Chronicles of Elyria - Weathering the Storm - MMORPG.com

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Chronicles of Elyria - Weathering the Storm - MMORPG.com

This week Timothy Eisen looks at surviving the weather and making it to launch in Chronicles of Elyria.

Read the full story here

Slapshot1188

"As speedy as things are looking I’m still skeptical of getting in the MUD, the pre-game and the game all with thorough testing by the December 2017."

And don't forget the no-wipe head start is 3 month BEFORE that. So lets assume rationally that this won't happen. What does that do to the budget where they have admitted they need millions more to get a complete game?

Time = money. Underestimate your time and you have underestimated your money. What happens when an MMO developer runs out of money?

Also, don't forget that all the money from the biggest fans has ALREADY been collected from the Kickstarter and store. People have multiple year's worth of gametime pre-paid. This to me is the Achilles heal of all the Kickstarter MMOs... they get all the revenue up front but it has to last not just to launch, but to well beyond.

Aeander

Slapshot1188 said:

"As speedy as things are looking I’m still skeptical of getting in the MUD, the pre-game and the game all with thorough testing by the December 2017."

And don't forget the no-wipe head start is 3 month BEFORE that. So lets assume rationally that this won't happen. What does that do to the budget where they have admitted they need millions more to get a complete game?

Time = money. Underestimate your time and you have underestimated your money. What happens when an MMO developer runs out of money?

Also, don't forget that all the money from the biggest fans has ALREADY been collected from the Kickstarter and store. People have multiple year's worth of gametime pre-paid. This to me is the Achilles heal of all the Kickstarter MMOs... they get all the revenue up front but it has to last not just to launch, but to well beyond.

That's why crowdfunding and MMOs aren't normally compatible. A genre built on longevity doesn't lend itself to front-loaded returns.

Redemp

I keep hearing more about this game, can someone please explain why they think CoE has a shot? What experience does the dev team have and are their goals realistic?

Archlyte

Redemp said:

I keep hearing more about this game, can someone please explain why they think CoE has a shot? What experience does the dev team have and are their goals realistic?

I don't know that this can really be answered by anyone, maybe not even the team. There is a certain amount of faith involved (or foolishness as some might say) in following the game. Without access to what they actually have, how they are progressing, and what will happen in the future I don't see how a prediction could be accurate. 

You will get opinions based on guesswork and emotions though so watch out for that. Anyone completely sure that it will fail to launch or completely sure that it will come out and work like they say cannot be making an accurate prediction as I see it. The variables are missing. 

Dakeru

Redemp said:

I keep hearing more about this game, can someone please explain why they think CoE has a shot? What experience does the dev team have and are their goals realistic?

They promise AAA quality with a fragment of the usual costs, a fragment of the usual time and a fragment of the usual dev team size.

If you look around you will find epic statements by the big cheese such as:
Stop criticizing us, if we don't get the kickstarter money people will lose their jobs!
or:
That amount is all the money we need to make the game but that doesn't mean it's all the money we need.

Redemp

Ah - that helps a bit, nothing for me to share in the excitement of then. Graci!

Avanah

This is the only MMO I am looking forward to.

JeromyWalsh

Dakeru said:

Redemp said:

I keep hearing more about this game, can someone please explain why they think CoE has a shot? What experience does the dev team have and are their goals realistic?

They promise AAA quality with a fragment of the usual costs, a fragment of the usual time and a fragment of the usual dev team size.

If you look around you will find epic statements by the big cheese such as:
Stop criticizing us, if we don't get the kickstarter money people will lose their jobs!
or:
That amount is all the money we need to make the game but that doesn't mean it's all the money we need.

Impressive over-simplification, but I can't fault you for that.

It's true, we're aiming for AAA quality with a fragment of the usual costs. How do we plan to do that? By licensing most of the technologies we need and making smart business decisions. Things like licensing UE4 rather than developing the necessary client technologies from scratch, and partnering up with Improbable and using SpatialOS as the core of back-end.

I suppose you could criticize us for having a goal of developing a high quality game using less resources if we had no plan on how we were going to go about doing that. But aside from specifically designing around the expensive parts, the above two things go a long way toward that end. So you could instead be inspired by our plan to do things differently. If you want to achieve different results, you have to go about doing them a different way.

