I tend to not go into background detail when it comes to mmorpg games to play.  But since The Chronicles of Spellborn is a new and fresh mmorpg game, I think it would show off how much potential this great game has.

Here is some background into the game: Ages ago there was an army of enslaved humans by Daevi slavers.  The enslaved humans and Daevi rebelled against their Vhelgar masters and destroyed the main energy source to them.  The magical serge that this destruction caused across the land, left it covered in a thick layer of ice and sent it into a time of utter darkness.  At least five centuries passed until the surviving humans and Daevi awoke to a world that was changed forever.  They struggle to rediscover the pieces of their scattered world.  The rock realms known as the Shards are what remain within the magical surged thick iced covered world.  The Shards are known to the Enclaves of the five sacrifices.  The Enclaves of the five sacrifices are an alliance consisting of five higher houses.  The political balance of these houses among each other is stable, but they all still try for complete power on a daily basis.

That is the background story of The Chronicles of Spellborn.  There are two races with in The Chronicles of Spellborn.  These two races are what you can choose from for game play.  The appearance of you character is what you choose as your race.

The human race is versatile and resilient.  They are hard workers and great thinkers.

This is how you would look before personalizing it as your own, if you choose the human race.
The second race is the Daevi.  They are a hybrid race that consists of part human bloodline and Vhelgar bloodline.  This mixture is what causes the difference in appearance.  Their legs and feet are different than the human race, in a sense that they walk on their toes and use their heal as a second knee.

This is how you would look if you choose the Daevi race, before customizing it. I myself picked the Daevi race for my character, because it is different and we are all humans in real life so why not be creative. But when choosing a race for you character it is all a preference of which you want to be.

You can then customize your character one you pick the race that you want to be.  You have the ability to customize: skill color, gender, appearance, muscles/no muscles, hair style, facial expressions, color to tattoos, and in game voice. Here are some screen shots to those steps:

Aside from this you can also choose to what weapons at the start your character has and even the type of armor.

There is a large variety of choices when customizing your character.  This is another reason why I have gotten into this game so much at the start, even being a new player.  Aside from picking your race you also get to pick your archetypes.  There are three archetypes to pick from.  But within each group there are stages of upgrades within that group.  Here are the three archetypes to pick from and their qualities:

Warrior:  is a master of arms and close combat, and skillful force of raw power.
Rogue: is a master of precision, deception, and speed.
Spellcaster: is a master of skilled knowledge, controlling time, space, and the elements.

Now lets get more into the game play of The Chronicles of Spellborn.  I am a new player to the game have been playing it for about five days now and can say that the gameplay is easy to understand and get the hang of.  The combat is set as Tcos system, which allows you to attack where you want to swing and you manually keep your target targeted.  So if you win a battle it is based on your choices, defense, and ability.  There is a skill book you can use when attacking.  The skill book is really similar to that of WoW.  Here is what the skill book for The Chronicles of Spellborn:

The skills that you learn during your game play is kept in your skillbook.  The skill deck is the area where you pick the skills you want to use from your skill book and then will be easily access during game play.  Here is an example of the skill deck:

Then once you pick the skills from your skill book that you want in your skill deck, you will be ready for combat.  When in combat you skill deck will look like a cylinder.  The cylinder will have five skills in each row of the cylinder and only one row will be visible at a time. This is what you will see during game play for combat:

If a skill has a   by it, it means that it is a skill that is a combo opener.  A combo opener is the step into producing skill combos.  If the skill has this   by it, it means that it is a skill build up.  Then a skill will have this   by it, meaning it is a skill combo finisher.  You need all three types of skills to start, produce, and finish a skill combo.  If is your decision how you combine these skills and what you put in between an opener skill and a closer skill, will determine if it will be beneficial to your character during battle or negative for the character you attack.

The Chronicles of Spellborn have a great screen to show your attributes and stats of your character, it looks something like this:

The attributes of your character is what shows their strength and weaknesses in three main categories: body, mind, and focus.  You body attributes helps to enhance body skills, mind attributes help to enhance mind skills, and focus attributes help to enhance focus skills.  The three attributes also help to enhance rune (body), spirit (mind), and soul (focus).  The type of Archetype and Discipline, will dictate which skills will be most useful to you.  Here is a little guide line to go by when deciding which you would want to be a part of when it comes to skills: the warrior skills are linked to body attributes, rogue skills are linked to focus attributes, and spellcast skills are linked to mind attributes.

Now onto stats of your character, this is what defines your physic, moral, concentration of your player.  Your stat bar would look like this:

Keeping an eye on this and making sure to do things to keep these stats up will be very beneficial to you.  This is what will help you to keep your character alive during game play.
You have the ability to craft.  Meaning you are able to repair broken or craft new items.  To repair a broken weapon you have to have all the resources to do so.  Here is an example: say you find a broken sword - you must find the resources needed to fix it.

One all the resources are there that you need, then you can fix the broken weapon and add it to your weaponry or sell it later if you want.

To craft new items is easy to do.  All you have to have is a recipe and have or find the resources to do so.  When you are adventuring in the world you come across a lot of recipes and resources.  Then shops play a big part in all this along with your whole game play.  There are five different types of shops. You have Forge shops where you can sell weapons and armor, a blacksmith to identify broken weapons and provide u a recipe to fix it; you can buy weapons and armor, sell clothing, buy clothing, dye clothing or armor.  Then there is Rune shops where you can: get tattoos, get bloodline warrior scars, and get trickster gadgets.  The third is Soul shop where you can get stuff that enriches your soul/mind skills or can be useful to you in those areas.  A fourth is Spirit shop where you can: buy wrathgaurd crests, buy ancestral mage spirit pets, buy deathhand poisons.  Then the last one is the Tavern where you can: buy consumables and buy consumables for recipes.

I have been a fan of WoW, but have always wanted to find a mmorpg game close to or similar to WoW that was free.  And after a few days of play I can say that I have come very close to it.  The Chronicles of Spellborn is an excellent mmorpg game.  Its game play, features, open customization of character, and a lot more makes it a must play.  And who doesn’t want to play a great game like this and be able to do it completely free.  Go to http://spellborn.acclaim.com and find out for yourself what a great mmorpg this really is.

By Jessica Woods for FreeMMORPGs.com