MMORPG once went from a beacon of hope to a potential scam, and is currently said to be making progress, even if you can’t see it

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During the great drought in MMORPG history, there were a few small but exciting projects that wanted to be financed via crowdfunding. One of these games has been in development hell for more than eight years. Now there’s an update that’s causing another shake of the head.

What kind of MMORPG is it? When the Chronicles of Elyria Kickstarter campaign launched in May 2016, all was well with the world. The project around the aging heroes and realistic game world sounded so exciting that more than 10,000 supporters collected over 1.3 million US dollars. By October 2019, almost $8 million was said to have been raised.

As with many other MMORPG projects that were announced during the great drought between 2015 and 2020, there is no successful release to report so far.

On the contrary, Chronicles of Elyria went through such an absurd development hell that it was repeatedly accused of a scam that was intended to take money out of the backers’ pockets without offering anything in return. Here are just a few highlights:

  • A certain portion of the revenue came from the time-limited purchase of virtual properties from the pre-alpha of Chronicles of Elyria. Cost: $65 to $3,500.
  • The engine had to be changed in the middle of development because the virtual world platform SpatialOS that was first used was said to have been too expensive and inflexible.
  • Despite the enormous crowdfunding income, there was always a lack of money to advance development. It didn’t help that the release date planned for June 2016 was pushed back further and further. Due to a lack of publisher who had confidence in the project, the first layoffs occurred in 2018.
  • When the first real gameplay footage of Chronicles of Elyria was shown in September 2019, many supporters were disillusioned. It looked bad and unfinished, there was no sign of the years of development. The trailers published so far had painted a completely different picture of the MMORPG.
  • The first playable pre-alpha left a desolate impression in 2020 and was nothing more than a tutorial obstacle course.
  • Shortly afterwards, the team was disbanded and development was temporarily stopped.
  • Later, the project’s lead author, Jeromy Walsh, explained that this was just a misunderstanding and that he would now work alone on Chronicles of Elyria.
  • Walsh also explained that from now on they would also be working on a kind of spinoff called Kingdoms of Elyria for supporters.
  • The subsequent shitstorm caused those responsible to temporarily stop all communication with the community and close official channels such as the forums and the Discord channel. The supporters threatened a class action lawsuit. A trial ensued. To date, not a single player has received their money back.

    • To this day you can’t play Chronicles of Elyria – here’s a video from the pre-alpha:

    What is Chronicles of Elyria – Pre-Alpha

    More videos

    Autoplay

    New update, new head shaking

    What kind of update was there now? In the meantime, there have been occasional signs of life from Walsh, who this year, for example, blamed the press for the problems and layoffs. A public memo (via chroniclesofelyria.com) that recently went live is still oven-warm.

    In this, Jeromy Walsh claims that Chronicles of Elyria has made noticeable progress and that they are in close contact with Early Access and Alpha 1 supporters behind closed doors. There is no evidence of this in the form of videos or screenshots. There are also no players who would publicly confirm the exchange with the developer.

    The latter could be due to the strict non-disclosure agreement (NDA for short) to which all testers are supposed to be bound. According to the post, there will also be updates for the website and forum, which will make every last bit of public communication disappear behind a curtain, as you have to register in order to read forum posts or new developer blogs.

    How is the community reacting to the update? Many players react to the recent post with ridicule:

  • 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 CoE journey. You spend your time on anything 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 development and especially his backtracking on closing Soulbound Studios.”
  • MrTastyCake breaks out the popcorn on Reddit: “The show must go on.”
  • Nitramite is having fun (via Reddit): “Hahaha, I knew there would be an update right before the holidays. Amazing, really good and funny stuff. I love that everything he does has a multi-step process. I won’t check, but I’m sure he just gets through 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 should appear at the end of 2025: New MMORPG Camelot Unchained has a release date after 11 years – not everyone likes that

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