’s morale by 1 rank.
May buff your own morale while inflicting a morale debuff on an enemy behind you.
May inflict heroic damage on up to 5 enemies in front of the Wrathguard, who lose a rank of morale.

Combo Openers (11)
Heal-effect-increasing opener which deals heavy piercing damage to up to 5 enemies in front of the Wrathguard, but disarming on a miss.
Body-increasing opener which makes the Wrathguard resistant to magic and heightens their morale.
Attacker-damaging opener which inflict minor damage and inflict Haunt (lose morale and health on movement) on a single target.

Combo Closers (16)
Roaring-enhancing closer which grants combo-boosted morale and inflicts extreme crushing damage on a single target.
Increase-damage closer which performs a seven-step attack with increased damage for each step.
Morale-draining closer which transfers 3 ranks of morale from up to 3 enemies to 3 allies.

Late Skill Possibilities (24-34):
May teleport to target, granting valiant to both the Wrathguard and the target.
May inflict piercing damage on one melee target, draining it of one morale, and scaring up to 3 nearby enemies
May inflict moderate heroic damage to a melee target, wit minor heroic damage to up to 3 nearby enemies
May teleport a chosen enemy in front of you to deal heavy heroic damage while haunting 3 enemies nearby.
May deal moderate piercing damage up to 2 times to up to 3 targets.
May teleport 3 nearby group members to you and grant them Fury.

Ultimately:
A core leader, the Wrathguard not only possesses great physique and morale on their own, but they spread courage to allies while instilling dread in their enemies.  They are also quite formidable when confronting multiple targets, thinking little of slicing and dicing up to five at once.

Skinshifter

Theme: Animalistic Stealth
Focuses on Soul-type attacks, countered by Soul Affinity.
Maintains a the Rogue-inherited concentration focus in that it only has concentration-based attacks, but interestingly enough possesses skills to max all 3 states, or even copy existing states of a target.
The Skinshifter Crystal Maze bodyslots allow the Skinshifter to do one thing no other discipline can: walk among the NPCs in the world without being attacked.  A crafty player may even attempt to imitate the NPCs, if the right type is present.

Early Skill Possibilities (5-10):
May inflict moderate calculated damage and receive a minor heal.
May perform a backstab attack which also exposes the foe to melee attacks.
May teleport to a nearby (but not next to you) enemy, placing Doom on it, and build 1 concentration

Combo Openers (11)
Small-heal-providing opener which grants 3 ranks of concentration of the target dies within 8 seconds.
Attacker-concentration-reducing opener which grants 3 physique if the target dies within 8 seconds.
Focus-attribute-granting opener which grants 3 ranks of morale if the target dies within 8 seconds.

Combo Closers (16)
Increased-damage closer which is an extreme calculated damage backstab.
Increased-concentration-shifting closer which not only builds maneuver but silences the target.
Increased-paralysis closer which saps the physique when moving.

Late Skill Possibilities (24-34):
May grant a major heal to all nearby group members if a marked target dies within 8 seconds.
May copy the current stats ranks from the target.
May deal heavy calculated and piecing damage to a single target in melee range.
May inflict a piercing backstab that does even more damage if the target has higher resistance.
May mark a target at range and expose it to damage for all kinds of attacks.
May inflict a minor backstab that also taps the life of the foe.

Ultimately:
The Skinshifter’s capacity to lurk amongst a batch of NPCs only to mimic your stat states (assuming their own states were not only at maximum) coupled with their single target damage backstab-centric focus, makes them highly specialized assassins for sudden surprise attacks.

Death Hand

Theme: Poisonous Decay
Focuses on Spirit-type attacks, countered by Spirit Affinity.
Though they possess only Calculated attacks, Death Hands have several morale-boosting mechanisms.
Poisons bodyslot abilities are all about applying specialized negative effects to targets.

Early Skill Possibilities (5-10):
May land Corrupt (magic damage reduction) on 3 enemies in front of the Death Hand, healing the party for each.
May drain life from the target an inflict Nightmare (reduced resistances) and Scare (reduced morale) debuffs.
May poison a single target at range.  (Applies effect of currently selected poison in bodyslot.)

Combo Openers (11)
Ranged attacker-concentration-removing opener which decreases the resistances and decreases physique on moving targets.
Magic self-healing-providing opener which builds morale while taking 1 level from each enemy before the Death Hand.
Melee focus-increasing opener which backstabs for moderate damage and palayzes the target.

