Almost 9 years ago, an ambitious MMORPG project named Chronicles of Elyria managed to attract more than 10,000 supporters and 1.3 million dollars. By October 2019, it even raised almost 8 million dollars. However, a release is still not in sight. On the contrary!
What is the current situation? The ambitious MMORPG from Soulbound Studios has undergone an unprecedented development hell in recent years, leading to repeated accusations of a scam meant to extract money from the supporters without providing any corresponding return.
The main person responsible for the project, Jeromy Walsh, is looking for blame elsewhere, as well as for new investors and supporters. Moreover, he stated in December 2024 that they had made noticeable progress and were in active contact with early access and Alpha 1 supporters behind closed doors.
However, due to a strict non-disclosure agreement, no one is allowed to discuss this. Furthermore, they plan to carry out an important update for the website and the forum in the coming weeks. After that, registration will be mandatory to read forum posts or developer blogs – that is the plan.
The Alpha gameplay of CoE is a few years old:
Delay upon delay
What is happening now with the website? The update was originally supposed to be completed by December 19, 2024. There have been multiple delays (first to December 24, then December 31, then January 7, 2025, and finally January 23, 2025). Spoiler: None of these dates were ultimately met.
Anyone currently visiting chroniclesofelyria.com/blog receives a message that this blog section is still not accessible and that details about the return are supposed to be shared on the official Discord channel. The last update, according to massivelyop.com, was shared on December 12, 2024, and all chat channels except for one are reported to have been locked for further discussions.
What was in the blog section? Through the numerous blog posts from the developers, one could track quite well what promises and claims had been made over the past years and how little of that has actually been implemented to date.
How does the community react? Various players and supporters are watching Jeromy Walsh and his actions closely and are, of course, discussing each of the aforementioned deadline delays, for example here on Reddit.
- WonderboyUK writes on Reddit: “There were no updates in Discord either, he has just been gone for months and has not met his own deadlines, pretty typical, hahaha.”
- Totallynotaswede doesn’t understand it (via Reddit): “It’s so ridiculous, why doesn’t he just say ‘coming back soon’. Why does he keep setting a date? It must be a joke, right?”
- WhaneTheWhip is visibly angry (via Reddit):
The holidays are a busy time for him, during which he and his wife are busy spending the money he stole from people.
In a second post on Reddit, WonderboyUK explains that he worked as a moderator for Chronicles of Elyria a few years ago and therefore occasionally was able to talk to Jeromy Walsh and other employees. His impression:
I truly believe that this man had no malicious intentions at all. He was so passionate about the game, he invested so many hours and made so many personal sacrifices (like other employees) to try to achieve something with the game. It was simply unfortunate that he tried to achieve so much with a budget that was not sustainable. I fully agree that it will probably never see the light of day, but he definitely started with the best of intentions.
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 set to be released by the end of 2025. However, there have been recent reports of extensive layoffs: After layoffs, supporters want to sue the studio behind Camelot Unchained, DAoC veteran remains silent
