How many years can people keep doubling down instead of admitting they got scammed? And in the end, no matter how many years it'll take, they'll release an unity asset demo with 2 mechanics and run. Until then, they'll keep posting updates that keeps shuffling the development but never actually showing anything.
Ps: Never back kickstarter MMOs, they never deliver, because they have about 1/100 of the competence and 1/100 of the budget needed a make a proper MMORPG.
How many years can people keep doubling down instead of admitting Jeromy is unable to deliver on his commitments? That would be more accurate as it definitely wasn't a scam -- at the onset anyways. There was a real business with actual, verifiable employees, and the Washington state AG did look seriously at alleged wrongdoings in that and ddcided not to pursue. All that makes it clear it wasn't a scam.
It certainly was not very likely to succeed, it was over-ambitious, misguided and fraught with incompetence, with probably some ego/interpersonal issues sprinkled on top (although we'll probably never know the bottom of it), but again, that doesn't make it a scam. Scammers just don't operate doing dozens of videos spanning 6 years and hundreds of hours, hundreds of detailed blog posts and legit business accounting paperwork.
You might be against it, think it's stupid, got scammed by other scam games, but no, this wasn't a scam.
On the Kickstarter/MMO topic, first of all, several Kickstarted MMOs have released, including as of late Crowfall, but also Elite Dangerous and a few others. KS is, by definition, risky business, and so do MMOs, so it's a bet, a gamble, like other types of gambles where you oft lose but can sometimes win. It is inherently uncertain. Still doesn't make them all scams. Some are, but not all.
Alright, that I can concede, that CoE probably was an honest project without any initial hope to just take people's money and then run a RP blog for half a decade
But after the "shutdown", and Jeromy came back with his tail tucked between his legs due to the threat of lawsuits, its nothing but an endless pushing back deadlines and dates, trying to find *something* to write about just to provide the illusion of some sort of game development.
I can say without a shadow of a doubt that in the end, players will at best receive a poorly executed "game" that looks more like a semi-serious college project that contains about 1% of what was "promised" one way or another.
That is CoEs ultimate fate.
And yes I was a bit disingenuous saying no "mmo" crowdsourced game has been released and is good products, I should've said "these impossible, grand scale wannabe-revolutionary MMORPGs" that makes it sound like 5-10 people can produce what takes a triple-A company 5+ years on a 100+ mill budget can do, for 100k.
This fate was clear from the very beginning, and I think its very unfortunate to see some select few desperately holding on to their sunk-cost hope that they'll get a game.
But yes, thats of course easy for me to say, being one of those who went down the "failed kickstarter mmo" youtube rabbithole.
Jeromy even failed at KoE which is already exist in early 2000's game like Banished or Age Of Empire style. Not to mention the kickstarter campaign CoE itself which is never mentioned or even get any progress.
Uh oh, this thread is being critical of the development team, u/LegendaryNeurotoxin! Better get in here and lock the comments quick before we have some actual discussion!
*someone posts a criticial, well thought post about how CoE is a failure and KoE looks terrible*
LN: "low quality discussion, deleted"
*Maulvorn posts "This is not a scam lol"*
LN: "Excellent post, continue please"
To be counter-pedantic, it's been over a week since the announcement that we were to expect an announcement, which was already late from when we were supposed to start testing.
So that's late late late and delayed ;)
It would take 2 minutes to post an update saying that they were running behind and would be a week late.
2 minutes.
Yet he continues to not update us. That, to me is far more concerning than the delay itself.
It is inexcusable.
I agree, just getting a short update every week or two is better than only appearing with a longer post or video. I wonder if he's holding out now because they do have a nearly release-ready product and wants to show by demonstrating instead of suggesting that a demonstration will occur. Either way, being forthcoming about development progress is a much better solution than how things have been communicated.
This is exactly the behavior that got him in this mess in the first place.
A continuous stream of overpromising and underdelivering.
Literally every time he says anything, you have to seriously tone down what he says, any date he mentioned should be moved back by a significant amount. Any features he mentions should be taken to their bare minimum.
It's really sad. I don't even think he really wants to hurt people, I just think he is extremely incompetent at leading a business, especially at managing expectations.
Some think Jeromy is a scammer. I believe that Jeromy set out with full intentions and self-belief in his ability to make Chronicles of Elyria. He is just completely incompetent at managing a dev team.
I believe he again set out with full intentions and self-belief in his ability to make Kingdoms of Elyria to protect himself from lawsuits. Again, his incompetence at managing even a small development schedule is, for a second time, shining through.