Combo Closers (16)
Damage-increasing ranged finisher which inflicts a debuff that reduces all focuses when damaged.
Healing-effect-increasing finisher which poisons up to two targets and, 10 seconds later, heals up to three party members in the spore cloud.
Corrupt-effect-enhancing finisher which steals one rank of morale from the target while reducing their magic damage dealt and reducing their affinities when they are damaged.

Late Skill Possibilities (24-34):
May perform a melee attack that wounds the target and applies the current bodyslot poison to the foe.
May perform a magic attack that scares a foe up to five times, with raising damage chain for each hit
may perform a magic attack that causes 3 enemies in front of the Death Hand to constantly lose affinity and health over 12 seconds.
May poison self in exchange for having each hitting enemy to receive an Acid and Poison effect.
May poison up to 5 nearby enemies, after 12 seconds one of the target inflicts Venom (DoT) on any nearby enemies.
May inflict decay and paralyze on one enemy.

Ultimately:
With their wide selection of poisons and debuffs coupled with avenues of delivery across the broad spectrum of melee, ranged, or magic, the Death Hand is the number one discipline for rendering enemies into quivering stateless, affinityless, resistanceless jellies.

Trickster

Theme: Circus Tricks
Focuses on Rune-type attacks, countered by Rune Affinity.
Maintains the concentrated and calculated attack focus from the Rogue class, but remarkably few discipline-specific calculated attacks.
The Trickster’s Gadget bodyslots run a wide gamut between area-based offensive or defensive effects.

Early Skill Possibilities (5-10):
May deal calculated melee damage to up to 2 enemies
May teleport to a target, blind it, and the target and up to 3 nearby enemies lose a rank of concentration.
May throw a gadget at a targeted location where it will activate to affect that area.

Combo Openers (11)
Focus-increasing opener that deals minor damage 2 times to up to 3 nearby enemies while becoming Evasive.
Self-healing-providing opener which throws a gadget at a target of location and deals minor damage 3 times to a random enemy at the target location, but causes the Trickster to lose one physique.
Attacker-concentration-sapping long range attack that dazes and exposes to range up to four enemies.

Combo Closers (16)
Evasive-enhancing closer which uses a gadget twice on the target area while granting 12 seconds of evasion.
Physique-For-Health-swapping closer.
Increased-damage closer which hamstrings a target at range.

Late Skill Possibilities (24-34):
May swap the values of your state ranks randomly.
May use a gadget on an enemy within melee range behind you.
May teleport to a nearby location up to 6 times, nearby enemies receive minor damage and lose 1 physique
May make yourself and a random nearby enemy immune to melee in exchange for being infused for melee damage when attacked.
May use gadget on up to 3 nearby enemies, building physique.
May make three nearby enemies Blind (unable to use ranged attacks) while teleporting to a nearby enemy.

Ultimately:
A gambler by trade, the Trickster may sacrifice their own physique in pulling off the incredible stunts needed to deliver their diverse gadgets to unsuspecting recipients.  However, even walking at a crawl, the Trickster’s array of teleports and ranged attacks assure they’ll always have a way to stay in the fight.

Conclusion

While Chronicles of Spellborn certainly starts out complicated, since it dissolved the transitional class roles and “sit there and take it” autoattack mechanic.

However, by the time you grok down the understanding that everybody has a focus on a specific tangent of state shifting (physique, concentration, or morale) and simply look at the few unique skills they get, you can pick up a pretty good understanding of just what a specific class/discipline combination is capable of.

The weekend has come and gone, and I’m getting back to work.   Both trying to find somebody willing to pay me now, while hedging my bets for the future.

Foraging The Desert

Finding a job this week involved calling in to the temp agencies and registering on the rather mediocre job search board that passes for civil service now.  There used to be government programs that actually exerted effort in placing people, but it seems those are gone.

I’ll keep an on eye on USAJOBs, but my experiences with online job boards is that callbacks simply don’t happen.   This is yet another database to watch along with Careerbuilder and Worksource whose primary purpose is to confirm all suspicions that, if I were so willing and able to damage the environment by driving 50 miles a day, my work prospects would be much better.

The trouble with me is perhaps that wizards are rarely content working under merchant princes.  That wizards have to eat too will draw them out of their ivory towers, but this is perpetually a problem they seek to solve, and the only means they have to do so is to bend their formidable powers to change the world.  Such as the wizards of Spellborn Interactive versus the world of MMORPGs.

Chronicles of Spellborn: Surprise Usurper Of The MMORPG World

I am a little distracted with Chronicles of Spellborn because, at least based on the early opinions of 124 MMORPG.com frequenters, this is very much the best MMORPG out there right now, beating out World of Warcraft by nearly half a star in a 10-point system.

