Chronicles of Elyria – A sober year
This is what people thought at the beginning of 2018: Chronicles of Elyria had big plans for 2018 with the launch of its first alphas and an optimistic roadmap.
People thought Chronicles of Elyria would become more tangible over the course of 2018 and that high ambitions would be followed by actions.
Actually, the team should have convinced players in 2018: “Here, an MMORPG is being created that one must keep an eye on and that one wants to support financially.”
This is how 2018 actually went: The year was sobering for the team. It began with an search for a publisher and additional funding, but none was found. As a result, employees had to be laid off.
The team of Chronicles of Elyria also parted ways early with the wonder technology Spatial OS.
The highlight of 2018 remained a video about the character creation for the pre-alpha, which then never came.
They kept the community entertained with further plans about what the MMORPG will eventually be like and with a browser RPG. There, players could replay a historical plague in a community event.
Little is left of the once so optimistic roadmap:
- In July 2017, they still spoke of an alpha launch early in 2018 and a release in mid-2019 for Chronicles of Elyria.
- However, in June 2018, even the pre-alpha was canceled. Instead of starting a test phase that would consume a lot of capacity, they preferred to continue development.
Conclusion: Chronicles of Elyria is in a difficult situation. In 2017, it seemed as if it was making progress and was out of the basement. Without a financially strong publisher, however, they depend on money from the community.
They have to offer something to the community, but they can’t really do that because they want to focus on development.
The small team has extremely high ambitions, aiming to become a kind of real-life simulation in the MMORPG, but they have little to show for it. 2018 brought more setbacks than good news.
The game offers a massive projection surface for how amazing it will be when it’s finished. However, these are still distant visions that few can envision who are not already enthusiastic about Chronicles of Elyria.
In the situation of convincing new people to support the project financially is difficult. One must trust that concepts, plans, and backstory will excite players who engage with it.
With a publisher backing, the team would surely feel more comfortable – how it will go without one remains to be seen.
Soberly, it can be stated that in 2018, Chronicles of Elyria did not step out of the niche but rather disappeared further into it.
