In Chronicles of Elyria’s second public missive for 2023, Soulbound Studios’ Jeromy Walsh took his unjustifiably patient fans through the process of bringing both Kingdoms of Elyria and Chronicles of Elyria’s design documents in parity. It may not be the MMO they paid to see, but one could argue that combing through a document is even more exciting than playing a finished product.
There are hopes that Soulbound Studio will be able to get “Kingdoms of Elyria into the hands of backers again for the first time since 2021″ and bring back up the currently defunct official Discord. No in-game development work was shown in the letter, as multiple Redditors already pointed out; the work is limited to design docs on things like the permissions system and agriculture mechanics and a 47-minute video on said design docs, as well as an ongoing overhaul to the game’s website.
Walsh also apologized for not moderating the previous Elyria Discord in a better fashion, saying, “If the community was toxic before, it was my fault. I allowed it to happen by not creating an environment that adequately reflected the values of the studio.” It is not clear from the missive what the studio considers toxic, but given that many backers of the game were angry enough to sue the company over its failings (and given that the studio head bizarrely called beating that lawsuit a “victory” for crowdfunding and Elyria’s backers), we have a few guesses about what’s going on there.
Chronicles of Elyria made our list of the biggest MMO crowdfunding stories of 2022, after that lawsuit was tossed by the judge, meaning the company – which was apparently already deep in debt – has skated by without accountability.
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