That’s not to say Chronicles of Spellborn is prefect.  I’ve been over the reasons why in the last entry: the kill crediting, the travel time, the grind.  However, it really is a game that offers a level of depth largely unseen in MMORPGs.  Granted, saying a MMORPG has more depth than most is a bit like saying a puddle has more depth than most because it goes up to your knee instead of your ankle.  It’s deeper than usual, but a far cry from our Lake Baikel fantasies.

The bottom line is this: this is a very encouraging game for burned out MMORPG players everywhere.  Let the idiot casual players hate it and rave about something else as being their poison of choice, but Chronicles of Spellborn is the closest we’ve come to a breath of fresh air since EverQuest.

I’m engaged in my usual alt-a-holicism of trying to figure out what class, exactly, I will commit 50 levels worth of time towards (if I so decide to do that).  The comparison list on the Wikia is decent, but it doesn’t lay it out clearly enough, and I suspect the spoils of my self-debate will result in a class guide, sooner or later.

Magnum Opus Pre-Preliminary-Early-Development Continues

With BYOND, I’m dabbling with an entry-level self-developer platform, nothing too complex, but interesting in that it forms an easy bridge to test online game concepts.  In time, I should probably graduate to a nice C development suite, like Torque, or even Flash or Java.  However, this is great practice to work my way up to that, and it’s a whole lot cheaper.

Now that I’ve taken it seriously enough to have relatively mastered the tools involved, there’s been a significant amount of examination as to just what to do with those tools.  Monday was largely spent working on this, meditating extensively on my sketch pad, and (as before) my creative progress has been dramatic.

It seems it might be quite awhile until I actually solidify a design that I’m excited enough about to actually see it through.  This is not because of my tendency to follow distractions (though that certainly helps) but rather because I have very high standards of what I’m running through in my head before I will commit to create it.

So that, in a nutshell, is what I’ve been up to.  Check for job openings, drag myself down the tower steps to eat, retreat to my design sketch pad, sketch some more, and unwind when progress is slow.   I think it’s a fairly good schedule, but it remains problematic until my society deems it worthy of support.

I took much of Friday and Saturday off to give Chronicles of Spellborn a spin.  Though released November 27th in the United Kingdoms, in the United States this is quite a new game, released April 23rd, just a few days ago.

It might look like just another MMORPG, but after a thorough investigation of a dozen hours or so, I can firmly state that it’s a meaningfully different MMORPG.  What’s more, it’s actually reasonably good.  In a genre largely saturated with EverQuest clones, this is major.

False First Impressions

Before trying the game, a first blush reaction would be that this might be yet another low quality free2play game, probably developed for Eastern audiences.  This impression is backed up by a somewhat scant character creation system.

However, this impression would be mistaken.  Though Chronicles of Spellborn is hosted on Acclaim with another of Eastern imports, it’s actually developed by Dutch development house Spellborn Interactive.

Furthermore, this is not a Free2Play game.   Though they are offering 2 weeks of free access to players now, soon players will be restricted to only leveling up to level 7 unless they pay a standard $15/mo subscription fee.

It might seem a little unusual that you can pay in Acclaim Coins and that you have the option of earning these by answering marketing questions, but it’s not too unusual when you do the math and realize it’s still $15/mo worth of Acclaim Coins one way or another.

The European Influence

The flavor is similar to many European games I’ve seen in that the focus on high end graphics was second to one of having a bit of substance behind the style.  There are patches of overly pixelated textures here and there, a certain behemoth encountered at the end of the tutorial looks more like a puppet, and that’s okay because (again) it’s more about the substance.

That said, Chronicles of Spellborn doesn’t look bad at all – it uses a modified Unreal Engine to great effect – and the environment is quite unique in that it takes place in a post-apocolyptic fantasy world of floating islands against a backdrop of wild magic.  The very sky is suspended rock with mysterious light peering through holes in it, and this is one if many fairly breathtaking scenes.

My only real complaint about the appearance of the game is that their method of character equipment wearing is too compartmentalized, resulting in having to wear a number of strange incomplete armor and clothing pieces.  I suspect something like a flowing robe would be impossible for them to do.

The Cutting Edge Question: Is It Really Different?

For many cross-MMORPG nomads, the important thing to wonder about Chronicles of Spellborn is simply this: “Is it yet another clone of the games I’ve already become bored of in the past?” The answer is “No and yes.”

