The Prologue and CoE Adventure Toolkit (build your own adventures for friends);

Slapshot1188

In the State of Elyria from Caspien last summer he announced another revolutionary idea.   In addition to the long-promised and delayed "Prologue" single player game, they would make available a "CoE Adventure Toolkit" which would allow the creation of adventures for groups of 5-10 players.  

Delay of Prologue
The first topic I wanted to address is the delay of Prologue. When we first started CoE we intended to use the Prologue as both an introduction to the lore and story of the game, as well as a way to get player feedback on the client-side mechanics of the game. That is, how does the game feel. The idea was for the Prologue to include some of the crafting professions, some of the combat mechanics, a small sample area, and the ability to craft, fight, move around, equip/unequip things, open your inventory and paper-doll, etc. Basically, a small sample-set of everything that doesn't really require a network connection to validate.

Well, there were a few problems with that plan.

1. The combination of lore/story, and game-play mechanics means we're simultaneously working on curated, hand-crafted content as we're working on procedural, dynamic world-building systems. This is counter-productive and requires a huge amount of content team resources when we should be relying on our procedural systems.
2. Because the Prologue was intended to be so early in development, it limits the number of crafting skills, combat mechanics, and professions that would be testable.
3. Because Prologue was early in development, by the time the game was ready to launch, the lore/story would no longer be fresh in peoples' minds, which lowers anticipation and excitement for launch day.
4. All the things we wanted to test with Prologue, can also be tested in Alpha 1, as that provides an even more accurate assessment, as it includes latency and other online artifacts.

For the above reasons, we've decided to postpone the Prologue until closer to launch, just before Exposition and Beta. But that comes with benefits as well. It means there will be more content available for people to experience in the Prologue, it'll provide more build-up to launch, and most importantly - we'll already have our world-building systems and architecture tools in place.

So we've decided to not only change the timing of the Prologue, but also release a purchasable add-on to the Prologue called the CoE Adventure Toolkit. While the Prologue itself will be free to download and play as a solo experience, those who are interested can purchase the add-on to build buildings and structures, generate and layout settlements, dungeons, quests, adventures, and more. Those creations can then be shared with the community and played-through with maybe 5-10 friends. We're not sure which approach we're going to take yet, but this will either be run as a locally-hosted version of a mini-CoE Game Server, or deployed to our cloud.

But whichever approach we take, this will allow you to - before the launch of Chronicles of Elyria - create your own unique quests and adventures, and invite players onto your server to experience the adventures you've created. Additional content SBS creates will be made available to purchase as content packs so you can continue to expand your adventures with more creatures, animals, and environments.

We'll have more information about the CoE Adventure Toolkit and game servers in 2018.

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As far as I know, that is the last we have heard of this.  2018 is coming to a close.  Honestly, I think THIS would have been a better product for them to tackle before trying to make an overly ambitious MMORPG.  Has there been any further word on this? Is it still planned for early 2019 release? Any other details?  Or is this promising idea going to go the way of ElyriaMud and VoxElyria?

I have never understood how the lore/story would be related as this would be isolated and each server has it's own map, terrain, cities and kingdoms... but regardless, it still seemed like a fun idea IF it was properly implemented.  I know, a super long shot but certainly more likely than the launch of the full MMORPG...

So does anyone have further info to share?

SpottyGekko

Given that it was proposed as a "purchasable add-on"  to the Prologue, I'd imagine the chances are very good that it will appear at some point.

ElyriaMud and VoxElyria got canned, sure, but neither of those were going to raise any new revenue iirc.

Albatroes

Can they just put this limp horse down and go back to finding real jobs?

Slapshot1188

SpottyGekko said:

Given that it was proposed as a "purchasable add-on"  to the Prologue, I'd imagine the chances are very good that it will appear at some point.

ElyriaMud and VoxElyria got canned, sure, but neither of those were going to raise any new revenue iirc.

True, but it is based on the “free” Prologue. I just think they would have been better off focusing on something like this first and then turning to the MMO. Unfortunately it appears to me that it’s almost an after thought and not a true focus which is a shame because I see a lot of potential in a “build your own adventure” toolkit that lets you trade/sell modules and can be played by up to 10 players at a time...

Galadourn

Albatroes said:

Can they just put this limp horse down and go back to finding real jobs?

No, because then they would have to refund all the backers....

Slapshot1188

Galadourn said:

Albatroes said:

Can they just put this limp horse down and go back to finding real jobs?

No, because then they would have to refund all the backers....

I think the Adventure Toolkit would give them much needed revenue and buy them time to learn how to build an MMO.

GeezerGamer

Have they......you know.......coded anything yet? 

Kyleran

GeezerGamer said:

Have they......you know.......coded anything yet? 

Supposedly yes according to Caspian,  but not that anyone has really seen in action.

Nubz_Unite

Kyleran said:

GeezerGamer said:

Have they......you know.......coded anything yet? 

Supposedly yes according to Caspian,  but not that anyone has really seen in action.

They have showcased two feature demos at PAX now first was the Silverun mine that focused on parkour, and second was the jousting tournament. So they have made things but whether or not they have made similar progress across all features is unlikely.