Interview: Matthew has made mention in one of his posts in regards to character builds (http://www.khaeon.nl/sbforum/viewtopic.php?t=31): "If the game however ends up favoring just a perfect few combinations, not only does it slam you in the face (your personalization is no good) it then forces you to take that one path everyone is taking". How will Spellborn, being a game based on skills, keep people from creating the "perfect, do everything" character and promote grouping and relying on others?
Barry Hoffman: At first we believe that every person must have the possibility to create a cool avatar. By combining body parts, clothes, armor, body decorations and weapons everyone can look cool as a character from level 1 to ?? . 

Next to this we will have a skill system that is action based and not weapon based.

These design principles already create diversity in player characters as weapons and armor are independent of skills. A real hero does not worry about clothes, armor or weapons, except when caring about appearance.

Of course we do have our classes and in between classes there will be skills that appeal to a larger group of players. We are testing on balance between our different classes, subclasses and skill levels and of course in beta we will balance this even more with the future players.

Interview: It?s been stated many times that the "power" of a character will be dictated by the characters skill and not by the sword they wield. However small, the weapons must make some difference in combat. Could you explain the fallout of weapon rankings when comparing crafted weapons, rare weapon drops, common weapon drops and NPC merchant inventory? (i.e. a crafted weapon will be better than a common drop but not as powerful as a rare drop, etc)

Barry Hoffman: Skills define how well you can wield a weapons. These skills are action based and not object, or weapon based. This means that you can kill just as easily with a knife as with a battlehammer as long as your PC has the skill to do so.

Interview: Last month it was mentioned on The Chronicles of Spellborn Gold forum?s that you will be handling the death penalty "from a different angle". Could you elaborate more on this?

Barry Hoffman: We do not feel the need to hand out a penalty when your character dies. We??d rather give a bonus to a playercharacter for not dying for an extensive amount of time while playing the game. Of course a player standing around idle will not be granted such a bonus.

Interview: All of the screenshots to date seem to have the Player UI omitted. What are the current plans with the UI in relation to how it looks? I.E, will each user be able to customize the UI to just show the aspects they want, etc?

Barry Hoffman: The UI is under development and is being tested as we speak. We will keep you up to date on the progress.