I haven't heard of this game before but the screenshots make it look nice (reminds me of Guild Wars) and the combat and story sound interesting. Hopefully there will be more info on it before it comes out.
Also, in a couple of those screenshots there is a monster that looks like a zergling (or whatever the fuck they're called, from Starcraft).
While it is only my experience, and thus fairly insignificant in the grand scheme, I know 30 people who quit other MMOs for warhammer simply because there are stable, easily accessible servers here. I know another 10 who have picked up an MMO for the first time.
I know we might seem an annoyance to americans "just play on our servers", you really dont understand the pain of the 600ms ping times when trying to do anything.
Anyway, this game looks interesting, and if it had an aussie server located in australia where I could get an ok ping, Id def check it out.
While it is only my experience, and thus fairly insignificant in the grand scheme, I know 30 people who quit other MMOs for warhammer simply because there are stable, easily accessible servers here. I know another 10 who have picked up an MMO for the first time.
I know we might seem an annoyance to americans "just play on our servers", you really dont understand the pain of the 600ms ping times when trying to do anything.
Anyway, this game looks interesting, and if it had an aussie server located in australia where I could get an ok ping, Id def check it out.
LOL yeah I can speak english, can't speak anything else. :P
I know, Australia is just not interesting to publishers. I guess it has everything to do with you hacks being way out there and the political climate seems to be rather anti-fun.
Still, I wouldn't mourn about not being able to play this game.
Yeah, no kidding. I've been keeping an eye out and even I didn't realize it was coming out until Aldo mentioned it; it's like they don't want people buying their game.
I just heard about this game a couple of days ago from a friend of mine. And again, the entire "I never knew this game existed" thing... (even though apparently it tops or near tops lists of most wanted games on some mmorpg list sites, but who the hell ever looks at those?)
Looks beautiful, GWish, it looks like it plays fairly smoothly, I like the idea of customization and then stat modification without character appearance changing (much). I REALLY like the way they've done skills. After playing WoW for two years (Clean for a year now, woo!) then going to GW, I really, really, REALLY appreciate the entire "pick your skills. Just a few. Then deal with it" style of skill selection. Much more strategery.
Other than that, yeah it has a release date, and I'm going to be staring at it, I'm sure....
I have no idea if the NDA has been dropped yet and the website doesn't tell you when the game is going to be released. I'm willing to bet a fiver that they are going to postpone release again.
Apparently, the NDA has been lifted -- Aldo, please regale us with your tales!
Personally, I've been keeping an eye on this as I like the Skilldeck concept and the art & sound direction points towards it being quite immersive BUT from what I gather, it looks like UK players will have to use the NA servers and not the EU ones, which is... interesting.
"Also, from today, NDA is officially dropped." Indeed.
Time to convey what I have already told some of you through PM.
This game is beautiful, it absolutely is. I've never played an MMO before with so much detail in the artwork. Combat is interesting, it kind of plays like a shooter without guns, long reloading time and stiff graphics.
This is where the fun stops. Quests, progression, community aspects and crafting/economy is all useless shit. Quests are more than 50% FedEx, progression only means you get some extra skills, it takes eons to get to a level where you can even start tweaking your gear. In fact, due to constant restarts and everyone starting at lev1 all the time I haven't even gotten anything that would improve my character beyond his level. I assure you I have played the game for at least 20 hours. Community will be weird, for some quests you need some help, because you're facing a lot of mobs at once, but there is no incentive to remain in a party much longer than needed for that one quest and guilds only offer a chat room and no other functionality. The game has some sort of crafting in that you can make fashion items when you dump your complete fortune in it. It is utterly useless. There is no auction house too. Most damning thing: there is no end game at all. No one in beta even managed to get to the highest level. The only fun thing they noticed is the arena where you can have pvp fights.
The beta has been an absolute disaster on a magnitude that is hard to describe. I think I can try by describing my beta adventures.
I got in beta after I pointed out a very stupid article in a national newspaper about Spellborn, the whole article was full of factual mistakes, they used a screenshot of Spellborn with the subtext "a picture of World of Warcraft" and it was just horrible.
The PC I had at the time (what I can remember GeForce4200Ti and everything else from that era) couldn't run it, so I was mostly lurking the beta forums. At that time there must have been roughly 100 testers of whom maybe 20 or 30 were active on the forums.
