New interview!

Jamiros

The official website is linking to a new interview. Have to say that this sounds good and I really hope it's turning out nicely. ;-) They say they are still working stuff like Game Master etc. In the past I have been a bit surprised how they handled the relation to their customers but then, they might simply not have the manpower at this point to be 100% professional all the time. ;-) I guess that's what makes this company interesting. ;-)

Thank you for accepting our interview, could you tell our readers who you are and what your job is at Spellborn International?

Hello, thank you for allowing us to tell a bit more about The Chronicles of Spellborn. My name is Marco van Haren and I am the Marketing and PR manager for Spellborn. My job consists of informing the press, our community and our partners about the progress of the game's development and our plans for the game once it is released in the spring of 2007.

We?ve seen that players will be able to choose out of two races, the Humans and daevi. Will there be certain restrictions when you choose a certain race, for example the magic you can wield or the pledge of loyalty to a certain House?

At release the game will indeed offer two playable races. Together these two races form The Enclave of the Five Sacrifices and both races are seen by this Enclave as equals. Digging deeper into the lore there are some striking differences found between these races, but ever since the great cataclysm that resulted in the destruction of the known world, the two races became more alike. From a player perspective both races have no racial differences at all besides having a different body type. The difference in body type does have some effect on some of the armour sets and weapons since some armour pieces and weapons can only we worn by a Daevi or a Human in the beginning of the game. Later on players will find means by crafting to adjust these armour pieces and weapons to be used by both races.

It has been said that you will be able to ally yourself with one of the five High Houses. Will players be able to play with friends that have allied themselves with another House or will there be restrictions in the future?

At the release of the game players will be able to choose a favourite High House. These High Houses can be compared to political parties as we know them in our world. Players from different High Houses are allowed to play together and even create guilds together. In a future patch we will unleash a server-wide event that will result in a bigger separation between the High Houses. Friends can become enemies and also from a story perspective players will want to choose new alliances. Of course we will make sure that no guilds are forced to break up and such, and I think future players will be quite excited when we unveil more details of these events and the additional game play mechanisms that will become available.

Will the community have an impact on the world? For example, will certain changes happen in the environment when players do a certain quest or kill a certain monster or will the world only change with updates released on a specific time by the developers?

We always wanted players to be able to have impact on the world itself. At release players can earn great statues of their characters liking that will be erected on different locations in the great city of Quarterstone. These statues can be earned by winning arena tournaments, killing boss monsters and other achievements within the game. We are also experimenting with situations in which players can travel back in time and can alter things in the past that will be visible by all players in the future.

Is housing going to be included in the game from the start, or released afterwards? If housing is going to be implemented, will it be instanced and how will players be able to interact with it?

We always had big plans for player housing but it quickly became apparent that we are not able to incorporate all these features before release. A few of the features that were planned to be part of the player's house are now integrated into the game world: the auction system and the mail system. Somewhere after release we will most definitely introduce player housing with all the features that we had originally planned.

It has been said in the past that a crime and punishment system was in the works. Could you give us any more information about the status of this feature?

We are still looking at the exact impact of this feature and at the moment we have no finished design for it. While we still want to implement it, it will most definitely be something that will appear in the more distant future.

Will you be able to attack players of another House on sight or will there be certain safe zones where you cannot harm other players?

From a story perspective it currently doesn't make sense at all to have open PvP in all the zones of the world. The five High Houses currently serve as political parties and the real backstabbing only happens in places hidden from the eyes of the general public. At release PvP between the High Houses is only allowed in situations where diminishing the numbers of opposing High Houses might benefit the greater good of the players preferred High House and since money makes the world go round, you will most likely find some PvP action in the resource rich mines scattered through the game's world.

Of course players will have many options to enjoy PvP combat in the Quarterstone Arena where entire guilds can participate in PvP combat. Each guild will also be able to access a practice arena in cave system beneath their guild house. For the future players can expect to see large scale PvP additions which allow them to take control over entire Shards.

On what will the end-game focus of TCoS? Will it be more towards PVE with dungeons or raids against strong bosses, or will it be more PVP focused, with the focus on taking over shards for your House/Guild and gaining power?

We want our end game content to service all types of players. There will be many options for those that enjoy PvP and there will be different challenges for those that enjoy PvE. Players reaching the current highest level 50 will unlock tier 9 and 10 of the sigil system. These two tiers contain many different rare sigils that allow high level players to further upgrade their skills and weapons that will allow them to face the tough challenges planned to be released in the post release patches that are already in production. Of course players can also look forward to high level tournaments with ranking systems.

