I really don't see how the game failing is at all relevant to Pantheon. At the minimum, it means that those who were fans of the project are open to poaching and Pantheon being in yet another place to capture additional prospective people if the PA5 and or Alpha release is something worth while.
I see it as slightly good news for this project, much less so for that one.
The biggest criticism about COE that I've seen is that they continued taking (and asking for) money from people up until a week or two ago. If things are so bad that your shutting down, you know it far longer in advance than a couple weeks before it happens.
Based on what was previously shown to what was recently shown, the game appears to be a bait-n-switch. PROTF has shown the actual game from the very beginning, even when things didn't look great. I'm not worried.
The worst part about this is that it will put a bad taste in the mouth of people who support crowd funded games.
On March 24th I posted a “State of Elyria” update for our game, Chronicles of Elyria, to our blog. In that post, I informed our community that, due to the under-performance of our recent Settlers of Elyria event and the economic impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic, I had made the hard decision to lay off staff and suspend development. However, it was my aim to leave the blog post with a message of hope that we could find a way to secure additional funding, honor your pledge package rewards, and deliver the game we promised.
In retrospect, I understand that the message might have been interpreted in many ways, for which I take full responsibility. To correct any misunderstandings going forward, let me clarify the status of Chronicles of Elyria.
Game development is a challenging endeavor, even under the best of circumstances. Working on a project as ambitious as ours, while requiring on-going backer-supported funding at the same time, makes it even more demanding. Over the course of this project, our financing has fluctuated greatly, but I have always tried to keep my amazing team of programmers and artists motivated and employed. This has always been a priority because it is the best way to deliver the kind of product we have promised.
The March 24th statement was ultimately born out of a concern for the development team and their opportunity to secure alternative paying work as quickly as possible, as well as an awareness of our community’s need to prioritize secure food and shelter during this time instead of additional contributions to an in-development game. It also came from a very emotional place, as I am invested in Chronicles of Elyria as much as anyone. But, at the time, I couldn’t yet see how to move forward.
It was never my intent to permanently end the development of the game, disregard your contributions, or fail to deliver what we promised. In fact, several of the team members have agreed to continue development while I find solutions. I and a team of advisers are currently investigating other sources of funding and hope to have more concrete news for you soon. In the coming days, I’ll be posting a more detailed FAQ and will strive to be more transparent and clear in my communication as I work through possible ways forward. I humbly ask for your patience as I begin the process of rebuilding your trust.
Sincerely,
Jeromy Walsh, CEO & Founder
Soulbound Studios, LLC
Not to go too far off topic, but Camelot Unchained (another crowd funded MMO) recently announced they are starting a new game. They claim the new game will help CU but of course people are upset. The feeling on the Internet is that CU angel investors want something on the market now so they are moving to make an easier to design game first to sell, then move back to CU. Either way, I can understand why people who crowd funded CU are upset.
A lot of things seem strange about that shut down to me. First and foremost their posts and website sound like they a. They may have had other options to continue and didn’t like them and b. Their development hit several surprises that spooked investors
Being in engineering R&D, I’ve seen a lot of projects fail because the management is not committed enough to ride out rough seas. I don’t think we have that problem here at VR. The other major thing I’ve seen is projects fail because of poor planning resulting in poor execution. I never got the feeling that the VR team wasn’t committed. I do get the feeling like they’re feeling the pressure to rush. Another pitfall to be sure in rushing, but there’s nothing bad about pressure IMO as long as your team is competent and willing to tackle things head on.
It makes me feel really good to see things like the test simulator. Nothing takes my motivation like those gut-punch epiphany moments when you roll out all your work and the prototype breaks down. There’s a time for lots of trial and error in the dev process. As we say “it wouldn’t be R&D if we knew what we were doing”. But once a path is committed that will destroy the execution time and fail the business model eventually.
Do the execution without the proper Vision and research though, and you had better get ready for all those gut punches...it sounds a little like maybe that’s what happened to Elyria.
Am I the only one who had absolutely had zero interest in this game? From the 20th of march pre alpha footage the game looked like an unpolished turd at best. It looked as if someone actually tried to make chicken soup out of chicken sh*t and im trying to be polite about what they did to my eyes but it was horrific at best. On the other hand every bit ot Pantheon footage I have seen looks significantly better then what CoE showed. Even the 5 year old video's are significantly better. So what I want to know is anyone even upset that this game failed? Other then the potential impacts it will have on other crowd funded MMO's Was anyone actually interested in playing this game and if so what aspects of this trailer park abortion peeked your interest?
