The MMORPG Chronicles of Elyria was able to delight fans with the idea that their characters could rule over large kingdoms and even age in the process. A lot of money was raised through Kickstarter and crowdfunding. But the game is now dead and we’ll summarize the story again.
What made the game so interesting? On June 1, 2016, Chronicles of Elyria launched a campaign on Kickstarter. The aim was to raise $900,000 there to develop a prototype of the MMORPG. Within 30 days, fans donated more than $1.36 million because they were so intrigued by the idea.
Because it was supposed to be the first MMORPG in which your character would age and even die at some point. For this, around a year in the real world was planned, with each death reducing the lifespan by a few days. In order to preserve some of the progress and also your own kingdom, you should produce a successor who will then continue to direct your fortunes.
The game also promised limited resources, non-repeatable quests and a completely destructible environment. The character itself should never go offline and simply leave the world. Anyone standing out in the wilderness could be killed by others. In the cities, on the other hand, you were safe and with the help of an AI, the character was supposed to behave naturally and interact with NPCs.
The combat system promised a lot of action – with dodge rolls, blocking and a stamina system that was supposed to prevent skills from being spammed. The general motto was: Skill is more important than equipment.
You can see what was promised back then and what it should look like graphically in this video from 2016:
What is Chronicles of Elyria – Pre-Alpha
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The list of innovations was long and exciting to read. But a proper playable version was never released. An engine change and many problems in finding investors and publishers are said to have been the problem.
According to the official website, the game has raised over $7.9 million in crowdfunding.
Lots of updates at the beginning, but there were problems with the engine
How did the development go? At the beginning you had the feeling that the boss Jeromy Walsh and his team had a clear idea for their MMORPG. There were regular blog posts with new information and even smaller videos.
Walsh also raved about SpatialOS, a miracle technology that should make it possible to create huge worlds using simple means. The company behind it was now worth over $2 billion. Some MMOs relied on the engine, but none of them were really successful. The developer Improbable is no longer relying on this and is instead devoting himself to the Metaverse.
For Chronicles of Elyria, this meant an engine change in January 2018 – away from SpatialOS and towards the Soulborn Engine, which they developed themselves. However, that took time. The first alpha, in which Kickstarter donors were allowed to participate, was actually supposed to start just a few months later.
Here you can find the few official screenshots that were available for the game:
The date for Alpha 1 was therefore not met. Support for the game also began to crumble elsewhere.
It was already announced during the Kickstarter campaign that they wanted to earn additional money via crowdfunding on their own website. But the sums announced became more and more absurd.
Some users paid thousands of euros for kingdoms in a game that hadn’t even been released yet. A sad highlight was the Advent calendar for $95 in December 2019, which contained small in-game goodies. These have not yet been redeemed.
A gameplay video brings everything crashing down
What happened next in 2020? There were no major updates in the coming months either. Chronicles of Elyra was now two years behind schedule.
Then, out of nowhere, gameplay from the pre-alpha was shown on March 6, 2020. And from there things really went downhill. Because the content shown had nothing in common with the original graphics and the promised gameplay.
It showed a character going through a course in a very simple world. You were even allowed to play it yourself for a short time – if you had previously spent a lot of money.
For many it was now clear: Chronicles of Elyria is a scam and will never appear as it was originally promised.
You can watch the video here:
Chronicles of Elyria – Pre-Alpha Gameplay
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The MMORPG is dying… or is it?
When was the game discontinued? On March 26, 2020, around 20 days after the video, boss Jeromy Walsh announced that the studio had run out of money. The entire development team was fired and Chronicles of Elyria would no longer be released.
This made many former fans so angry that they filed a lawsuit directly against Soulbound Studios, but also against the payment provider Xsolla. They wanted their money back.
A few days later, Walsh spoke up again and explained that no publisher could be found for the ambitious MMORPG. He himself would complete the project together with volunteers.
It was later said that a strategy game was being worked on for the time being. Kingdoms of Elyria is easier to implement and can use a lot of the resources that originally went into the MMORPG. They want to use this to finance the studio and release Chronicles of Elyria at some point.
However, many players speculated at the time that Walsh wanted to get out of the lawsuit because work was still going on on the MMORPG – albeit very indirectly.
Where did the money go? In 2023, Jeromy Walsh explained in a blog post where crowdfunding revenue went from 2017 to 2019. He excluded the years 2015 and 2016 because the studio had hardly any employees there, and from 2020 onwards he had to reduce the number of employees significantly and there were court costs, which he also left out.
A considerable portion went towards employee salaries. The cost here alone is $3.5 million. With 17 employees, this corresponds to an average salary of $68,000 per person per year. He paid himself $96,000, making him usually, but not always, the highest earner in the studio.
An intact website and regular updates, although there is no progress
Where is the studio today? Soulbound Studios and the Chronicles of Elyria website still exist today. There you can still read the vision of the “next-gen MMORPG”, even though it is not currently being worked on.
Walsh himself still posts an update on the status of the strategy game every month in the associated blog. However, according to a new interview from October 2023, the game will not have multiplayer for the time being. That doesn’t fit with the actual vision of working on Chronicles of Elyria again at some point.
However, Jeromy Walsh isn’t the only boss who has ruined an MMORPG:
Legendary MMORPG developer raised $15 million from fans – built a game that disappointed everyone