Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Matthew added that the Spellborn has been in concept since 1995, when a group of pencil and paper gamers had a vision of creating an online game that would be completely different five years after release. Some of that vision is realized, according to Matthew, by the fact that by completing a quest in the first five levels, players can dramatically impact how an NPC will treat them later in the game.

Another unique aspect of Spellborn is the AI, which is less about aggro than the game trying to decide how best to beat you or your group. "You'll be tanking the the mob, and it might think it's more interesting to attack your healer," El noted. Matthew added that one of the most rewarding aspects of a game is to get beat by a group, then go back, figure out the "puzzle" there. He added that watching a level 15 get beat by a level 6 that knows his skills is "pure joy."

The panel fielded a number of questions about how the game transitions from free-to-play to premium access. David Perry called the concept "freemium", saying that to allow players see so much of the game for free, "you have to be brave, you have to believe in your game." El described the free-to-play side of the game as limited to three areas but completely unlimited within those three areas. Players can level as much as they want, do quests, join guilds, whatever premium players could do within those areas. One fan asked if the free-to-play option was due to pressure from Acclaim (being that Spellborn is the first in the Acclaim stable to have a subscription-only side of the game). El's response: "No, we were exploring these options... we were definitely looking into the Asian market and the Asian market is much more into F2P."

Beta players, who have access to the entire game, shouldn't expect a character wipe. Acclaim community manager Historian noted that Acclaim has never done a server wipe after beta and the chances with Spellborn are "very slim."

More High House Armor.

The panel answered a number of audience questions, including the following:

• Live events - the German server has already had several, including PvP tournaments and "dress to impress" events, complete with prizes. No plans have been made for events on the American servers, but its entirely possible.
• Class balancing - El noted that the Spellborn team is keeping a close eye on this, but that there are currently "no big menacing issues." So far slight imbalances have been due to bugs, not more structural problems with the classes, and there are fixes in ever patch.
• Will Acclaim servers always trail the European servers in patches, updates, etc.? David Perry noted that Spellborn has an incredibly aggressive update schedule, so the Acclaim servers will lag slightly behind. He added that "there's no way we'll fall a year behind, though."
• Spellborn DB, guides, etc. - The dev team is not discouraging these efforts, and are in fact glad for them.
• Improving guild tools - this is very important to the dev team for obvious reasons, look for improvements not in the next patch, but soon.

More answers to questions asked during the chat can be found at the spellborn.acclaim.com early this week. Stay tuned to Chronicles of Spellborn at Ten Ton Hammer and the official site for details on the next dev chat will be all about how to build your skill deck.