Today I am going to rant/try to get you to get on a game.
Last week I discovered this beautiful gem called Chronicles of Elyria. A game that has progressive research, deep immersion and permadeath.
The game drops you in an unknown world playing human like Mann, or rather, their souls. Like Ark this game is persistent(as in, your character doesn’t vanish upon logging out, it will actually be taken over by an AI(you can give tasks to it) until you log in) and as such you’ll need things like food, water, shelter and the gods know what more.
Your character will age and eventually die. You are more physically capable when you are young then when you are old, but old age comes with wisdom and as such you are better at the mental stuff of life. You also want to get a family going, which helps you in your next life(s), with finance, resources and getting back to life. Didn’t I mention that? If you die you have to do this spirit walking, the younger you are, the longer the time you have, and family gives you a reason to live and thus extend that meter a bit. So yeah, that’s the game in a very tiny nutshell, you can read more about it here, and even more about it here.
And I am extremely excited about it.
Not so much because of what I named(and really, it does no justice), but more so because I thought of a game like this way back when I first heard of The Sims 2(yes, that game). The game was described as new, progressive and able to live lives from a broad view. That was somewhere in 2003-4. The Sims 2 badly dissapointed me(though, was still enjoyable) because of the things I had dreamed up about that game.

What had I dreamt up? Well, in my mind you could go anywhere you wanted and you could discover things, even new technology. Now, from there(really liking this concept in my head) I expanded upon it when I heard bits and pieces about Spore(it was announced in 2005), namely the parts of being able to piece things together and make new technology happen and progress from the Stone Age all the way up to modern times. I dreamt that there would be this big MMO where players would be free to do what they wanted, and started in(or around) the Stone Age. Progression was up to them. Literally. You wanted bronze swords? Go find, mine and process Tin and Copper and figure out the right mixture to get Bronze, then fiddle with that until you’d get a Bronze Sword. All the while you’d need to survive as well, and others would most likely be jealous of you, etc. Point was, progress could be hard to do. (oh, and all the things would be player created, via a similar interface spore had, some shapes you put together to make item X, which you can use to assemble item Y, and so on and so forth. No pre-made shit from the devs)
Chronicles of Elyria does not do this exactly, however, it DOES keep research in, with which you progress. And it does let you make a Dynasty over your lives(your soul travels to a new vessel when the old one decides to break down permanently). And the best part? No levels, EVERYTHING is skillbased, like it should. A new skilled player can still poke an experienced lesser skilled player full of holes, very much unlike most other MMO’s where a lvl 90 laughs so hard at the level 50 trying to hit him.

 

It’s a very ambitious project, which is already 8 years in the making(albeit with a very small team most of that time), but it has already reached it’s goal. And for my sanity’s sake I hope they succeed in bringing this beast to surface and rock the world. I want my dream to be truly realized by some smart-ass dev and loose myself properly in that game and build myself from stone age to modern age and beyond. And SoulBound Studios(creators of Chronicles of Elyria) has added to that dream; I now want to build a family alongside that progress as well, myself reincarnating every so often to view the progress to new eyes and add to it.
And only for that I wish to thank them from the bottom of my heart.

 

Musica Maestro!

First of we start a bit dolente(sad that is 😉 )with Wrong Side of Heaven by Five Finger Death Punch. I really must warn you here, this thing get’s to me, but is so powerful.

Second of is a popsong from yesteryear, Thrift Shop by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

Third off is Bliss by Muse