The Chronicles of Spellborn: Not free to play, proclaims Acclaim
by Tateru Nino 
Sep 29th 2008 at 6:00PM
Filed under: Fantasy, MMO industry, New titles, Chronicles of Spellborn
In fact, the PR Manager for The Chronicles of Spellborn is quite insistent on the that point. 'TCoS is NOT a Free2Play game,' says PR manager, Mirage. And then again, only in ALL CAPS. Mirage is correct, of course. The Chronicles of Spellborn basically has a starting zone that you can play in for free. Think of it as a free trial, if you like. If you want to play the rest of this MMOG, you'll need to upgrade your free account for the regular subscription kind.
'Second, there are NO item malls, there is NO item selling,' adds Mirage. By the time we got halfway through we had to fan the air a little, as the stench of those nasty free-to-play models had pervaded the corners of the room. We hear that a box of sodium bicarbonate left open behind the sofa will eliminate those nasty odors.
On the plus side, the use of a zone like this to give non-time-limited demo content for an MMOG is a pretty good idea. It's amazing how fast a seven, ten or fourteen day trial can go by when you're busy writing for a popular MMO web-site. You turn around and suddenly it's gone.
On the perplexing side is the obvious... vehemence. The horror at being thought of as having a free-to-play model is evident. While the ever-expanding catalog of free-to-play MMOGs include a number of B-grade titles, we don't think that the model represents such a stigma.
Perhaps it was all to clarify the pricing model. Vociferously.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Tony said on 6:46PM 9-29-2008
They might want to update their site in that case... it kind of implies otherwise.
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Tony said on 6:48PM 9-29-2008
Actually, the Acclaim site says otherwise... but the source of the actual update doesn't mention Acclaim at all that I can see.
Confused.
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Tateru Nino said on 9:50PM 9-29-2008
It certainly isn't clear who is speaking, exactly. We are inclined to think that the PR manager represents Acclaim -- although they *could* be a part of Spellborn International too. It's quite hard to tell.
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Tony said on 10:36PM 9-29-2008
Yeah, I couldn't pick up on it (obviously lol). I noticed that the Acclaim hosted version of the site does not have any news or a working link to the beta, though.
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Henry said on 11:27PM 9-29-2008
And with that, Acclaim lost any interest they would have garnered from fans.
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ScytheNoire said on 11:31PM 9-29-2008
Acclaim doesn't give away anything for free. It goes against the corporate model of hating your customers.
Free games and free to play one's, or one's you give away for free and then charge for other things... ya, those are horrible business models that are the future of PC gaming and will make PC gaming even more popular. How dare any one suggest they do something smart and good for business and the industry.
Ah, poor Mythos, would have taught so many.
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Weiser_Cain said on 1:26AM 9-30-2008
More from angry PR man
Furthermore you're all fat, and I mean sloppy fat!
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mutantmagnet said on 9:57AM 9-30-2008
Free 2 play does carry a stigma. Before the CM had to make this announcement I've seen people on four different messageboards (one of them SB's beta questioning the devs in teaming up with Acclaim)
Some of them were even nasty about it saying they won't play the game now because it would be another Free2play trash game. So the fustration on the CM's part is understandable especially since this particular CM was already notorious for this type of behavior before she was hired by the Devs to represent them.
Bottom line is that Acclaim is partnering with Spellborn because they don't want to follow the same business models of past games with item mails and all that other crap people look down on. THey see SB as a subscription based game to work with.
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Krushchev said on 10:48AM 9-30-2008
The game Dofus has been using that way to demo their game for quite some time now.
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Jenna said on 12:23PM 10-07-2008
Saga of Ryzom used a free-trial area for a while as well, unlimited time, no level cap (you were limited in how much xp you could get based on the fact that the lower level creatures in the area only get you so far)... and they opened that up in June/July 2006.
Using a free-to-play region, with unlimited time is NOT a new concept.
Making a whole game F2P makes a lot of gamers cringe because the pay model filters out a lot of jacktards.
june32nd said on 12:31PM 10-28-2008
f2p carry that stigma because most of the f2p games use item malls are korean based games that are straight grindfests with pretty graphics. The stigma will stay unless businesses like Blizzard and Mythic start using the same type of model. However, it's not as steady and reliable as a subscription based MMO. Item mall f2p might not make a whole lot of money at the start so they can't improve as fast. Also, Since it also has a "korean" bias the game play is always lacking towards the middle of content possible from not enough founds. The game stays in the state for so long because it doesn't have the steady 15 dollars from their consumers. Some fail over and over like Ryzom. I hear it's a great game and the people who play it love it, but it keeps going bankrupt. Conquer Online just got it's first major content updrage with a new class some months ago. And i was playing that game when i was around 12 or so, I'm turning twenty soon. WoW would of had three or so. It's a hard road and a hard choice.
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