If you look around one or two threads here on MMORPG.com you'll find me discussing the merits and drawbacks of Crowdfunding. One thing true of crowdfunding that's not true of publisher-funded games is that the community of players has a lot more influence over the success or failure of the game. A while back there were a couple people who seemed to make it their goal to discourage people here on MMORPG.com from backing us or taking an interest in the game. I do recall telling those people that we weren't some far removed entity, but real people, with real families, working really hard to bring a game to market for their benefit. The way I saw it, if we were a bakery and someone was standing outside our store discouraging others from entering, we'd have every right to go out and remind them their actions have consequences.

As for your final remark, we'd long stated in multiple locations we had an amount we needed from Kickstarter, but that it wasn't all we'd need to complete the game. Much like Star Citizen, Crowfall, Camelot Unchained, and virtually every other crowd-funded game on the market that has sought additional funding post-Kickstarter. Some people were surprised to learn we were going for additional funding after Kickstarter, but most were not.

In any case, we continue to work hard on an awesome game, and many people on MMORPG.com continue to be negative. I've long since abandoned any hope of changing that. People demanded we show *something* of the game, so we started sharing concepts. People demanded to see something more, so we started showing screenshots. People demanded more, so we started showing gameplay videos. People demanded more, so we went to PAX.

People still continue to doubt our abilities, motivations, and likelihood of completing CoE, and we'll continue to step up and deliver.

SaunZ

BOOM!   he told you guys!


I sure hope all goes well for CoE and it has been #1 on the development games poll (MMORPG.com) for a long long time!

Good Luck CoE

... live a little, be a gypsy, get around (get around)
get your feet up off the ground, live a little, get around

Sz   

Slapshot1188

JeromyWalsh said:

People still continue to doubt our abilities, motivations, and likelihood of completing CoE, and we'll continue to step up and deliver.

In order to continue to deliver you would first have to actually deliver something. As far as I can tell the only thing you have delivered is a website (very late) to let people buy things.  Are you on target to deliver the launch of the game by the Kickstarter ETA of Dec 17? With the 3 month no wipe Headstart by the end of Sep 17? When you do THAT you will have actually delivered something other than promises and hype.  We will see I guess...

genaknosc

Slapshot is my barometer for how likely an MMO might be successful. Dude is brutal on these forums, but usually makes some good points.

ArChWind

Slapshot1188 said:

JeromyWalsh said:

People still continue to doubt our abilities, motivations, and likelihood of completing CoE, and we'll continue to step up and deliver.

In order to continue to deliver you would first have to actually deliver something. As far as I can tell the only thing you have delivered is a website (very late) to let people buy things.  Are you on target to deliver the launch of the game by the Kickstarter ETA of Dec 17? With the 3 month no wipe Headstart by the end of Sep 17? When you do THAT you will have actually delivered something other than promises and hype.  We will see I guess...

So you're saying they have nothing. No demo of anything yet?

genaknosc

I am make mmo see proof demo pls send million dollars thanks

Archlyte

JeromyWalsh said:

Dakeru said:

Redemp said:

I keep hearing more about this game, can someone please explain why they think CoE has a shot? What experience does the dev team have and are their goals realistic?

They promise AAA quality with a fragment of the usual costs, a fragment of the usual time and a fragment of the usual dev team size.

If you look around you will find epic statements by the big cheese such as:
Stop criticizing us, if we don't get the kickstarter money people will lose their jobs!
or:
That amount is all the money we need to make the game but that doesn't mean it's all the money we need.

Impressive over-simplification, but I can't fault you for that.

It's true, we're aiming for AAA quality with a fragment of the usual costs. How do we plan to do that? By licensing most of the technologies we need and making smart business decisions. Things like licensing UE4 rather than developing the necessary client technologies from scratch, and partnering up with Improbable and using SpatialOS as the core of back-end.

I suppose you could criticize us for having a goal of developing a high quality game using less resources if we had no plan on how we were going to go about doing that. But aside from specifically designing around the expensive parts, the above two things go a long way toward that end. So you could instead be inspired by our plan to do things differently. If you want to achieve different results, you have to go about doing them a different way.