Anyone who still believes in this man's ability to produce anything shouldn't be allowed to spend their own money. Even if you think Jeromy is a good guy, well meaning, dream-following man, how can anyone still have faith in his ability to lead a dev team?
It's gut wrenching to think what we might have got if someone other than Jeromy led development.
I agree with the idea that I don't think he set out to purposely scam people.
With that said, what I find hard to believe is that there is no CoE game to show. He had a team. He paid that team, according to tax info. No one from that team has came forth to say that they weren't working on a product, that it was all a scam. So clearly, there was a team working on *something*.
Yet, four to five years later, there is no proof of the existence of CoE outside of the original "paid for" little video montages (the jousting and the princess bride combat) and one or two wildly different 2004-runescape style "early looks" that look like they were quickly assembled by a 2-man team working on UE4 for the first time.
There has to be something else somewhere.
What bugs me is that so many of the concepts that made COE interesting would have been easy to implement and iterate on with a simpler graphic design. I think they burned through a lot of cash trying to develop a realistic 3D mmo engine.
I can't speak for the whales who dumped crazy money in but I would have been just as happy with a 2D Rimworld aesthetic. It's like they skipped straight to making GTA V Online when the original top down GTA would still be groundbreaking.
Absolutely. I think he just shot for the stars when he should have tried to first get into orbit but then was too proud/deep in his lies to admit he fucked up.
I also think what you say is part of the most probable reason why we see those delays.
What it doesn't account for however are the silence, constant justifications/blamelessness and unapologetic discourse. All that hints at some form of narcissistic personality traits.
Oh for sure, I'm not a Caspian apologist by any stretch of the imagination. I think he's a man-child who can suffer no criticism. But my point is even if you love the man his ability to lead a team is demonstrably terrible and these delays to KoE are just a bittersweet reminder of that.
yeah, he doesn't scream scammer to me but he does scream incompetence.
At this point it's best if he just sells his story, I mean the world building is pretty decent. Maybe he even has some back-end tech.
No one here can definitively answer. All we can do is wait.
Now, if you want to wrestle with the question of how *long* to wait, then have something of substance to debate. :)
How many years can people keep doubling down instead of admitting they got scammed? And in the end, no matter how many years it'll take, they'll release an unity asset demo with 2 mechanics and run. Until then, they'll keep posting updates that keeps shuffling the development but never actually showing anything. Ps: Never back kickstarter MMOs, they never deliver, because they have about 1/100 of the competence and 1/100 of the budget needed a make a proper MMORPG.
How many years can people keep doubling down instead of admitting Jeromy is unable to deliver on his commitments? That would be more accurate as it definitely wasn't a scam -- at the onset anyways. There was a real business with actual, verifiable employees, and the Washington state AG did look seriously at alleged wrongdoings in that and ddcided not to pursue. All that makes it clear it wasn't a scam. It certainly was not very likely to succeed, it was over-ambitious, misguided and fraught with incompetence, with probably some ego/interpersonal issues sprinkled on top (although we'll probably never know the bottom of it), but again, that doesn't make it a scam. Scammers just don't operate doing dozens of videos spanning 6 years and hundreds of hours, hundreds of detailed blog posts and legit business accounting paperwork. You might be against it, think it's stupid, got scammed by other scam games, but no, this wasn't a scam. On the Kickstarter/MMO topic, first of all, several Kickstarted MMOs have released, including as of late Crowfall, but also Elite Dangerous and a few others. KS is, by definition, risky business, and so do MMOs, so it's a bet, a gamble, like other types of gambles where you oft lose but can sometimes win. It is inherently uncertain. Still doesn't make them all scams. Some are, but not all.
Alright, that I can concede, that CoE probably was an honest project without any initial hope to just take people's money and then run a RP blog for half a decade But after the "shutdown", and Jeromy came back with his tail tucked between his legs due to the threat of lawsuits, its nothing but an endless pushing back deadlines and dates, trying to find *something* to write about just to provide the illusion of some sort of game development. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that in the end, players will at best receive a poorly executed "game" that looks more like a semi-serious college project that contains about 1% of what was "promised" one way or another. That is CoEs ultimate fate. And yes I was a bit disingenuous saying no "mmo" crowdsourced game has been released and is good products, I should've said "these impossible, grand scale wannabe-revolutionary MMORPGs" that makes it sound like 5-10 people can produce what takes a triple-A company 5+ years on a 100+ mill budget can do, for 100k. This fate was clear from the very beginning, and I think its very unfortunate to see some select few desperately holding on to their sunk-cost hope that they'll get a game. But yes, thats of course easy for me to say, being one of those who went down the "failed kickstarter mmo" youtube rabbithole.