SugarWood said:Am I the only one who had absolutely had zero interest in this game? From the 20th of march pre alpha footage the game looked like an unpolished turd at best. It looked as if someone actually tried to make chicken soup out of chicken sh*t and im trying to be polite about what they did to my eyes but it was horrific at best. On the other hand every bit ot Pantheon footage I have seen looks significantly better then what CoE showed. Even the 5 year old video's are significantly better. So what I want to know is anyone even upset that this game failed? Other then the potential impacts it will have on other crowd funded MMO's Was anyone actually interested in playing this game and if so what aspects of this trailer park abortion peeked your interest?
No your not the only one that had no interest. Its an investment of time you have to sync into these games and for some of us, we clearly are not interested. Pantheon might be my last MMO actually. Seeing as not much is being developed i have not much interests in any game.
My own opinion? These things happen..'best laid plans of mice and men" as it were. Just because one or two companies have failed doesn't mean there will be an immediate failure of all others...we aren't playing dominoes here. I have stuck by VR and Pantheon for a long time now, sure there are or were bumps and hiccups ..but those should be items to learn from. I give our Devs a lot of credit they have come a long way over time, and they are STILL HERE..despite our loss of Aradune last November. Stick to it VR ..keep on truckin' we'll get this baby out the door...do it for Brad. Love to you all. :)
Cana
Crazzie said:SugarWood said:Am I the only one who had absolutely had zero interest in this game? From the 20th of march pre alpha footage the game looked like an unpolished turd at best. It looked as if someone actually tried to make chicken soup out of chicken sh*t and im trying to be polite about what they did to my eyes but it was horrific at best. On the other hand every bit ot Pantheon footage I have seen looks significantly better then what CoE showed. Even the 5 year old video's are significantly better. So what I want to know is anyone even upset that this game failed? Other then the potential impacts it will have on other crowd funded MMO's Was anyone actually interested in playing this game and if so what aspects of this trailer park abortion peeked your interest?
No your not the only one that had no interest. Its an investment of time you have to sync into these games and for some of us, we clearly are not interested. Pantheon might be my last MMO actually. Seeing as not much is being developed i have not much interests in any game.
Honestly it wasn't even on my radar. :)
Cana
disposalist said:I hadn't been following it closely, but have looked into it a bit now. Wow. To compare almost anything about CoE and Soulbound Studios to Pantheon and Visionary Realms is just laughable.
What SS did was pretty much a protracted smoke-and-mirrors show culminating in a fraud.
To pick just one recent aspect, their pre-alpha, it consisted of, in one YouTuber's words, a "shitty parcours tech demo that looks nothing like the game they advertised and has no MMO features".
The Pantheon pre-alpha has shown a fully playable group MMO. Not feature complete or content complete, but already enjoyable as an actual multi-player RPG.
I don't want to break NDA, but we've seen it in so many streams, that I will risk saying what I experienced was actually engrossing and fun enough for many hours to often forget I was supposed to be testing (sorry!) Already a good game (and that's pre Project Farthaele).
The CoE plan was always to get a publisher, but they didn't tell their backers that and, unsurprisingly given the lack of anything to show, they couldn't get a publisher and had to close.
Again, VR is in nothing like this situation.
Being worried about VR and the industry as a whole because of CoE and SS is like being worried about your financial advisor and their industry because you heard about someone else's advisor turning out to be a conman and embezzling their money.
Maybe I've got it wrong, but if so, so have a lot of people much more knowledgeable about it than me.
Also, as I keep saying - and am getting criticised for *shrug* I guess I'm just a White Knight fanboi - worrying about it and producing negative, speculative posts will achieve *nothing* but maybe putting off potential backers. Nothing.
P.S. The vid @Geoffrey links above, from TheLazyPeon, seems to cover the issue well.
If anything, the CoE SS debacle makes me feel *more* confident about Pantheon and VR, because it has none of the symptoms and tells that CoE and it's developers did.
P.P.S. I feel bad for anyone who backed CoE. *hugs*
Agree Disposalist..when I see comments about vaporware referencing Pantheon I just laugh out loud. Sometimes I think those comments (mainly on Facebook) are because the authors want to "play" the game and haven't put a penny towards supporting Pantheon's development. I think the term is: "sour grapes" can't have what you want so "diss it" heh I can vouch that the game exists is not vaporware and time flies by wayyyyyy too fast inside. :)
Cana