If you look around one or two threads here on MMORPG.com you'll find me discussing the merits and drawbacks of Crowdfunding. One thing true of crowdfunding that's not true of publisher-funded games is that the community of players has a lot more influence over the success or failure of the game. A while back there were a couple people who seemed to make it their goal to discourage people here on MMORPG.com from backing us or taking an interest in the game. I do recall telling those people that we weren't some far removed entity, but real people, with real families, working really hard to bring a game to market for their benefit. The way I saw it, if we were a bakery and someone was standing outside our store discouraging others from entering, we'd have every right to go out and remind them their actions have consequences.

As for your final remark, we'd long stated in multiple locations we had an amount we needed from Kickstarter, but that it wasn't all we'd need to complete the game. Much like Star Citizen, Crowfall, Camelot Unchained, and virtually every other crowd-funded game on the market that has sought additional funding post-Kickstarter. Some people were surprised to learn we were going for additional funding after Kickstarter, but most were not.

In any case, we continue to work hard on an awesome game, and many people on MMORPG.com continue to be negative. I've long since abandoned any hope of changing that. People demanded we show *something* of the game, so we started sharing concepts. People demanded to see something more, so we started showing screenshots. People demanded more, so we started showing gameplay videos. People demanded more, so we went to PAX.

People still continue to doubt our abilities, motivations, and likelihood of completing CoE, and we'll continue to step up and deliver.

Appreciate the post. I feel that even though this is a wretched hive, it is not a waste of time to reach out. To me you guys have the future of the species in your incubator, and I fully recognize that to do something outside of the same sad paradigm is hard on many levels.

At times I have been critical of you in particular as I felt that from the text it seemed that you were allowing others to irritate you, which worried me because I felt that was a vulnerability that added doubt. Having said that, I now understand the context of your statement and I understand better. The mantle of the leader is a bitch, I get it.

As for the negative, well that is like the continuum of humanity that I feel we will eventually see in your game. There will be benevolent bread bakers, and others who will actively seek to commit infanticide. I come here for the villains (from my perspective) as much as anything the most cogent posters write, because it is entertaining to watch the adversity.

I think that enough people will give the game a try, even if they talk mad shit. The casual observer who is turned off by that will be just as easily swayed by the positive draw of something they can play. In the end I think that the venom will be less abundant than the median silence and the allied up-talk. 
 
Anyway, thanks for dropping a line or two here for those who wait. 

ArChWind

genaknosc said:

I am make mmo see proof demo pls send million dollars thanks

That's awesome man.

Octagon7711

I remember when SWG launch a lot of stuff was missing. It was enough for a start and over the years they added a lot. EoC will probably do the same. SWG had PvP locked down with zones and flagging, open world PvP is a different animal. This will be interesting.

Dakeru

SedrynTyros said:

genaknosc said:

Slapshot is my barometer for how likely an MMO might be successful. Dude is brutal on these forums, but usually makes some good points.

He makes some excellent points at times, but he's not a prophet.  And to me, there's nothing admirable about betting on failure when your persistent rhetoric encourages that outcome.  Being brutally honest about one's opinion is fine but when it crosses over into the realm of doing little more than damaging the potential for success ... that's more difficult to respect.

But there is something admireable about overpromising to you instead?

The only time I saw Slap making a bad prediction was about the amount of money the ks would get.
That isn't something related to the qualifications of devs but  he simply underestimated the willingness of people to part with their money.

Meanwhile I remind you about the delay of the homepage.
Making a homepage is infinitely easier than making a game.

So when Caspian says that I am stating things overly simple I will give that right back and point out that implementing the technology he bought is nowhere near as simple as he is making it sound.

Slapshot1188

SedrynTyros said:

genaknosc said:

Slapshot is my barometer for how likely an MMO might be successful. Dude is brutal on these forums, but usually makes some good points.

He makes some excellent points at times, but he's not a prophet.  And to me, there's nothing admirable about betting on failure when your persistent rhetoric encourages that outcome.  Being brutally honest about one's opinion is fine but when it crosses over into the realm of doing little more than damaging the potential for success ... that's more difficult to respect.

I prefer to think of it as giving the developer a dose of much needed reality which perhaps might enable them to make the course adjustments (to perception or to gameplay) to succeed.

FAR more games have been sunk because of the echo-chamber of love than because someone said something mean about them on the forum.  If a great game is produced in the time it is promised it will SUCCEED, regardless of if I said something bad about it on a forum.

