Ethyrial: Echoes of Yore, a new MMORPG aimed at hardcore gamers, was released on May 1st. But a lot went wrong in the first few days and the reviews were brutally bad. Now the developers have come forward and announced a complete new beginning – to the annoyance of some active players.
What kind of game is this? The MMORPG is reminiscent of old classics like Old School RuneScape – both in terms of gameplay and content. There is an extensive skill system, all items are made by players and team play is generally important. There are also many quests and dungeons.
However, it takes a hardcore approach: if you die, you lose your equipment, which can then be picked up by any player. There is also a subscription model of 9.99 euros, which must be paid monthly, or 300 euros for a lifetime subscription.
What is the problem? More than 1,800 users played Ethyrial at the same time (via SteamDB). That’s not a bad value for an indie MMORPG with strong “old school” graphics. But only a few were impressed by the game concept.
Already on May 4th – three days after the release – it barely cracked the 500 simultaneous players. In addition, 75% of the 588 reviews rated the MMORPG negatively.
Almost all areas of the game are criticized, but the double debiting of the subscription in particular caused a shitstorm.
Ethyrial: Echoes of Yore MMORPG trailer
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Boring quests, bad menus and subscription issues
What do the reviews criticize? Even getting into the game should be quite boring. The user Jonathan writes, for example: “You only collect berries and kill rats on the tutorial island – and with a 5 second input delay.” In addition, the game world is full of NPCs, but hardly any of them have a dialogue function at all.
Also, many of the mobs should simply not drop any drops at all and should feel like placeholders. All cities after the first should feel like copied content, with the same vendors and only slightly adjusted visually.
Also criticized is the control, which does not allow diagonal running and should generally feel “clunky and unfinished”. The balance of the individual classes should not be good either. The game uses a system similar to Ragnarok Online, in which you have 5 basic classes, each of which is divided into further specializations.
In addition, there have already been several item and currency dupes.
The biggest criticism, however, revolves around the launch. Because there were major problems with the server at the time of release, which is why many players were unable to log in for hours. Some have not had a chance to do so and joke how something like this can happen when “only” 1,800 players have registered at the same time.
The user sk1tt1ezz writes (via Steam):
This was the worst MMO launch of the last decade. I’m old and I’ve seen them all. It’s been 3 days and people still can’t get past the character creation screen and once that’s done you have to connect to the server which is almost impossible at the moment.
It is also annoying for many that the subscription costs were deducted twice, although only one month was to be paid for. However, the developers quickly explained that this revenue would be reversed.
There will be a complete relaunch on May 12th
So what did the developers say? In a blog post, the developers apologized for the weak start. There were “some minor and major issues” that they are currently working to fix. This includes, with the highest priority, double debits that are due to a technical error on your part.
But they go even further and want to do a complete restart. This should take place on May 12th:
Additionally, we’ll be hitting the proverbial (and literal) reset button to fix this disappointing launch.
On May 12th, the servers will reset and everyone will start the game over again. Yes, we will wipe the servers completely and practically restart the game on May 12th. Until then, players are welcome to play to help us troubleshoot any other issues and to confirm that the current issues are resolved.
All players who have an active subscription through May 12th will have 2 weeks of game time on their account to make up for lost time between launch and May 12th. Additionally, all accounts will receive a special “I Survived Launch!” cosmetic that the community will vote on at a later date.
How is that received? Mixed. Some of the fans are looking forward to the reboot because they hardly got a chance to play at all. Others see it critically, precisely because they have been actively playing for several days and lose all of their progress.
The user Nedry is also bothered by the fact that he has now invested so much time that he can no longer return the game.
In the comments on the post, the players also criticize that the basic game systems will probably not change much until May 12th. But they are also problematic, not just the launch and the dupes.
What do you think of Ethyral: Echoes of Yore? Have you played it yet? And do you think a reset that early is more of a good or a bad idea?
In addition to Ethyral, some new MMORPGs have already been released this year. You can find out more about this here: 5 new MMORPGs were released for the PC in 2023 and this is how they are doing right now.