COMMUNITY - FORUMS - GENERAL DISCUSSION
"I heard it on the grapevine" (sneak peak at the State of Elyria?)

For those who don't follow alternate communication channels, this was stated by Caspian yesterday.

"There's been a lot of changes the last two months. A ton of new hires and more to come. There's also a lot happening on the development side. I've got some business development stuff I may consider doing that I've only been toying with, and looking at other forms of revenue and investments for the studio, but nothing concrete yet. Some of these plans need some more bake time. Some need advice from my advisory board. Some just rely on the completion of a specific internal milestone before I can move the plans forward."


You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to get angry. JAMES 1:19 NLT

1/2/2020 6:58:17 AM #1

What does this mean and who is the advisory board?


1/2/2020 7:29:08 AM #2

I was wondering about that. Most mmorpgs have 500 million to make a game. I wouldn't mind throwing a couple bucks their way if it would help them out. Hell if everyone gave $20 towards dev. Even 50k/250k population That's another million for them to work with.


1/2/2020 7:41:13 AM #3

Posted By Naughty_Virtue at 6:29 PM - Thu Jan 02 2020

I was wondering about that. Most mmorpgs have 500 million to make a game.

Haha what? Where are you getting that info from? Even just a quick google search. Most expensive MMOs. Not counting SC, since it's not finished.

Star Wars: The Old Republic: 200m ESO: 200m FF14: 120m

Then goes down from there. Of course one could argue those are only rough guesses. Nothing close to 500 million either way.

You could say most need at least 50-100 million. An indie studio is meant to be way less.

Onto the topic. I can only hope Caspian plans to share a lot happening on the development side. Within the state of elyria.


1/2/2020 7:58:04 AM #4

Posted By Drudge at 1:58 PM - Thu Jan 02 2020

What does this mean and who is the advisory board?

Married male must have wife permission to spend/invest money


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1/2/2020 8:01:24 AM #5

120 million is a lot closer to 500 million than 7 million is, don't you think?


1/2/2020 8:10:23 AM #6

Also, most studios don't rely heavily on procedural generators and crowd development. CoE does rely heavily on procedural generators and crowd development.


1/2/2020 10:17:06 AM #7

Posted By Drudge at 07:58 AM - Thu Jan 02 2020

What does this mean and who is the advisory board?

Matter experts like financial managers. Those are generally in an advisory board.


1/2/2020 10:29:42 AM #8

What is the alternate communication channel?

And 500 million is (really) a bit over the top. But I agree that SBS have too little to work with in order to make the MMO they are aiming for.


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1/2/2020 11:58:57 AM #9

Posted By Gunnlang at 6:41 PM - Thu Jan 02 2020

Posted By Naughty_Virtue at 6:29 PM - Thu Jan 02 2020

I was wondering about that. Most mmorpgs have 500 million to make a game.

Haha what? Where are you getting that info from? Even just a quick google search. Most expensive MMOs. Not counting SC, since it's not finished.

Star Wars: The Old Republic: 200m ESO: 200m FF14: 120m

And just for reference what the development time with those budgets looked like:

ESO took 8 years in development to release

FF14 took 6 years and it was a flop, then took another couple years to basically redo it.

SWTOR Was at least 6 years in development confirmed, but possibly more than that.

ESO and FF14 were both in full development for over 4 years before they were even announced to the public,


1/2/2020 12:26:35 PM #10

Everquest was in development for only 3 years and almost 21 years later still has a large following, and making money.


1/2/2020 1:11:04 PM #11

Posted By Aiji at 11:26 PM - Thu Jan 02 2020

Everquest was in development for only 3 years and almost 21 years later still has a large following, and making money.

That first part isn't exactly correct, EQ was built on the back of another personal project McQuaid and Clover had already been working on called Warwizards 2, I was in the original batch of beta testers for EQ back in '97, was playing Meridian 59 at the time.


1/2/2020 1:43:21 PM #12

Posted By Ineluki at 08:11 AM - Thu Jan 02 2020

Posted By Aiji at 11:26 PM - Thu Jan 02 2020

Everquest was in development for only 3 years and almost 21 years later still has a large following, and making money.

That first part isn't exactly correct, EQ was built on the back of another personal project McQuaid and Clover had already been working on called Warwizards 2, I was in the original batch of beta testers for EQ back in '97, was playing Meridian 59 at the time.

+++RIP B McQuaid.+++

I didn't beta but started within a month of release and still have accounts I use.

But yeah, you beta'd in 97 was released in 99 so makes sense time-wise. One year dev prior to your beta give or take makes 3 years.


1/2/2020 1:47:27 PM #13

Posted By Ineluki at 03:58 AM - Thu Jan 02 2020

Posted By Gunnlang at 6:41 PM - Thu Jan 02 2020

Posted By Naughty_Virtue at 6:29 PM - Thu Jan 02 2020

I was wondering about that. Most mmorpgs have 500 million to make a game.

Haha what? Where are you getting that info from? Even just a quick google search. Most expensive MMOs. Not counting SC, since it's not finished.

Star Wars: The Old Republic: 200m ESO: 200m FF14: 120m

And just for reference what the development time with those budgets looked like:

ESO took 8 years in development to release

FF14 took 6 years and it was a flop, then took another couple years to basically redo it.

SWTOR Was at least 6 years in development confirmed, but possibly more than that.

ESO and FF14 were both in full development for over 4 years before they were even announced to the public,

Just for curiosity, how many people worked on said games?


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"Different denotes neither bad nor good, but it certainly means not the same."

-Just a lowly beekeeper

1/2/2020 2:09:58 PM #14

All aboard the hype train!

I dont know what new deviancy Caspian has up his sleeve but if the Calendars are any indication of things to come I would not be the least bit surprised if we dont already have some kind of shadowy investor eroding their moral compass towards a full blown $hop.

Caspian can say whatever he wants but seeing is believing and they never show anything really worth getting excited about and invest more money into the game. I am surprised they got this far on smoke and mirrors.

If they want funding just show off the real game in UE4 with the AI in the actual world. Thats it. Funding will roll in. Anything less is just a waste of time at this point. There has to be something worth showing at this point right?


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1/2/2020 2:18:16 PM #15

Posted By Draguta at 12:47 AM - Fri Jan 03 2020

Posted By Ineluki at 03:58 AM - Thu Jan 02 2020

Posted By Gunnlang at 6:41 PM - Thu Jan 02 2020

Posted By Naughty_Virtue at 6:29 PM - Thu Jan 02 2020

I was wondering about that. Most mmorpgs have 500 million to make a game.

Haha what? Where are you getting that info from? Even just a quick google search. Most expensive MMOs. Not counting SC, since it's not finished.

Star Wars: The Old Republic: 200m ESO: 200m FF14: 120m

And just for reference what the development time with those budgets looked like:

ESO took 8 years in development to release

FF14 took 6 years and it was a flop, then took another couple years to basically redo it.

SWTOR Was at least 6 years in development confirmed, but possibly more than that.

ESO and FF14 were both in full development for over 4 years before they were even announced to the public,

Just for curiosity, how many people worked on said games?

ESO had over 250 members in their dev team.

At the peak of Bioware Austin SWTOR development, they had 200+ developers with about that many more working offsite, or freelance for a total at peak development of over 400.

FF14 had 240 in house for the first release, and an interesting note, their in house team right now is over 300 for the live game.

Other games of note, Guildwars 2 had 270, Wildstar had 330,