The online role-playing game market has obviously garnered a good deal of attention in the past few years with the release of a number of high-profile games that have brought the genre to the public eye. One of the next wave of games slated to entice players into its unique world is The Chronicles of Spellborn, from European developer Spellborn. This original title aims to offer a unique experience that draws on tried-and-true gameplay elements that are integral to an online role-playing game while doing away with the tedious bits that tend to drive players off. We recently had the chance to get a look at a work-in-progress version of the game to see how it's shaping up.

The game's premise finds you eking out an existence on massive free-floating shards that reside within an expanse known as the Deadspell Storm. The large rocky masses that make up the remnants of a planet known as the Ancestor World contain a population of humans and supernatural creatures, who have become strange bedfellows in the wake of the supernatural apocalypse that resulted in the world shattering. Still, in the wake of the planet's destruction, order has slowly started to creep back. Settlements, which continue to search for other shards that make up pieces of the shattered world, have begun banding together. A new civilization known as the Enclave of the Five Sacrifices has formed from the remnants. You'll play as one of three classes, warrior, mage, or rogue, and set out to explore the remnants of the Ancestor World, eventually discovering more shards.