The developers behind Chronicles of Spellborn have rethought many aspects of MMORPG design and tweaked the core game mechanic accordingly.  Amongst some of the more prolific examples:

• Mana or Energy have been done away with entirely – attacks can be done with no restrictions to them, although the health bar remains.  There are now three new bars that grant bonuses or penalties depending on their current level: Physique, which affects movement speed, Morale, which affects damage output, and Concentration, which affects attack speed.  Buffing these while debuffing the enemys’ has a major affect on having an upper hand in a fight.
• Experience points have been replaced with Fame Points and Personal Experience Points (PeP).  Fame points are earned mostly from doing quests (though defeating monsters will earn a few) and these are primarily what drives leveling up.  Personal experience points are gained primarily from slaying monsters, and modify your maximum physique, morale, and concentration state.  Being killed when fighting monsters will cause you to lose a PeP level.
• The hotbar has been changed to automatically rotate so you can set up combinations of attacks that work well together.   You pick one new skill a level (up to 20, then a new skill every 2 levels) and the hotbar will periodically increase in length of combos (eventually up to 5 skills) or number of combos (eventually 6) for a total of 30.  Customizing your chains of attack has been compared to collectible card game deck customization, not unlike Guild Wars but with a significantly different implementation.
• Autoattack is gone, as are rolls to hit or miss, in place of a full-contact combat system requiring having your crosshair on an enemy for an attack to connect.  Whether it’s PvE or PvP, dodging or putting others between you and the enemy makes a big difference.
• Though there are familiar character classes in that Chronicles of Spellborn features Warriors, Rogues, and Spellcaster base classes which split into 3 disciplines each, they don’t play as you would expect.  There can be spellcasting warriors or durable front-line spellcasters.  A lot of this depends on how the player has chosen to customize their specific character’s skill choices.
• There does not seem to be any taunting abilities or direct healing abilities (at least that I’ve seen).  Instead, all skills are centric on players connecting with their opponents, and anything else that happens is secondary.   (e.g. In order to heal, I use Righteous Hunt, wich lands a Life Tap on enemies that heals anyone who hits that enemy with a melee attack.)  Aggro control is completely omitted, forcing players to stay wary of hard-hitting foes.
• Amount and number of NPCs does not seem to majorly impact their danger level because of how well one can exploit positioning and skills.  Played well, I’m able to take down a half dozen foes of same level because they’re not able to all reach me in melee and I’m continually healing or buffing myself.
• Equipment is largely cosmetic.  Anyone can use any weapon or any armor, but these weapons and armor don’t carry any statistics.  At most, you can slot some sigils (which grant certain buffs) on your main weapon and bow.  Most real power comes from good use of skill attack chains.

Overall, there’s so many differences to the way Chronicles of Spellborn plays that it really feels quite weird for established MMORPG players.  However, I would argue that it’s a good kind of weird in that it reflects that we’ve finally run into something relatively new and interesting.

But, as I said, it’s a “yes or no” scenario, and this is because Chronicles of Spellborn repeats some of the same old mistakes we were hoping to have evolved past by now:

• “Tagging” monsters by landing the first hit and then sitting back as other players finish them off will grant you full credit for the kill while the players who did the real work get nothing.  This not only opens the road for grief play, but also is fairly exploitable for power leveling’s sake.
• A great deal of the game is spent walking from place to place attempting to finish quests.  There are currently no mounts in the game, at best you can hope to garner a 30% speed boost from having accrued enough PeP levels, or have certain skills that grant you faster movement speed (not available to all disciplines).
• The travel delay is further exuberated by slow monster spawns.  Some of this is just the glut of newbie problems you can see in most MMORPGs, but to an extent this is just the way the game is set up.  This is particularly in the case of named monsters (needed for the highly lucrative wanted poster quests) where it can take 20 minutes for the monsters to respawn.
• The grind is quite protracted.  It took me, a fairly experienced MMORPG player, all day to go from level 5 to 10 and this is mostly sticking to the game’s most lucrative method of gaining levels – performing quests.  This is unfortunate because the players really need to build up a good skill and combo base early on to properly appreciate the combat system, but the speed of the grind is such that reaching the needed level 10-20 will alienate many players.

In the end, Chronicles of Spellborn emerges as one of the most innovative MMORPGs to be released in a long time, but not a perfect game.  Veteran players may be delighted by the highly interactive combat system but, without a significant outpouring of patience, it’s inevitable that they will be frustrated by the stolen kills and long travel times.

As for me, I’m not sure if I’ll bother to subscribe to the game or not when my two weeks are up.  Probably not simply on the grounds my time is better spent developing a game of my own.  Still, Chronicles of Spellborn is definately a good try, and an encouraging sign of change in a genre often stagnant with clones.