The initial Steam launch of Ethyrial: Echoes of Yore went badly enough that developer Gellyberry Studios announced plans for a full server wipe and a restart over this past weekend. Unfortunately, that has not gone over well either and has even made things worse.
Shortly after the game came back online, the studio released several patches to address some extra problems involving mob attack range exploits, players getting stuck, and the removal of some items and NPCs that were causing problems among them. Meanwhile, the latest patch notes posted on Discord provide a potential fix for items disappearing and improvements to caravan information.
In spite of these patches and a consolidated list of updates and fixes made since May 1st, the game is still apparently dealing with another exploit related to character levels, with a ban applied to five players who took the greatest advantage from the exploit and further investigation being promised.
The game’s lead developer, Amar, is also officially on record as saying he is lowering his involvement in managing the MMORPG to about three to four hours a day while he works on “other opportunities” and other devs take the reigns – a move that he claims was the plan for the game’s launch “for a very long time.”
The combination of a bug-laden re-release, the message from Amar, and the requirement of a subscription to play it all has caused gamers to be understandably upset: The Discord’s general chat is full of rancor and disappointment over the state of the game, accusations are flying in Discord and on Reddit that its release was nothing more than a grift, numbers on Steam are falling off a cliff (though the all-time high wasn’t much better), and Steam reviews are slipping into “Mostly Negative,” with people warning others away from what’s being considered an unfinished title.
We hasten to point out that our own initial impressions piece felt similarly about the MMORPG’s launch state, even without any major bugs or problems during our pre-launch time in-game. Even so, it’s an unfortunate restart for an already unprepared MMO.