Will the Game Masters interact with the players in the world itself, which happened in mmorpgs like Ultima Online or EVE Online, or will you stay back into the shadows and not interfere with the in-game community?

We haven't finalised all our Game Master plans yet. But since our developers themselves have always been really close to our community, you can rest assured that we have some cool plans in store.

Which kind of transport methods will be available to the players if they want to move around not just between the shards, but also on the shard itself?

On of the design principles for Spellborn has always been that we want to keep the world dense and cut out any unnecessary space and travel time. Each shard is constructed in a way that will allow players to travel to all the locations without losing a lot of valuable playtime. At release the game will only offer Shardships that players can board to travel between the shards. In the future players can expect additional mounts for travel and we are already experimenting with flying mounts that will allow players to discover the many secrets hidden in the vast Deadspell Storm.

How many shards will players have access to at the start of the game? The famous quote of the game is ?what lies hidden?. Must be found.? Does that mean that there are already areas ready to be unlocked by the players at the start of the game?

The game will ship with four different shards; Parliament, Quarterstone, Mount-of-Heroes and Ringfell. The development team is already hard at work creating additional shards. While I don?t want to get ahead of things, I can mention that they are currently working on at least another four with names such as The Labyrinth, Carnyx, Hood's Belfry and Coldspur.

Many shards and location within these shards will need to be found and unlocked by players and some of these locations can only be found by unravelling secrets hidden in the mists of the past.

Since the lore is quite important in this game will players be able to decide which way a quest line might develop? Or will the only choice players have will be the reward at the end of a quest line?

Not all, but some quest lines offer a 'complex' set of conversation options. Based on the input given by a player, the quest line might indeed develop in a different direction. If a player accepts a quest to retrieve information there might be different means to achieve this goal. The player should sometimes be allowed to choose his preferred way of handling things.

A plague that has struck every mmorpg are the gold farmers. How does Spellborn International react on these money making companies and why?

Although it will probably be impossible to completely solve the problems of gold farmers, Spellborn does have two important features that might make gold farming less interesting.

Players can only be effective in combat if they are actually skilled. Each opponent uses a complex deck of skills and with the manual targeting that our combat system requires, players will need to be actively engaged in combat. Gold farmers are well known for their usage of combat macro's which won't work in Spellborn.

Furthermore Spellborn isn't focused on items the same way most other MMOs do. All weapons and armour come without statistics. This will allow players to wear armour and weapons that they actually like to wear. By adding statistic enhancing sigils, player's can further upgrade their character. These sigils are mostly quest rewards or can be made by crafting. This doesn't mean that items have no value in our economy, but it does mean that gold farmers will have far more work cut out for them to actually create items that are worth selling.

What is the stance of the development team about User Interface add-ons? Will players be able to customize their interface with self-written add-ons or is it strictly forbidden?

We always wanted to create a user interface that can be modified. At the moment we are still discussing if we will actively support this feature. It is of course our goal to ship the game with an user interface that will give the players all the feedback and information that the player needs.

With some mmorpgs, certain parts of the world always had to wait several days or even weeks before they had the latest update. Will this be the same with TCOS or will you try to update everything at the same time?

We are working very closed with our publishers worldwide to ensure that all continents can enjoy new patches at the same time. This is quite a difficult task taking into account all the localization needs for the many different languages.

As a follow up to the previous question, how will distribution happen? Will online downloads be available, or will you only be able to buy your game in the store?

While online downloads seems an easy solution for mass distribution, different laws and taxes for each region and different publishers for these regions make this hard to realise. At release Spellborn will probably only be available through shops with additional online download possibilities per region later on. We are working very hard to make sure that all gamers interested in playing The Chronicles of Spellborn will be able to buy a copy one way or the other.

I would like to thank you for answering our questions and I?ll be looking forward to the release of The Chronicles of Spellborn.

http://www.gamesplanet.be/index.php?main=gp_article&info=gp_article&articleId=730&chk=5PAw0000V

L0k1-

thank you for posting about our interview, by the way if you're dutch talking check out the tab "wedstrijd" we got something nice of TCOS there to give away

Man1ac

Great interview! I can't wait till this game come out.