Akashic Records – Developers and the Lore

~ victoriarachel ~ 1 Comment

Welcome back to the Akashic Records. A series of posts about the lore of Chronicles of Elyria.  In this post, we are not going to look at a certain feature of the lore but instead, focus on a post made by the developers about their attitude to lore as a whole.

There are several parts to lore in my opinion ‘background’, ‘progress’ and ‘engagement’. Soulbound Studios seem to have already considered them all as Jeromy ‘Caspian’ Walsh told us in a thread about In-game Lore started by Luccheno. He started by talking about some of the backgrounds for the game:

To me, the lore of a world is a combination of cultural norms, religious beliefs, mythology, cosmology, and ancient history. All of these exist in Chronicles of Elyria. Continue reading →

Journal Abridged – Time, Aging, and Offline Player Characters

Aging in Chronicles of Elyria
~ victoriarachel ~ 2 Comments

This series takes the Developers Journals and gives you a run down of the key information covered. This is the bare bones, just the straight talking facts if you want discussion there will be an accompanying Journal Discussed article which will be posted later in the week.

Chronicles of Elyria’s has a lot of interesting features but the dynamic nature of your characters is one my favourites, as I discussed previously in my post about aging. This week’s developer journal expands on the topics of Time, Aging, and Offline Player Characters so head to MMORPG.com to read it in full or read the abridged version here (or, of course, you can do both!). Continue reading →

Forum Finds – Player Housing

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All sorts of things have appeared on the forums for Chronicles of Elyria in the last few days that are worthy of a blog post, but some of them will have to wait. Housing was confirmed. Okay, of the regular forum goers it may just have been me that didn’t realise it was definitely in, but I am going to celebrate none the less. So I have combed the forums and pulled together all the scraps we have so far.

Houses will be available at launch. Houses are absolutely essential. Cheers!

Continue reading →

Forum Finds – Time Cycles

Chronicles of Elyria Universe
~ victoriarachel ~ 6 Comments

The Chronicles of Elyria forums have just had their first makeover showing that the developers are at least listening to their community when it comes to making the important changes, the forums are a serious business after all. The developers are still using the forums to engage and are responding to questions about all sorts. Some of the most interesting news pops up in unexpected places, which means it is easy to miss like this week’s forum find.

In a thread about the price of the game started by community member kingfighsher, things took some interesting turns. From the price, to price per life, to how long a life was, to how quickly time passes for your character, ending up at the time cycles of the world. Yep, the community moves quickly! It was that point that the ever watching Jeromy ‘Caspian’ Walsh stepped in with this post which starts a little something like this:

There is a day/night cycle, and changing season. However, Elyria’s day/night cycle is longer than Earths, and there are fewer days per season. The end result is the game will shift between night and day at a comfortable rate (a few times per RL day), with seasonal effects changing ever so slightly over a 24 hour period of time. After four RL days you’ll be back where you started.

This builds a picture of the world we are all going to be living in, and I mean living. It is features like this that make worlds feel alive. Aesthetic changes during play time keep the world interesting. They encourage you to stay longer and can help build long term attachments. Continue reading →

Journal Discussed – #2 Soul Selection, Destiny, Achievements and Soul Mates

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If you have not read this week the Chronicles of Elyria developer journal yet you can catch up with the abridged version here, though of course nothing beats the real thing over at MMORPG.com. It is a rather packed journal, and still some ended up on the Soulbound Studios cutting room floor so we better make a start discussing it all.

There was less straight controversy in this one, yes I am looking at you last week’s talent system, but it was full of fascinating detail on some pretty crucial features. Including some of the first things we are going to see when we get hold of the game, the beginning of character customisation. Firstly let’s ignore the idea of choosing a soul and lets focus on the nitty-gritty, the UI. Now we know this is not a finished product, but if we are at a point where we can judge the ideas we are certainly at a point where we can look at their implementation too. Continue reading →

Chronicler Conjecture – Magic

~ victoriarachel ~ 1 Comment

Welcome to a new series of posts looking at some of the parts of the game that are still mostly under wraps. These articles are speculation or sp-ECHO-lation… haha.. no? Fine. They are my, the chronicler’s, thoughts on a topic based on the tiniest scraps of information that have been extrapolated upon far beyond what is reasonable. They are thoughts and possibilities to be debated, not be taken as fact.

Magic, it is a fascinating thing and one that comes up regularly on the forums. Unfortunately for those of us who are impatient and what to know everything now it is one of the topics that is a closely guarded secret. One the Soulbound employees are determined not to spill. However, because they just can’t resist, we have been given a few clues which I shall now run wild with. Continue reading →

Journal Abridged – #2 Soul Selection, Destiny, Achievements and Soul Mates

Chronicles of Elyria Soul Selection Screen
~ victoriarachel ~ 2 Comments

This series takes the Developers Journals and gives you a run down of the key information covered. While there is not much discussion here, you can head to the accompanying Journal Discussed article which will be posted later in the week.

This week is part two of looking into one of Chronicles of Elyria’s fundamental mechanics, souls. If you missed part one you can catch up here, but to dive into the part two you can head over to MMORPG.com for the full topic covering Soul Selection, Destiny, Achievements and Soul Mates or read the abridged version here.

Buckle up because with four packed topics just in the title this is going to be a wild ride. Continue reading →

Forum Finds – Aging

~ victoriarachel ~ 5 Comments

Edit: I have seen things, beautiful things. Things that make you run up and down your house it the middle of the night silently squealing because they are everything you hoped for. So as well as a the normal Forum Find you can also read my response to an animation of the in-game aging I have been lucky enough to see, to jump straight to that click here. Or read on for the full experience:

The thread that keeps on giving is the topic for today’s post. Chronicles of Elyria community member Tom started a thread about aging and over the last week a number of interesting responses by the ever present Jeromy ‘Caspian’ Walsh have dropped some serious information. Continue reading →

Forum Finds – Animal Skills

Chronicles of Elyria Town
~ victoriarachel ~ 1 Comment

We know there will a wide range of skills in Chronicles of Elyria, including some really interesting skills not often seen in other MMOs like cartography. What we do not know yet is what other skills are out there or how we get them.

A few more skills have slipped out, and along with them the words “skill tree”, here is the post by Jeromy ‘Caspian’ Walsh in response to community members kingfighsher (great big apologies for spelling it wrong to begin with) and Lordnym discussing skills in the now somewhat derailed, or perhaps just diverted, Will behaviors affect survival? thread on the forums.

Animal Taming is currently part of the Bardic Skill Tree. Animal Husbandry is one of the Lore skills.

Animal related skills have been confirmed though their impact on the world and all the details of how they work are still unknown. Continue reading →

Journal Discussed – #1 Introduction to Souls

~ victoriarachel ~ 2 Comments

Introduction to Souls was the first Developer Journal since the public announcement of Chronicles of Elyria if you haven’t read it yet catch up with the Journal Abridged. In this post, we shall be looking at the communities reaction, additional developer responses and all round discussion on the topic.

With so much new information coming out it was interesting to see which parts the community really picked up on. However, with one of the announcements being an asymmetrical talents system, there are no prizes for guessing which part got the most tongues wagging. Concerns ranged from everyone unlocking the best talents, to players re-rolling over and over to get the talent they want, to simply quitting out of disappointment if they didn’t get one. The community was initially pretty flustered (myself amongst them), but as always Jeromy ‘Caspian’ Walsh came to the rescue clearing up a lot of the confusion that was fueling those negative thoughts. Continue reading →