In their new video, Soulbound Studios takes us on a journey through the first in-game region of their upcoming sandbox MMO Chronicles of Elyria.
In our last news, we reported that the production of Chronicles of Elyria, after the successfully completed Kickstarter campaign, is picking up pace quickly and that players of the sandbox MMO will be able to play several prologues, including a single-player demo, before the release.
Soulbound’s latest video now shows for the first time the region “Titan Steppe,” which will not only be the location of the single-player demo but also part of the later game world. Next to the larger city “New Haven,” the small mining settlement “Silver Run” is also located in “Titan Steppe,” both of which can now be seen in detail for the first time.
The special thing about “Titan Steppe” is that it is crucial to the game’s backstory and will be the only region that will be identical on all servers. Because the rest of the game world will – like the quests of the game – be completely procedurally generated, so that each server will have different land masses, islands, regions, villages, and cities.
The technology responsible for this is also used in No Man’s Sky and Camelot Unchained and allows the creation of large yet authentically-looking areas that would otherwise have to be created by hand over several years.
This will be particularly necessary in the case of Chronicles of Elyria, as the starting continent alone will cover an area of 32,750 km2. For comparison: World of Warcraft had an area of about 207 km2 before Burning Crusade, and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes had about 500 km2.
However, this is somewhat put into perspective when you think that there are supposed to be only 2-3 servers worldwide, each of which should accommodate up to 100,000 players and NPCs, as well as countless monsters and creatures, which should fill the world with life thanks to SpatialOS, the new simulation tech from Improbable. A new trend in the MMO genre that Star Citizen is also following, as dynamic NPCs are supposed to bring life to the galaxy there as well.
Matthias says: You can tell from the video that it is in PreAlpha status, and the developers explicitly point out that this is “Work In Progress” and that this is also the reason why neither NPCs nor mobs are visible in the video.
Some of the animations are still placeholders, while others, such as the landing animation while jumping, are even missing entirely. Nevertheless, the video already makes a good impression at this early stage.
If you like Chronicles of Elyria and want to learn more about the game’s features, I recommend the following article: What is Chronicles of Elyria? The MMORPG with the aging process has made it!
