Crowdfunding MMORPGs experienced a real boom between 2013 and 2018. This resulted in successful games like Albion Online, but also long-term projects like Camelot Unchained or Star Citizen. We, in turn, have collected games that sounded very promising on paper, but failed.
Here’s how I picked the games: For this list, it doesn’t matter if the MMORPGs were released or discontinued before release. I also set a limit of at least $50,000 that had to be raised through crowdfunding.
We also presented some of these titles to you in our own video:
4 crowdfunding MMORPGs that really flopped
More videos
Chronicles of Elyria – Crowdfunding of at least $7.7 million
What made the game so interesting? Chronicles of Elyria wanted to create a realistic fantasy world where your characters would age over time. They got gray hair, wrinkles and at some point the final death followed. It was therefore important to think about having children after a certain period of time, in order to inherit part of your wealth and skills.
A life of your avatar should correspond to about a year in reality. After that, you would have had to continue playing with the offspring or a new character.
The MMORPG planned a free skill system with different types of weapons and armor. In addition, there should be different professions that you could learn and in which mini-games had to be mastered for the production.
Chronicles of Elyria also promised:
However, the game never saw a release.
How much did it take? Chronicles of Elyria raised a whopping $1.3 million from its first crowdfunding on Kickstarter. Other pre-order packs were later sold on the website, as well as skins, kingdom slots and a virtual advent calendar for $95.
Overall, the MMORPG is said to have earned around 7.7 million dollars by 2019.
Why did it fail? Chronicles of Elyria was damn ambitious and it quickly became apparent that crowdfunding alone would not finance it. The head behind the game – Jeromy Walsh – probably wanted to use the money to finance a prototype in order to attract investors and publishers who should ensure financial security.
But the plan didn’t work out, he couldn’t find any investors.
A pre-alpha of the game was released on March 20, 2020, which shocked many fans: it had nothing in common with the vision of a great MMORPG that was described. In retrospect, the pre-alpha was probably a last desperate attempt to convince anyone of the project.
Also in 2020, Walsh announced the closure of the MMORPG. But the people who had invested money got angry and threatened to sue. Since then, official work has been done on the game, but Walsh now does everything himself. He apparently wants to use force to “sort of finish” a game so that he can still get out of it.