As I said above... TIME = MONEY.  They promise a shitload of "revolutionary features".  We are now around 9 months from the last date we were given for the 3 month head start.   We know they need more money to complete the game. They haven;t even started Alpha testing yet, and have promised fully functional "Prologue", MUD, and Kingdoms games all before the actual game launches. That would be overly ambitious for a huge team of experienced developers. The further the date gets pushed, the more money it will take.  Let's see if Jeromy will confirm that they are on target for the Kickstarter dates.

The reason all the games he listed get the benefit of the doubt (although some would argue they don't), is that Roberts, Jacobs, Gordon/Coleman have actually DELIVERED  games before.  Games people liked.  Instead, we literally have folks pictured on the Kickstarter who reference projects like THIS on their LinkedIn profile:  https://games.digipen.edu/games/f4rm#.WEwZ5bIrKJA  

So while everyone has to start somewhere, no... they don't get to put themselves on the level of established folks until they actually deliver something more than promises and screenshots.

JeromyWalsh

Instead, we literally have folks pictured on the Kickstarter who reference projects like THIS on their LinkedIn profile:  https://games.digipen.edu/games/f4rm#.WEwZ5bIrKJA  

So while everyone has to start somewhere, no... they don't get to put themselves on the level of established folks until they actually deliver something more than promises and screenshots.

Sure, we hired an engineer who graduated from DigiPen... so did Valve - so does almost every other game company in the Seattle area. But that's not the point. The point is some of the people here on MMORPG attempt to use things like the fact that we have a recent graduate on the team to demonstrate we're somehow unfit to make this game. And, you do so while selectively choosing to ignore stuff on the same page like all of our previous game studios. Previous game studios which now includes:

Microsoft Game Studios, FASA Studio, Liquid Entertainment, Snowblind Studios, Monolith, Her interactive, Sony Online Entertainment, Pandemic Studios, Bungie, The Amazing Society, Amazon Game Studios, EA, and probably a few more if I thought really hard about it.

So in addition to the neat little DigiPen game you linked, here's a list of some of the other credits from the people on our team...

* Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
* Star Wars Battlefront
* Mercenaries
* Dungeons & Dragons: Dragonshard
* The Lord of the Rings: War in the North
* Halo
* Halo 2
* Ryse: Son of Rome
* Mechwarrior 4
* F.3.A.R
* Marvel Super Hero Squad Online
* The Unmaking

And by the by, the engineer you linked from DigiPen has more passion for game development and dedication to his team than virtually any engineer I've worked with over the last 15 years. So while all you see is someone proud of their college projects, I see someone with more talent and commitment to making CoE great than virtually any other engineer we could have hired.

ConstantineMerus

JeromyWalsh said:

Dakeru said:

Redemp said:

I keep hearing more about this game, can someone please explain why they think CoE has a shot? What experience does the dev team have and are their goals realistic?

They promise AAA quality with a fragment of the usual costs, a fragment of the usual time and a fragment of the usual dev team size.

If you look around you will find epic statements by the big cheese such as:
Stop criticizing us, if we don't get the kickstarter money people will lose their jobs!
or:
That amount is all the money we need to make the game but that doesn't mean it's all the money we need.

Impressive over-simplification, but I can't fault you for that.

It's true, we're aiming for AAA quality with a fragment of the usual costs. How do we plan to do that? By licensing most of the technologies we need and making smart business decisions. Things like licensing UE4 rather than developing the necessary client technologies from scratch, and partnering up with Improbable and using SpatialOS as the core of back-end.

I suppose you could criticize us for having a goal of developing a high quality game using less resources if we had no plan on how we were going to go about doing that. But aside from specifically designing around the expensive parts, the above two things go a long way toward that end. So you could instead be inspired by our plan to do things differently. If you want to achieve different results, you have to go about doing them a different way.

If you look around one or two threads here on MMORPG.com you'll find me discussing the merits and drawbacks of Crowdfunding. One thing true of crowdfunding that's not true of publisher-funded games is that the community of players has a lot more influence over the success or failure of the game. A while back there were a couple people who seemed to make it their goal to discourage people here on MMORPG.com from backing us or taking an interest in the game. I do recall telling those people that we weren't some far removed entity, but real people, with real families, working really hard to bring a game to market for their benefit. The way I saw it, if we were a bakery and someone was standing outside our store discouraging others from entering, we'd have every right to go out and remind them their actions have consequences.

