During the great drought phase of the MMORPG history, there were some small but exciting projects that sought to finance themselves through crowdfunding. One of these games has been stuck in development hell for more than eight years. Now there’s an update that is causing more shaking of heads.
Which MMORPG is it about? When the Kickstarter campaign for Chronicles of Elyria launched in May 2016, the world was still fine. The project about aging heroes and a realistic game world sounded so exciting that over 10,000 supporters raised more than 1.3 million US dollars. By October 2019, almost 8 million US dollars were reportedly raised.
As with many other MMORPG projects that were announced during the great drought between 2015 and 2020, there has yet to be a successful release to report.
On the contrary, Chronicles of Elyria went through such an absurd development hell that allegations of scams repeatedly arose, claiming to pull money out of the supporters’ pockets without providing an appropriate return. Here are just a few highlights:
- A certain part of the revenue came from the time-limited purchase of virtual land from the pre-alpha of Chronicles of Elyria. Cost: 65 to 3,500 US dollars.
- In the middle of development, the engine had to be changed because the initially used virtual-world platform SpatialOS was said to be too expensive and inflexible.
- Despite the enormous crowdfunding revenue, money was repeatedly lacking to drive development forward. It did not help that the planned release date for June 2016 kept being pushed back. Due to a lack of a publisher who had trust in the project, firings occurred in 2018.
- When the first real gameplay footage of Chronicles of Elyria was shown in September 2019, many supporters experienced disillusionment. It looked bad and unfinished, with no sign of years of development. The previously released trailers had painted an entirely different picture of the MMORPG.
- The first playable pre-alpha left a disastrous impression in 2020 and was nothing more than a tutorial obstacle course.
- Shortly thereafter, the team was dissolved, and development was temporarily halted.
- Later, the main responsible person of the project, Jeromy Walsh, explained that it was just a misunderstanding and that he was now working alone on Chronicles of Elyria.
- Walsh also stated that they would now work on a sort of spinoff called Kingdoms of Elyria for the supporters.
- The subsequent shitstorm caused the responsible parties to halt all communication with the community for the time being, closing official channels like the forums and Discord. Supporters threatened with a class-action lawsuit. A legal case ensued. To this day, not a single player has received a refund.
To this day, you cannot play Chronicles of Elyria – here is a video from the pre-alpha:
New Update, New Head-Shaking
What update has there been now? In the meantime, there have been occasional signs of life from Walsh, who this year attributed the problems and firings to the press. Very fresh is a public memo (via chroniclesofelyria.com) that recently went live.
In it, Jeromy Walsh claims that Chronicles of Elyria has made noticeable progress and that they have been in regular contact behind closed doors with early access and alpha-1 supporters. There is no evidence in the form of videos or screenshots. Similarly, there are no players publicly confirming communication with the developer.
The latter may be due to the strict non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that all testers are said to be bound by. According to the post, there are also updates for the website and forum, which will take the last bit of public communication behind a curtain, as registration will be required to read forum posts or new developer blogs.
How is the community reacting to the update? Many players are reacting with mockery to the latest post:
- Serain writes on Reddit: “This really hurts me.”
- Sqelm jokes about the website update (via Reddit): “I feel like this is representative of the entire path of CoE. You spend your time on everything but the actual development of the game.”
- Launch_Arcology writes on Reddit: “It sounds like he doesn’t want people to see his delusional and often not entirely honest previous statements about the development and especially his backtracking on the closure of Soulbound Studios.”
- MrTastyCake grabs popcorn on Reddit: “The show must go on.”
- Nitramite is having fun (via Reddit): “Hahaha, I knew there would be an update shortly before the holidays. Amazing, really good and funny stuff. I find it great that everything he does has a multi-stage process. I won’t check it, but I’m sure he only completes step 1 of his website and then makes a new list.”
Another MMORPG project that has been in development hell for ages is Camelot Unchained by industry veteran Mark Jacobs (Dark Age of Camelot). According to an update from March 2024, it is supposed to be released at the end of 2025: New MMORPG Camelot Unchained has a release date after 11 years – not everyone is pleased