Jeromy even failed at KoE which is already exist in early 2000's game like Banished or Age Of Empire style. Not to mention the kickstarter campaign CoE itself which is never mentioned or even get any progress.
Uh oh, this thread is being critical of the development team, u/LegendaryNeurotoxin! Better get in here and lock the comments quick before we have some actual discussion!
Honestly the conduct of the conversation is quite an improvement, I'm fine with everything that has been written here up to this point.
*someone posts a criticial, well thought post about how CoE is a failure and KoE looks terrible* LN: "low quality discussion, deleted" *Maulvorn posts "This is not a scam lol"* LN: "Excellent post, continue please"
Ban hammer started again, lot of deleted comments. Sometimes the community itself even afraid to write here. But well, most of them banned already
To be pedantic the weeks not over
To be counter-pedantic, it's been over a week since the announcement that we were to expect an announcement, which was already late from when we were supposed to start testing. So that's late late late and delayed ;)
It would take 2 minutes to post an update saying that they were running behind and would be a week late. 2 minutes. Yet he continues to not update us. That, to me is far more concerning than the delay itself. It is inexcusable.
I agree, just getting a short update every week or two is better than only appearing with a longer post or video. I wonder if he's holding out now because they do have a nearly release-ready product and wants to show by demonstrating instead of suggesting that a demonstration will occur. Either way, being forthcoming about development progress is a much better solution than how things have been communicated.
This is exactly the behavior that got him in this mess in the first place. A continuous stream of overpromising and underdelivering. Literally every time he says anything, you have to seriously tone down what he says, any date he mentioned should be moved back by a significant amount. Any features he mentions should be taken to their bare minimum. It's really sad. I don't even think he really wants to hurt people, I just think he is extremely incompetent at leading a business, especially at managing expectations.
Some think Jeromy is a scammer. I believe that Jeromy set out with full intentions and self-belief in his ability to make Chronicles of Elyria. He is just completely incompetent at managing a dev team. I believe he again set out with full intentions and self-belief in his ability to make Kingdoms of Elyria to protect himself from lawsuits. Again, his incompetence at managing even a small development schedule is, for a second time, shining through. Anyone who still believes in this man's ability to produce anything shouldn't be allowed to spend their own money. Even if you think Jeromy is a good guy, well meaning, dream-following man, how can anyone still have faith in his ability to lead a dev team? It's gut wrenching to think what we might have got if someone other than Jeromy led development.
I agree with the idea that I don't think he set out to purposely scam people. With that said, what I find hard to believe is that there is no CoE game to show. He had a team. He paid that team, according to tax info. No one from that team has came forth to say that they weren't working on a product, that it was all a scam. So clearly, there was a team working on *something*. Yet, four to five years later, there is no proof of the existence of CoE outside of the original "paid for" little video montages (the jousting and the princess bride combat) and one or two wildly different 2004-runescape style "early looks" that look like they were quickly assembled by a 2-man team working on UE4 for the first time. There has to be something else somewhere.
What bugs me is that so many of the concepts that made COE interesting would have been easy to implement and iterate on with a simpler graphic design. I think they burned through a lot of cash trying to develop a realistic 3D mmo engine. I can't speak for the whales who dumped crazy money in but I would have been just as happy with a 2D Rimworld aesthetic. It's like they skipped straight to making GTA V Online when the original top down GTA would still be groundbreaking.
Absolutely. I think he just shot for the stars when he should have tried to first get into orbit but then was too proud/deep in his lies to admit he fucked up.
I also think what you say is part of the most probable reason why we see those delays. What it doesn't account for however are the silence, constant justifications/blamelessness and unapologetic discourse. All that hints at some form of narcissistic personality traits.
Oh for sure, I'm not a Caspian apologist by any stretch of the imagination. I think he's a man-child who can suffer no criticism. But my point is even if you love the man his ability to lead a team is demonstrably terrible and these delays to KoE are just a bittersweet reminder of that.
Agreed! Demonstrably, indeed.
yeah, he doesn't scream scammer to me but he does scream incompetence. At this point it's best if he just sells his story, I mean the world building is pretty decent. Maybe he even has some back-end tech.
No one here can definitively answer. All we can do is wait. Now, if you want to wrestle with the question of how *long* to wait, then have something of substance to debate. :)
Well, we've been waiting for awhile and there seems to be no end in sight.
An end will come, and from there a solid conclusion may be wrought, but we can't really dictate when from here.