Backing any sort of crowdfunded game is a risk, but I do have hopes CoE will succeed in it's endeavors. I was skeptical at first when I heard about this game, but over time Caspian and the team showed their passion in what they're trying to achieve.

Doubts are perfectly normal, and if you don't feel comfortable investing as you mentioned then all you need to do is wait. Next year will show more in terms of content, and updates if all goes well and no delays hinder them for too long. :)

I can understand where you are coming from, and as said quite well above that it is always a risk. I was won over by the passion and the transparency of the group of developers. I figured such an open group has the best chance to succeed what they want to do.

I have a hard time showing this game off to my other friends without good solid footage. All I mostly have are dreams and words. And pretty much saying yes multiple times they can do this, and that, back to this again. Anyway enough of my idealistic rant, I would wait a year for solid footage that can be shown to the public.

As Xeyska said, any sort of investment comes with potential risk, but it also comes with potential reward. When you put money in the stock market, you do so expecting it to grow, but there's the chance you may lose it.

The risk in this case is that the game slips more or never actually launches. While schedule slips are very common in software development, especially among small indy teams, I at least feel very confident about the current schedule. I came to the game "late" (a few weeks ago) but I've been reading/watching old Q&As and dev journals and things feel much more certain now. In the July State of Elyria Caspian mentioned that since December they have expanded their engineering team by "several hundred percent", so it sounds like SBS has certainly made the investment to be successful. I forget where I read it (I thought it was the SoE, but I couldn't find it in there), but he also recently said that when they started they did so under the assumption that they would be able to grow the team rapidly, but that didn't happen. It took longer than expected to find the right talent, but it sounds like they've finally found it.

Jousting has been such a big thing lately because that's what they wanted to show off at PAX West. It's hard to demo an MMO, especially one that is still pre-alpha, so they picked one thing and focused heavily on that. I'm hoping that over the next few weeks we'll start seeing other new content.

So now let's talk about the potential reward of investing. The reward is that you help CoE become the reality that you are hoping it becomes, but on top of that each tier has other perks such as mounts, titles, custom surnames, etc. The reason SBS was able to add so many new engineers is because of the backing of the community. If everyone sat on their hands saying "I'll play it safe and wait until it comes out to buy it" then it never would have gotten off the ground. If you are certain you would play the game when it finally does come out (i.e., if you're willing to pay the money anyway), then IMO you should go ahead and invest.

I'll make it personal for a sec. I started small. My initial pledge was Pioneer ($70), but each month I'm putting $20-30 away and slowly upping my pledge over time (currently at Bloodline and my goal is to eventually reach Mayor). That's $20-30 a month that I could be spending on other games and things I enjoy, but frankly I don't want to wait for CoE any longer than I have to, so by upping my pledge I can get earlier access to the Betas and Alphas.

Personally, it would hurt me to drop $250 on a game right now that I wouldn't even begin to play in Alpha for another year, but I'm effectively only spending about $25 a month on it. It also helps keep my excited about the game and I'm finding other ways to enjoy it until I can play it, such as getting involved in the community and even writing fan fiction. I wouldn't do any of that it I wasn't invested in the game.

*waves pompoms*

It is always best to do a background check on the game you are backing. I personally couldn't find anything bad about Soulbound studios, so it was worth a gamble. There is a certain company, who's name has only two characters, who I will never invest in to let them develop a game I want to play :)

Also listen very careful at what they are promising. In a certain game, which failed, the developers promised a quintrillion planets. That was my reason to walk away.

I'd initially become aware of this game around February of this year, when I was searching on google "games in pre-alpha/in development". Came across "Chronicles of Elyria" and searched it up on YouTube and found their channel, then watched numerous videos (mainly the Q&As) and become interested in the game since then.

Only until mid September was when I actually signed up on the site and and pledged $100 into Founder, a week later I added another $125 for the Proprietor pledge and I plan to continue to Mayor soon.

It took about 6-7 months for me to actually invest money into the game, but I believe that it was well worth it, seeing that the game has been going in a good direction for some time now.

Posted By Rajikii at 02:52 AM - Thu Oct 05 2017

Wow, that was fast. Well at least the community is already awesome. Thanks for the food for thought, I will probably invest once I see somthing more substantial, in terms of gameplay.

Good to hear you already like the community, as it will be a big part of the game. For your question, I myself invested in the game early this year knowing that it would be a gamble (made some bad gambles in the years). But the dedication passion and the community won me over, Also the way the team gives information (Q&A blogs chitchats) were a big plus for me.

All in all I have a feeling we will be seeing some early gamefootage in a short while. Next year will be a big year (and important) year for COE and SBS.

Posted By Rajikii at

I've been obsessed with this game since early 2016. I've seen sbs grow and create a lot of content. However lately they have made jousting and tribes the only new things i can sink my teeth into (new textures and animations look great). I'm starting to worry I wont see ship, crafting, trade, lifeskill, contract gameplay soon. I fear this game will be delayed again. So what I'm trying to say is I don't feel comfortable investing. What are your thoughts? I just want to see solid gameplay first.

The community is extremely welcoming and very helpful, so if You do want more insight into everything I would suggest joining the kingdoms as well as the CoE discord so that you can also hear more from everyone and bounce ideas.

As it stands you have to remember too that there is a long time between now and when the game comes out, they have shown some of the cool things introduced with professions and such like mini games which is really awesome and interesting!

I feel like in it's current state they're working on the bigger pictures and it makes me really excited to see the professions and the details that they will go into for those from seeing the detail that they have gone into so far with everything else. ^.^

So I hope that in due time you are proven the worth and cave like us and join us in this venture!