Chronicles of Spellborn is a very important lesson in the realm of MMOs: If you don’t have money to fund your project, your game is going nowhere. The game launched in April 2009 in the US, and almost immediately afterward developer Spellborn Works kicked the bucket, dissolving into the vast nothingness of space. Acclaim announced that the game would be going completely free to play, with a big relaunch in the works to be released at some point in the future.
Since then Spellborn has been running similar to many of my local state and county parks. Technically open, but nobody’s mowed the grass in a year, and no one ever stopped by to open the gates to actually allow people to get in. According to my reports, playing Spellborn is a matter of getting files off of another website, because the client Acclaim offers doesn’t work, and neither does their patcher. Since the breakdown of Spellborn last year with Acclaim and Frogster taking over for the game in their respective areas, prospects have gone from poor to worse, and in all respects Spellborn is sitting in a comatose condition waiting for the plug to be pulled.
Well Frogster is the first to throw the switch, and Chronicles of Spellborn Asia-Edition will be heading for the crematorium. So far there hasn’t been any news on what Acclaim plans to do with the title, although the standing claim still points towards a miraculous reincarnation of the game under a freemium model.
The problem with Chronicles of Spellborn, and I don’t blame them for this, is Acclaim is likely seeing a dearth of excitement for this title. It isn’t often a title goes to sleep for as long as Spellborn has so far, and wakes up to find a large number of players still waiting on it. Life goes on, and sadly it is leaving Spellborn behind.
I’ll be watching Chronicles of Spellborn as more news appears, but for the tiny handful of you who are still holding on to the hope of a relaunch and reinvention, I have a friend named Gary Whiting I need to introduce to you.
MMO Fallout 