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An Artist's Perspective

When it comes to MMORPGs, the art direction in the game often plays a pivotal role in a player's decision to jump into the world. While Blizzard's World of Warcraft was often described as light and cartoony, no one would make that description of The Chronicles of Spellborn. This dark fantasy MMOG has some exceptional visuals, but almost everything in the world has a dark twist to it. Developer Frank Bakker took a few minutes of his time to pen an art dev journal to talk about Shorath Mesa, a zone in the game. Check it out!

If you look closely at the screenshot you can see some huge waterfalls cascading from Shorath Mesa. This is the next thing we changed from the original design document. The reason for this change is that a huge cliff with nothing happening to it except it towering above you is pretty impressive but if you add waterfalls to it, it becomes even more impressive.

Since Shorath Mesa is located quite a bit higher than the slope leading up to the entrance we had to create a way to get even higher up all the way to Shorath Mesa itself. This was done using a canyon through which originally a river would flow.

• The Chronicles of Spellborn: Art Dev Journal #1
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