Chronicles Of Elyria Beta
Betawatch: Chronicles of Elyria shows off its pre-alpha gameplay. Astellia has not yet launched and it's largely passed from its beta phase, but.
| Chronicles of Elyria | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Soulbound Studios |
| Director(s) | Jeromy Walsh |
| Designer(s) | Adam Maxwell, Eddie Smith |
| Engine | Unreal Engine 4 |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows |
| Genre(s) | Massively multiplayer online role-playing game[1] |
| Mode(s) | Multiplayer, single-player |
Chronicles of Elyria is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game[2][3] developed by Soulbound Studios for Microsoft Windows that is currently on an indefinite hiatus[4]. Early development of the game began in 2000.[citation needed] Production started in 2016 with the majority of financing coming in the way of a large crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. The game was originally marked for an estimated December 2017 release, but was not met.[5] Soulbound Studios closed its doors and laid off the entirety of its staff on March 25th, 2020.[4]
Development[edit]
Jeromy 'Caspian' Walsh had been designing Chronicles of Elyria solo from 2000 to 2015, taking time to write various algorithms and proofs of concept for various mechanics. Most of his inspiration for Chronicles of Elyria comes from the Wheel of Time series.[citation needed] In January 2015, Walsh filed Soulbound Studios, LLC in Bellevue, Washington in order to form a company and hire employees that could further develop Chronicles of Elyria. Also in 2015, Eddie 'Heat' Smith and Nathan 'Tripnull' Hitchcock joined Walsh to start working on more serious proof of concepts and got the game's website online[citation needed]. At the end of 2015 Brandon 'Strider' Carpenter joined the team to provide animations.[citation needed]
Chronicles of Elyria had a Kickstarter campaign from May 3 to June 3, 2016[5] raising $1.36 million, surpassing their goal of $900.000. However, developing an massively multiplayer online role-playing game of the quality Soulbound Studios was aiming for requires more than that[6] and so the company continued crowdfunding on their website and raised over $7.7 million as of October 2019.[7] Pre-production ended in November 2016 at which time active production began.
After being delayed from its tentative December 2019 date, a special virtual land auction event called 'Settlers of Elyria' was launched on March 12, 2020.[8] On March 20, Soulbound Studios released a pre-alpha, gray box demo showcasing parkour mechanics.[9] Four days later, Soulbound Studios announced the closure of the studio, complete staff layoffs and the indefinite hiatus of the project.[4] In response to the perceived lack of delivery of a tangible product after years of development and millions of dollars in funding, as well as the close succession of the land auction, demo and abrupt studio closure, hundreds of backers of Chronicles of Elyria began to organize and explore legal avenues to take against Soulbound Studios and Jeromy Walsh. Within days, the office of the attorney general of Washington had received hundreds of filed complaints - amidst the highest in the state's history.[10] On April 9, Walsh released a new statement, claiming that his announcement was misinterpreted and that he would be pursuing continuing the project by having former staff members continue their work on a pro bono basis, while he would seek new sources of funding.[11]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^'Frequently Asked Questions About Chronicles of Elyria'. Retrieved March 18, 2018.
- ^'Soulbound Studios Wants to Bring Meaning Back to MMO Life'. Retrieved March 23, 2018.
- ^'Chronicles of Elyria'. Retrieved March 23, 2018.
- ^ abc'News - Community - Chronicles of Elyria'. iis-prod.chroniclesofelyria.com. 2020-03-25. Retrieved 2020-04-03.
But to our great sadness.. with the failure of Settlers of Elyria, and five long months of only limited crowdfunding revenue coming in, Soulbound Studios has officially run out of money. Last night I was forced to do something I never thought I'd have to do. I closed the online store, put the SoE map back into read-only mode, and laid off all the employees..
- ^ ab'Chronicles of Elyria - Epic Story MMORPG with Aging & Death'. kickstarter.com. Retrieved March 18, 2018.
- ^'Soulbound Studios Needs Around $3 Million More to Finish Chronicles of Elyria'. Retrieved March 23, 2018.
- ^'Chronicles of Elyria has raised $7.7 million from gamers to date'. Massively Overpowered. Retrieved December 9, 2019.
- ^Neal, Chris (March 12, 2020). 'Chronicles of Elyria kicks off its Settlers of Elyria virtual land auction for a second time'. Massively Overpowered. Retrieved April 14, 2020.
- ^Shankar, Poorna (March 23, 2020). 'Chronicles of Elyria Pre-Alpha Testing Has Started'. MMORPG.com. Retrieved April 14, 2020.
- ^Royce, Bree (April 7, 2020). 'Disgruntled Chronicles of Elyria backers seek aid from the Washington attorney general'. Massively Overpowered. Retrieved April 14, 2020.
- ^Royce, Bree (April 9, 2020). 'Chronicles of Elyria boss says development is still ongoing, still seeking funding'. Massively Overpowered. Retrieved April 14, 2020.
External links[edit]
In a shocking development, it seems Chronicles of Elyria is no more. Caspian, the founder of Soulbound Studios, made an announcement titled: Chronicles of Elyria: Into the Abyss which starts by chronicling some of the progress the game had made over the years. It isn't until towards the end of the post that we learn that the entire staff has been let go and that Soulbound Studios has run out of money.
Chronicle of Elyria was first revealed on November 16, 2015 and launched a Kickstarter campaign on May 03, 2016. The Kickstarter campaign proved to be a success, raising over $1,300,000. The game continued crowdfunding off Kickstarter over the years, with over $8,000,000 raised to date. Soulbound Studios, the company behind Chronicles of Elyria, put a great deal of emphasis on the lore and roleplaying aspects of the game. Community forums and outreach early in development led to the creation of multiple guilds led by 'nobles' who had pre-purchased in-game land within the game. Unfortunately, little in the way of gameplay was ever revealed to the public during the roughly 4 years of development.
But to our great sadness.. with the failure of Settlers of Elyria, and five long months of only limited crowdfunding revenue coming in, Soulbound Studios has officially run out of money. Last night I was forced to do something I never thought I'd have to do. I closed the online store, put the SoE map back into read-only mode, and laid off all the employees..
The closest we got to seeing any gameplay for Chronicles of Elyria was a short obstacle course style demo released to Alpha testers this month.
The official post does leave the door open to some sort of future for Chronicles of Elyria, and the forums and discord servers will remain online for now. There was no mention of refunds or compensation for those who pre-purchased land and titles of nobility within Chronicles of Elyria. In fact, it seems the company deliberately removed transaction history from user's accounts!
To Soulbound's credit, they made the decision to shut down development rather raise more money from the community:
While we had no doubt that our backers would come to our aid, we're living in a volatile period in our world's history. With unprecedented changes to society caused by the Covid-19 outbreak, and with economies beginning to suffer all around the world, I made the hard decision not to try and get additional crowdfunding. I knew doing so would mean having to close the studio. But it was the right thing to do. I'd rather people spend their money on games they can play now, or better yet, food and shelter, rather than on the continuned development of Chronicles of Elyria.
EDIT: Keeping the official discord server up may have been a mistake. Customers, some of whom had 'invested' $10,000+ into their titles of nobility were furious:
Readers should be aware that they can contact their credit card issueing bank directly and request a Charge Back for undelivered services. For more info on charge backs, read this Credit Karma post.
Further Reading:Official Post
