Do you remember when Chronicles of Elyria raised $1.36 million on Kickstarter back in 2016 to make its highly ambitious (and so far, unfinished) MMORPG? Soulbound Studios certainly wants to keep that memory fresh in your mind with annual “Kickstarter-versaries” that also, coincidentally, raise even more money for the fantasy sandbox. The latest of these fundraising campaigns just wrapped up, and the studio wanted to thank all involved.
“Thanks to you, this was a record breaking Kickstarter-versary! You worked so hard to meet our challenge that we had to make new challenges for you,” Soulbound said. It went on to list several rewards, such as a Versary Monkey, that it will dole out to backers who have helped prop up the project.
It appears that the month’s promotion raised over $780,000 for a total of $7,730,142 collected to fund the game to date. Earlier this month, the dev team posted a pre-alpha video that focused on the soundscape of Elyria.
Wasn’t this the game that said you ‘require’ a group of 6 or something, and if you drop your torch you’re screwed? Or am I mis-remembering?
I would think this is more than enough to get something out the door.
No this is the game that you actually swim while holdng the torch.
Huh. Then which one am I thinking of? lol
Just looked at their page, and I’m pretty sure I read all of this a long while back.
This amused me :
So they thought they figured out a way to get you to pay money by obfuscating that it’s what it is? lol
Think you are referring to Saga of Lucimia
Ah. OK. My memory is so bad lately for certain things. Doesn’t help that if you go look at their pages they are nearly identically designed/same concept.
Sorry, the very term “kickstarter-versary” just sickens me.
I find perpetual beggary more to the point.
Could not agree more. Just think about how ludicrous it is to celebrate each year that you have gone past your original release date plus fund raise off the fact that you are another year late? W T F
Jo Watt’s comment below got me to thinking … do we have an actual launched, non-“beta” crowdfunded MMO? Something that could be called “successful”?
I’ve backed a fair number of tabletop game and other kickstarters and while often late they do arrive at a point where they are “done”- completed and delivered. I contributed to some of the early CoH successor efforts in the post-cancellation fury that many of us succumbed to and now 7 years later we have … no working, released games. So now I’m trying to think of any MMO, or even just MO, crowdfunded games that we could say are released and functioning. I’m drawing a blank so I turn to the experts at MOP – are there any?
Maybe there’s an article idea – just how successful is the whole crowdfunding model in this area? What’s the track record?
There are several. Elite, AQ3D, OrbusVR, HEX, SOTA, GOE, and Nebula are the most prominent, and there are several more in the “orbiting MMOs” category and several more in soft launch early access (like Project Gorgon).
We recap crowdfunded MMOs nearly every week in Make My MMO. We also do annual crowdfunding MMO rundowns too – here are the ones from 2018 and 2017 (2019’s will be in December). Justin also just did a P10 on biggest MMO Kickstarters and where those games are now. This is part of why I get grumbly over this topic – we already do a lot to keep an eye on these types of games.
Project Gorgon was more playable in alpha than many were in early access and had let everyone play during alpha for free. Its a bit it hasnt funded as much as other projects that show less promise
Project Gorgon development team are the real deal :). Not sure if there are more than Eric and Sandra that work on it but it is pretty impressive.
So literally zero of those big “revolutionary” projects that started their development years ago. Do you believe any of them will actually release eventually as a full (as full as mmo can be on release, that is) game?
Not literally zero, no. Elite and SOTA are most certainly among the crop of high-ambition, high-dollar-amount crowdfunded MMORPGs. Whether you think they’ve been successful post-launch is a different question with a different answer.
And yes, I do think several of the larger remaining projects will eventually make it to a true launch.
Elite picked a different path though, they do it the way similar to Warframe. And SOTA… well. After all these years it’s still not what they promised it to be. Can’t really call it a “true launch”.
Fairly certain COE and most of the rest will go the route of SotA.
Eventually the money well will dry up and these games will launch in whatever state they are at with a promise to complete everything later.
I’d say Elite is the best example out of those for sure. SOTA I suppose is technically true but yeah, the success label is up for debate.