As for your final remark, we'd long stated in multiple locations we had an amount we needed from Kickstarter, but that it wasn't all we'd need to complete the game. Much like Star Citizen, Crowfall, Camelot Unchained, and virtually every other crowd-funded game on the market that has sought additional funding post-Kickstarter. Some people were surprised to learn we were going for additional funding after Kickstarter, but most were not.

In any case, we continue to work hard on an awesome game, and many people on MMORPG.com continue to be negative. I've long since abandoned any hope of changing that. People demanded we show *something* of the game, so we started sharing concepts. People demanded to see something more, so we started showing screenshots. People demanded more, so we started showing gameplay videos. People demanded more, so we went to PAX.

People still continue to doubt our abilities, motivations, and likelihood of completing CoE, and we'll continue to step up and deliver.

@JeromyWalsh Thank you for taking time and reply on an external forum. At very least it shows you care. 

I really like your ideas and the concept behind CoE. But I didn't back your game, and I have backed +100 projects on Kickstarter, ~40 of them being video games. Compared to those video games, I liked your project the most. 

The reason I didn't because your ambition didn't match the budget you were asking for. Now I know you have mentioned you have your family plot on the line - I respect that, and you were always supposed to secure more funding through other means, that can happen, I've seen it enough times to know it can happen, I've seen many projects with ~$5k seed money which attracted millions later down the road. Hope that would happen to you as well. 

My personal experience, and from what I know from your project, made me believe that you will have a lot of cut backs. You will settle down on a smaller version of vision. Now I hate nothing more than that. I'm not into 'what could have been'. 

What I know is no explanation can make what I believe go away, because plans in this state are not plans but hopes. That's why it's called an angel investor - I believe that's what you need. 

But that doesn't mean I doubt your ambition or dedication. If we'd put any company under microscope we can make a long list of stuff we'd all agree on they are doing it wrong. But we're doing that on a gaming forum behind our nicknames where we have no $ or a shred of dignity on the line ourselves. You really can't put up any rationale to make this go away. 

Best of luck!

Slapshot1188

JeromyWalsh said:

Instead, we literally have folks pictured on the Kickstarter who reference projects like THIS on their LinkedIn profile:  https://games.digipen.edu/games/f4rm#.WEwZ5bIrKJA  

So while everyone has to start somewhere, no... they don't get to put themselves on the level of established folks until they actually deliver something more than promises and screenshots.

Sure, we hired an engineer who graduated from DigiPen... so did Valve - so does almost every other game company in the Seattle area. But that's not the point. The point is some of the people here on MMORPG attempt to use things like the fact that we have a recent graduate on the team to demonstrate we're somehow unfit to make this game. And, you do so while selectively choosing to ignore stuff on the same page like all of our previous game studios. Previous game studios which now includes:

Microsoft Game Studios, FASA Studio, Liquid Entertainment, Snowblind Studios, Monolith, Her interactive, Sony Online Entertainment, Pandemic Studios, Bungie, The Amazing Society, Amazon Game Studios, EA, and probably a few more if I thought really hard about it.

So in addition to the neat little DigiPen game you linked, here's a list of some of the other credits from the people on our team...

* Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
* Star Wars Battlefront
* Mercenaries
* Dungeons & Dragons: Dragonshard
* The Lord of the Rings: War in the North
* Halo
* Halo 2
* Ryse: Son of Rome
* Mechwarrior 4
* F.3.A.R
* Marvel Super Hero Squad Online
* The Unmaking

And by the by, the engineer you linked from DigiPen has more passion for game development and dedication to his team than virtually any engineer I've worked with over the last 15 years. So while all you see is someone proud of their college projects, I see someone with more talent and commitment to making CoE great than virtually any other engineer we could have hired.


------------------------
(For some reason the quote boxes are messed up.  My response below:)

You miss the whole point of the post or at least are pretending you did.  YOU tried to tie yourself to established people like Roberts, Jacobs, Gordon/Coleman.  Funny how you selectively edited that part of my paragraph out.   The REASON those people get the benefit of the doubt (and some would argue that they do not) is because they have DELIVERED a product before.  Yes, I saw some of those titles listed on the LinkedIn profiles of your team.. but do I really care that a guy "Created conversational dialog and cinematic sequences for the Nancy Drew series" at HER Interactive?  No, it's about having been in CHARGE.  You sir, are not a legend of the gaming world as each of the other folks are.  For better or worse.  Once you actually release something resembling a playable game THEN you might have some credibility to make such a comparison. 

