We’re once again taking a moment to recount the updates and progress of Ethyrial: Echoes of Yore. As a refresher, this sandbox MMORPG’s initial launch was an immense bellyflop and was all but dead in the water until an angel investor came in and bought out the studio.
That studio, Oath Games, has continued to make additions through the latter half of 2024 and into 2025: Some of its largest patches include the long-awaited arrival of relic equipment, an upgrade to Unity 6, a new hardcore mode and party loot rules, and most recently, a new elite zone known as the Deadlands.
Ethyrial still continues to remain free-to-play on Steam and still classes itself as an open alpha product, but user reviews seem to suggest that overall efforts are finally having a positive effect, with the most recent user reviews hitting the “very positive” aggregate as players frequently call the game’s patches a massive improvement. One player even suggested that the game re-name and re-release on Steam in order to shake its negative stigma, which brought forth a developer reply that stated plans for a fresh start server to use as “a marketing push.”
One could argue a marketing push is needed: Ethyrial’s concurrency still remains low, averaging roughly 20 to 25 players online at once, which is a significant drop from the 1,800 players that were in-game almost two years ago. Still, all of Oath Games’ work might indeed be paying off at last.