About a year ago - after the game had been postponed numerous times - I got a new PC and downloaded the game again. At that time the game was no where near finished, even the starting zone was nearly completely empty and the first serious mobs you fought were so strong that people had to fight in groups of 2 or more to even stand a chance. The community manager agreed with the complaints but it took about 3 months to tweak this mob, because they refused to roll out "small patches".
During that time there were large periods we hadn't heard a single thing from the company and many people had uninstalled the game because their character was stuck, they were told to wait for the next patch or they were out of content because there was no way to get off the second rock. After a lot of screaming and yelling we got another patch that fixed some problems but added a few dozen more. Since my previous character had been whiped I had to start over again, so I couldn't even see the changes they made to the second zone.
The last time I played was around 21/10/2008, it was around that time that the community manager had acted like such a wanker that I had given up all hope for this game.
I made a thread explaining thoroughly to them why their game would not have anyone playing it for more than a few hours and what they could do to stop this from happening, to summarize:
* The starting area is one big grind consisting of dozens of FedEx quests and a few combat quests tossed in for good measure. You will be delivering dinner invitations half the time in this game.
* The hype had been created years in advance, they had Within Temptation sing a song about the game and they had invited a few magazines over for a hands-on. Now that the game is almost coming out they have stopped with any and all marketing attempts.
The community manager replied to my topic, first he changed my title because I had the quote "fun, fuckers, FUN" in it and he changed it to "fun...FUN" which was just ironic but shows how serious they take their beta testers...
He did not reply to my feedback on this shitty quests, but instead went for the marketing abortion, it can be summarized as "There are plenty of games out there that did not have a huge pre-release hype and still, they are profitable games". I told him they were lying to themselves, no game has ever gotten popular without some sort of effort to get the news out that there is this fun game people can play.
His reply: "As always, you are more than welcome to apply for our marketing job openings, since we are still looking for the people with good marketing credentials."
I just refused to reply past this point. This much passive-agressiveness from a fucking community manager I could not stand. The alternative is that they are really desperate for employees and are willing to take anyone. I'm not sure what should be more worrying.
Anyway, if anyone will be able to have fun in this game I will be highly surprised. I guess this is the correct time to show screenshots.
This game never really kindled my interest, it always looked super generic to me. Now after this bad post here and those terrible looking screen shots....i want the game even less.
It's sad, this is the first game these guys made and it's the first MMO from the Netherlands. Their failure will not do well for any other aspiring MMO designers in the region.
It's a pretty harsh business... and it's a shame that they seem to have some great ideas which won't achieve their full potential by much of the game/marketing letting them down.
I half expect Darkfall to drop the ball in exactly the same way.
It's a pretty harsh business... and it's a shame that they seem to have some great ideas which won't achieve their full potential by much of the game/marketing letting them down.
I half expect Darkfall to drop the ball in exactly the same way.
Other Dutch games that came out in recent years were Killzone and De Blob, I was kind of hoping that with Spellborn more investors would be willing to tap into Dutch talent. It might still happen, but I'm not gonna hold my breath for it.
That's too bad. I never did get into the beta aldo, but I agree with their marketing push which started years ago got me interested but the abysmally long development cycle has killed my interest in the game.
Well I was originally kinda interested because the game looks beautiful, if a bit dated, and the tiny bit of storyline I had read seemed interesting enough but after your pretty awful description of it I think I'll stay away and wait for something else.
but apparently only for Germany/Austria/Switzerland
Then they release it to the rest of western europe on the 5th of december
I don't know about America or the UK though
In essence, this seems like a horrible way to launch an MMO
If I can make a guess...the marketing department of Spellborn BV has either been dissolved two years ago or they are completely and utterly retarded.
Dec. 5 is a good date for The Netherlands and Belgium (and a very small part of France) because Saint Nicholas Day is huge here and we give gifts to each other then. Why they didn't move the complete release to the fifth is beyond me, there's no big holiday in the German speaking countries today.
but apparently only for Germany/Austria/Switzerland
Then they release it to the rest of western europe on the 5th of december
I don't know about America or the UK though
In essence, this seems like a horrible way to launch an MMO
Actually, North America, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and South America are handled by one publishee, Acclaim. Some europe-regions, Benelux and scandinavia-regions belong to another publisher Frogster. Since its different publishers IP-restrictions will be in effect...yah.