But let's move past that.  Can you confirm that your team is ON TARGET to release the full game in Dec 2017 as stated in the Kickstarter?  And that prior to that you will have a No Wipe Headstart 3 months earlier?  And that also prior to launch you will release fully functional  ElyriaMUD, Prologue and Kingdoms of Elyria games as well?    Do what you say and you can START to build credibility. 


If you say what you mean, and do what you say.. and actually release the game you describe in the time you describe then yes you will become a hero and have a game that I and many others would love to play.  If you don't do what you said you would do, in the time you said you would do it, then you simply become yet another guy that promised the moon but delivered cheese.

 

Azrael_Antaryon

Well, even if they deliver cheese I'd be happy, because it would be a much better cheese then all the other MMOs out there...

Slapshot1188

Antaryon89 said:

Well, even if they deliver cheese I'd be happy, because it would be a much better cheese then all the other MMOs out there...

I don't know about that.  Project:Gorgon has a whole CheeseMonger skill line...

Erevus

Slapshot1188 said:

"As speedy as things are looking I’m still skeptical of getting in the MUD, the pre-game and the game all with thorough testing by the December 2017."



And don't forget the no-wipe head start is 3 month BEFORE that. So lets assume rationally that this won't happen. What does that do to the budget where they have admitted they need millions more to get a complete game?



Time = money. Underestimate your time and you have underestimated your money. What happens when an MMO developer runs out of money?




Also, don't forget that all the money from the biggest fans has ALREADY been collected from the Kickstarter and store. People have multiple year's worth of gametime pre-paid. This to me is the Achilles heal of all the Kickstarter MMOs... they get all the revenue up front but it has to last not just to launch, but to well beyond.

Just don't forget that indie companies might as well develop a game until a certain point and then sell it to a big one for further development.
For us it's a win-win situation as long as the new owners keep the original idea.

fodell54

JeromyWalsh said:

Instead, we literally have folks pictured on the Kickstarter who reference projects like THIS on their LinkedIn profile:  https://games.digipen.edu/games/f4rm#.WEwZ5bIrKJA  

So while everyone has to start somewhere, no... they don't get to put themselves on the level of established folks until they actually deliver something more than promises and screenshots.

Sure, we hired an engineer who graduated from DigiPen... so did Valve - so does almost every other game company in the Seattle area. But that's not the point. The point is some of the people here on MMORPG attempt to use things like the fact that we have a recent graduate on the team to demonstrate we're somehow unfit to make this game. And, you do so while selectively choosing to ignore stuff on the same page like all of our previous game studios. Previous game studios which now includes:

Microsoft Game Studios, FASA Studio, Liquid Entertainment, Snowblind Studios, Monolith, Her interactive, Sony Online Entertainment, Pandemic Studios, Bungie, The Amazing Society, Amazon Game Studios, EA, and probably a few more if I thought really hard about it.

So in addition to the neat little DigiPen game you linked, here's a list of some of the other credits from the people on our team...

* Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
* Star Wars Battlefront
* Mercenaries
* Dungeons & Dragons: Dragonshard
* The Lord of the Rings: War in the North
* Halo
* Halo 2
* Ryse: Son of Rome
* Mechwarrior 4
* F.3.A.R
* Marvel Super Hero Squad Online
* The Unmaking

And by the by, the engineer you linked from DigiPen has more passion for game development and dedication to his team than virtually any engineer I've worked with over the last 15 years. So while all you see is someone proud of their college projects, I see someone with more talent and commitment to making CoE great than virtually any other engineer we could have hired.  

Funny that as a developer you would argue with a potential customer. You are setting yourself up for failure and if you're to arrogant to see it that will be your downfall. Learn to take some criticism and grow some thicker skin. If you were as experienced in this genre as you claim you wouldn't be acting like such a toddler.

The only other Dev. I've seen come here and act like this was Jason Appleton and I'm sure you'd love to have your company associated with that man. 

Good luck with your game.