And my suggestion wasn’t “we need more coverage of these” – I read the columns you mentioned. It was more of a hey let’s look back at the games that were crowdfunding in say, 2014-15-16, so 3-5 years ago, and see how many of them have launched. More of a one-off thing than a weekly update. I guess it’s more of a “does crowdfunding -really- work for these kinds of games” question. Sure, it gets people money, but does it get people actual playable games? We know there are more coming – how often does it really work out?
Albion Online?
Do you remember when the head clown leading this circus said on these forums that of course $1.36M was not enough money. It was just seed money and he would need around $3M or $4M total to bring the game to full release with all the bells and whistles? Well they are double that money now. “Game” is still not even in Alpha. No investor ever found, just milking the same suckers for more and more cash.
I honestly blame sites like this for aiding in the sham by not doing follow up articles pointing out the undelivered promises, missed dates and lack of progress. Why does MOP never do follow-up article where they compare what was promised a year ago with what was delivered? Or even what was promised many years ago? How about showing the same concern for the unfilled promises and lack of accountability of crowdfunded games? Lets see some honest to goodness digging into what these guys have said in the past and what they delivered? Just posting articles like this does nothing but provide free advertising to keep this fiasco going. If you want to post stuff like this, at least balance it a little.
Remember the whole “We are the storm” fiasco from the beginning of the year? What happened to that? Still in supposed pre-alpha with no players with about 60 days left in the year. Every video we see is a regression from what was shown years ago. And not its not just about graphics. Take the “Silvermine Demo” from years ago and watch it. Then take their recent dungeon “shiny” and watch it. Ignore the graphics difference (even if it’s ridiculous). Just compare the movement, functionality, multiple levels, interaction with environment, etc… Please run an article comparing the two. That would be a great idea.
Here is the Silvermine Dungeon demo from 2.5 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xi2ASn9xDB0
Here is their latest dungeon walkthrough: https://cdn.chroniclesofelyria.com/screenshots/shiny/chronicles-of-elyria-prealpha-dungeon-walk-01.mp4?_=1
Yes, the SECOND link is what was shown a few weeks ago. Those are not reversed.
oh god lmao
What the fuck?! It looks like two totally different games!
I can’t even bring myself to comment sincerely when you are so detached from reality and so uninformed but open your mouth anyway.
When you are the one that has spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on this joke I think it’s safe to say that we know who is detatched from reality.
I’m still trying to understand how this happened. Did they ever mention, “Hey we’ve decided to change our art direction completely” ???
You can find articles even here that explain why the game currently looks like it does. Short story – they haven’t changed anything, this is a stop on the road to completion. Not unlike an animatic.
[Edited by mod to remove insults.]
Ur deluded mate
Eh.. it is not how games work, buddy. They have full-blown assets in there, if that’s just a “stop in the road to completion” they wouldn’t need them. It would be a total waste of time.
That’s exactly how game development works, actually.
It has an analog in every other creative medium, from website creation (wireframes) to feature films (animatics/storyboards) to software development (prototypes). In games, you can call it grey-boxing, or what have you.
The point is it’s much cheaper to create and iterate when you’re not using high-fidelity complete assets that will THEN require rework based on every change.
The recent videos show CoE in the greybox phase, using placeholder low-poly assets to flesh out function. The earlier videos and demos were proof of concepts, and while they may have been in-engine, they almost certainly had none of the “game” behind it. Tech demos.
Hope this helps.
You would know, you’re the seat of developers.
You never fail to amuse me, Leth. Your delusion is something i miss sometimes.
Actually the Silver Run Mine was not billed as a tech demo but rather as an actual dungeon that you would soon be able to experience in the Prelude which they were supposed to release years ago. No Prelude has materialized yet, and dungeons have regressed, not just graphically but feature-wise. Trying to ret-con and say the Silver Run Mine was just a tech demo or proof of concept is not being truthful IMHO.
I don’t think game development works like you think it does.