I have been trying to sign up for the Acclaim TCOS beta but I cant ever seem to get their website up. http://www.acclaim.com/ I always get a connection interrupted page load error.
Also, the first 7 or so levels are free to play, so you can download the client and try the game out for free, which is great. I did so, and the game is pretty decent. The introduction is lacking, and the questing system daunting (but fun), but it's worth trying out since it's free. Then I got together with two random people and went and quested and it was pretty fun. The game remind me of Fable, really.
It would be nice if any of you Penny-Arcadians would want to join my Warrior for the trial, so I have people to quest with.
The PvP server available is "international" so I'm pretty sure you Americans can join it just fine.
There was a time when I was really looking forward to this game...that was about 2 years ago. I'm tempted to try it, but after reading the beta testers comments, it sounds like it isn't even worth playing for free.
God, their site is retarded. It's convinced my IP is a US one, and all attempts to register an account redirect to the US site (Acclaim's BETA HO! site). I hate sites and software that tries to be fucking smart...
[edit] And Kay gets the exact same thing in the UK. Just what country do you have to be from to play the damn trial?
[edit2] Can someone who can make a throw-away account and PM me the details? After downloading 3 gigs I'd like to at least try it.
Posts
Also, in a couple of those screenshots there is a monster that looks like a zergling (or whatever the fuck they're called, from Starcraft).
Since they don't have aussie servers, Ill think Ill be sticking with WAR.
Dude, I didn't know Aussie land was a full month ahead of the US.
While it is only my experience, and thus fairly insignificant in the grand scheme, I know 30 people who quit other MMOs for warhammer simply because there are stable, easily accessible servers here. I know another 10 who have picked up an MMO for the first time.
I know we might seem an annoyance to americans "just play on our servers", you really dont understand the pain of the 600ms ping times when trying to do anything.
Anyway, this game looks interesting, and if it had an aussie server located in australia where I could get an ok ping, Id def check it out.
Still, I wouldn't mourn about not being able to play this game.
I finally got to experience low pings with warhammer, and my god PVP is easy!
I honestly thought "your target is out of range" and rogues seeming to teleport was part of the gameplay in wow :P
Also lol 22nd of November and I've never heard of it until now? I will just assume that 5 people will be playing this game
Looks beautiful, GWish, it looks like it plays fairly smoothly, I like the idea of customization and then stat modification without character appearance changing (much). I REALLY like the way they've done skills. After playing WoW for two years (Clean for a year now, woo!) then going to GW, I really, really, REALLY appreciate the entire "pick your skills. Just a few. Then deal with it" style of skill selection. Much more strategery.
Other than that, yeah it has a release date, and I'm going to be staring at it, I'm sure....
I just stumbled upon this game yesterday and I got a little interested
Zero hype has left me in the dark about this game and I have no idea if it's worth monies or not though...
Personally, I've been keeping an eye on this as I like the Skilldeck concept and the art & sound direction points towards it being quite immersive BUT from what I gather, it looks like UK players will have to use the NA servers and not the EU ones, which is... interesting.
Time to convey what I have already told some of you through PM.
This game is beautiful, it absolutely is. I've never played an MMO before with so much detail in the artwork. Combat is interesting, it kind of plays like a shooter without guns, long reloading time and stiff graphics.
This is where the fun stops. Quests, progression, community aspects and crafting/economy is all useless shit. Quests are more than 50% FedEx, progression only means you get some extra skills, it takes eons to get to a level where you can even start tweaking your gear. In fact, due to constant restarts and everyone starting at lev1 all the time I haven't even gotten anything that would improve my character beyond his level. I assure you I have played the game for at least 20 hours. Community will be weird, for some quests you need some help, because you're facing a lot of mobs at once, but there is no incentive to remain in a party much longer than needed for that one quest and guilds only offer a chat room and no other functionality. The game has some sort of crafting in that you can make fashion items when you dump your complete fortune in it. It is utterly useless. There is no auction house too. Most damning thing: there is no end game at all. No one in beta even managed to get to the highest level. The only fun thing they noticed is the arena where you can have pvp fights.
The beta has been an absolute disaster on a magnitude that is hard to describe. I think I can try by describing my beta adventures.