Dang, the 2nd video looks like a mock-up
Holy shit…
I’m not going to bother responding to the whole of this mess you dumped because I’m a poster, not a writer for Massively, but…
So… just going to conveniently ignore the ENTIRE fiasco with Shroud of the Avatar then? If it doesn’t prove your point that the site never checks in or follows up on any missed items, then it doesn’t count clearly?
No? You weren’t reading massively that day was it? Because they covered it over several days.
Don’t be disingenuous or hyperbolic if you want to see something. Also, I don’t know, don’t attack a site in the same breath as you start trying to tell them what they should or shouldn’t be doing.
Also…? ‘Reporting’ doesn’t work that way. Eliot isn’t going to slip into some shiny catsuit and drop down into a vault from a wire to hack into Chronicle’s database for a client list. Mia and Chris aren’t going to slip into one of the developer’s companies to cozy up to said clients and get the juicy bits from them. And Bree isn’t playing Oracle, sitting back and covering all their asses from behind a half dozen monitors while Justin is sitting in the Ferrari for the high-speed Ang-Lee shot 120fps 2K resolution getaway scene–and I’m cutting myself off here because I ain’t writing an ‘Oceans Eleven’ of Massively writers for this post.
You get what they can get. Sometimes they’re able to get something out of an inside source, or someone digs something up extra juicy. Other times? The company completely blocks them out and refuses to answer questions while also whining about how they never get covered fairly or positively (see Shroud of the Avatar).
I don’t think it takes an inside source to look at the original dungeon linked and then the current dungeon linked and realize something is seriously wrong here.
The time to do so is before a game folds or is um, transferred ala SotA.
I mean you can say… well they havent done this or done that. But the reality is… all these kick starter games are not complete. Maybe in the future xyz features will come along. Its kind of hard to bash something too much before its complete. Also… if you actually want to get interviews throughout a development process you dont want to completely destroy any reputations for something that again.. isnt completed.
At most you can touch on how they are moving along here and there… also some of these “games” are keeping info pretty closed so there isnt much to base whether some things are done or not yet.
That’s your problem, not theirs.
Of course we remember the “we are the storm” fiasco. It was provoked by us when we literally gave this game the equivalent of the most likely to fail award last December, after which Walsh flamed us on Twitter and said this year the game would bring the storm. (Spoiler: It did not.) If it weren’t for SOTA being an even bigger trainwreck, it’d probably win again.
As you should probably be aware since you pretty much only ever comment to trash Elyria, we’ve spent kind of a lot of time chronicling what Elyria has been up to this year, to say nothing of other MMOs as some other folks have already pointed out. We may do a recap post for Elyria at some point, but it’s not at the top of my list to spend money and writers on right now. I certainly thought our readers had been duly warned, and there hasn’t been much demand for Elyria, but that’s why feedback from active readers is helpful. Though generally, if you want a site to spend money to investigate your pet gripe, honey works better than vinegar.
Sending buckets of honey your way!
All too common with the KS projects sadly. Star Citizen’s pitch was meant to be achievable for $23M but even with 13x that amount they are nowhere near what they claimed could be done.
The original pitch didn’t include the procedural planet tech. That was the $41M stretch goal. But when they released the “pupil to planet” tech demo, Chris completely altered course to pursue it in all aspects of the game. Instead of having isolated landing zones, the scope of the project exploded, because not only did they need to develop planet-sized gameplay areas, they needed all of the tech necessary to support them, and the people to develop that tech, on top of getting all of the Squadron 42 missions wrapped up. It’s monumentally behind schedule because it’s monumentally ambitious and complicated. But I think it’s also at the “too big to fail” point. Rather than going bankrupt, they’ll find the funding elsewhere when they can’t squeeze any more out of the current backers. Eventually it should be worth the wait–at least I hope so–though I also feel sorry for the backers who’ve pledged thousands and may not even live long enough to enjoy what they paid for. There’s still so much left to be done.
If or when it drops, it’ll never be what either folk built it up to be or what was promised. It’ll be a prettier version of other stuff and if they jam enough details in it’ll be a work simulator. Folk expect Hollywood when the reality is silicon valley
There goes my $25 from Kickstarter…