I got in beta after I pointed out a very stupid article in a national newspaper about Spellborn, the whole article was full of factual mistakes, they used a screenshot of Spellborn with the subtext "a picture of World of Warcraft" and it was just horrible.
The PC I had at the time (what I can remember GeForce4200Ti and everything else from that era) couldn't run it, so I was mostly lurking the beta forums. At that time there must have been roughly 100 testers of whom maybe 20 or 30 were active on the forums.
About a year ago - after the game had been postponed numerous times - I got a new PC and downloaded the game again. At that time the game was no where near finished, even the starting zone was nearly completely empty and the first serious mobs you fought were so strong that people had to fight in groups of 2 or more to even stand a chance. The community manager agreed with the complaints but it took about 3 months to tweak this mob, because they refused to roll out "small patches".
During that time there were large periods we hadn't heard a single thing from the company and many people had uninstalled the game because their character was stuck, they were told to wait for the next patch or they were out of content because there was no way to get off the second rock. After a lot of screaming and yelling we got another patch that fixed some problems but added a few dozen more. Since my previous character had been whiped I had to start over again, so I couldn't even see the changes they made to the second zone.
The last time I played was around 21/10/2008, it was around that time that the community manager had acted like such a wanker that I had given up all hope for this game.
I made a thread explaining thoroughly to them why their game would not have anyone playing it for more than a few hours and what they could do to stop this from happening, to summarize:
* The starting area is one big grind consisting of dozens of FedEx quests and a few combat quests tossed in for good measure. You will be delivering dinner invitations half the time in this game.
* The hype had been created years in advance, they had Within Temptation sing a song about the game and they had invited a few magazines over for a hands-on. Now that the game is almost coming out they have stopped with any and all marketing attempts.
The community manager replied to my topic, first he changed my title because I had the quote "fun, fuckers, FUN" in it and he changed it to "fun...FUN" which was just ironic but shows how serious they take their beta testers...
He did not reply to my feedback on this shitty quests, but instead went for the marketing abortion, it can be summarized as "There are plenty of games out there that did not have a huge pre-release hype and still, they are profitable games". I told him they were lying to themselves, no game has ever gotten popular without some sort of effort to get the news out that there is this fun game people can play.
His reply: "As always, you are more than welcome to apply for our marketing job openings, since we are still looking for the people with good marketing credentials."
I just refused to reply past this point. This much passive-agressiveness from a fucking community manager I could not stand. The alternative is that they are really desperate for employees and are willing to take anyone.
Anyway, if anyone will be able to have fun in this game I will be highly surprised. I guess this is the correct time to show screenshots.
View the rest on my flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/helloiamaldo/tags/spellborn/
In a way, I'm glad I'm able to stop keeping an eye on this and stick it on the 'check again in a year's time' pile. Good luck to 'em...
I half expect Darkfall to drop the ball in exactly the same way.
but apparently only for Germany/Austria/Switzerland
Then they release it to the rest of western europe on the 5th of december
I don't know about America or the UK though
In essence, this seems like a horrible way to launch an MMO
Dec. 5 is a good date for The Netherlands and Belgium (and a very small part of France) because Saint Nicholas Day is huge here and we give gifts to each other then. Why they didn't move the complete release to the fifth is beyond me, there's no big holiday in the German speaking countries today.
Steam ID:
Also, the first 7 or so levels are free to play, so you can download the client and try the game out for free, which is great. I did so, and the game is pretty decent. The introduction is lacking, and the questing system daunting (but fun), but it's worth trying out since it's free. Then I got together with two random people and went and quested and it was pretty fun. The game remind me of Fable, really.
It would be nice if any of you Penny-Arcadians would want to join my Warrior for the trial, so I have people to quest with.
The PvP server available is "international" so I'm pretty sure you Americans can join it just fine.
Okay, redirecting you to this site that has no download links, sike!"
I see no reason why Americans wouldn't be able to get it either. If for nothing else, it's worth checking out to test the combat system
Albie the racist dragon supports this post.
[edit] And Kay gets the exact same thing in the UK. Just what country do you have to be from to play the damn trial?
[edit2] Can someone who can make a throw-away account and PM me the details? After downloading 3 gigs I'd like to at least try it.