Ethyrial had one of the worst releases possible

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Ethyrial: Echoes of Yore

Developer: Gellyberry Studios

Publisher: Freedom Games

Released: May 1st, 2023

Price: F2P / Subscription Based

Ethyrial: Echoes of Yore is a masked F2P MMO sandbox game, which is similer to what you would have seen from the older versions of games like Runescape or WoW, it has a pay to play version, but as of right now it's not worth the trouble.

Initial impressions are the element that will ultimately identify a developer's game as a whole in the first few weeks and months of release. If they get this wrong, it's usually as good as done for with any hope for recovery especially when so many things can ultimately go wrong both from the developers side and technical side.

The concept of this game is to return to the "golden" age of MMO gameplay, which is meticulous clicking and primarily a lot of grinding for skills proficiency.

You will essentially be creating your own adventure while also being able to roleplay in a variety of ways, such as writing in your journal about your adventures and the people you meet. This is a game, offering a tough, old-school experience that brings you to Irumesa, a region rich with perilous adventure.

The Serious Issues

Refunds

This game was supposed to be a free to play released on the 1st. The game would not function properly due to a variety of issues which persisted for days.

You couldn't even log in or create a character until today May 4th. While virtually every feature in the game was inoperable, the only thing that was available and functioning properly was the subscription button for you to give them money.

This was a massive red flag. Users who attempted to log in began to suspect that this game was not a game at all, but rather some sort of scam. Ultimately you would think "I'm unable to log in. Free servers must be unavailable, so I'll subscribe and play on a P2P server," only to be confronted with multiple charges to your account and the inability to join servers while subsequently no refunds.

If you subscribed to their services and were charged twice, or even if you were merely trying to log in, the only way to get a refund is to contact them. They would refuse to do so unless you were a user who received multiple charges.

A quick report to Steam Support under the categories indicated above would resolve the problem, as long as you reported it with sufficient detail.

Potential Data Selling

While this has yet to be confirmed, everyone has been on edge since the game's release. There has been some speculation that the game, because it requires you to join up with an email or your Steam account, may be aggregating emails and selling them in bulk to spammers. Once again this is not confirmed, however, in a way due to the state of the game could be something that did happen.

Server Reset

If you intend to play the game in its current condition, the game is operating reasonably okay despite it's scuffed release. Unfortunately, due to the troubles that remained on the initial launch day, the game will be reset on March 12th.

So any progression you make up until then will be lost and not saved. So that gives even more less incentive to actually play right now. What's worse, any update they release is essentially a re-download of the full game's 8GB of files, rather than a simple patch. It takes a long time if you don't have a fast internet, but even then, the download and verification process is lengthy and consuming.

Logging out

If you log out while in game and want to try a different class or log in with one of your other characters, the game will now crash and stay on this green screen. That is, you will have to ALT+F4 to exit the game and relog in.

Connection

The performance of the games after each subsequent update is what has to be fixed right now. The players connection can be seen in the top left corner of the screenshot above. In this case the ping was always in the negatives, making it more of a demanding thing for you to subscribe to go to an empty server.

You'll be lucky to see anything more than a few bytes of bandwidth or a minimal degree of latency on any world because of how many people are currently trying to play it which I believe the servers can not handle all that well.

You'll constantly be desynced and logged out minutes upon entering. In my case this would be for the NA EAST servers, other servers may work fine. Possibly.

Gameplay

Slow and somewhat fun

If you can get through the flaws that have plagued this game since its inception. You should try the game on the 12th, when the servers are wiped clean. There's a lot of general fun to be had here, but not in the game's current shape.

Because the servers only worked once in a blue moon in my experience, I can only show a small portion of the gameplay and some images from the game as a whole because the servers shut me down after a few minutes after recording.

This game pays respect to the old-school grind and community component, while also being a little more current in its approach to AFK skilling or AFK proficiency grinding for many of the available skills. Cooking, gathering, the use of specialized weapon styles, and overall general levels are examples of these.

It's a touch clumsy, but if you close your eyes and ignore all of the horrific things that have gone wrong since its release, this is a decent game. It allows you to explore, fight, train, skill, and be a part of a community if that's your thing.

While I haven't gotten very far, I like what the game has to offer, but it's not something I'd be willing to pay money for monthly or as a one-time fee of $300 for a lifetime membership. There are just too many things going wrong right now.

Customization

In terms of classes, character customization is actually rather good. There are many classes, some of which are far more powerful than others; there are even healers and tanks. However, it in a funny sense feels like they invested all of their assets in the artists to give the classes a more modern artwork aesthetic, then underpaid the programmers, resulting in the rather ugly looking voxel designs.

Meaning they focused on the visuals, even though the game is or was going to be a rather simplistic and straight forward basic visual aesthetic.

Instead of being showy with the visual design of the "cover art," I believe it would have been far better to keep the images true to what the game is all about.

Training

The game most similar to this is Runescape, but the original classic edition rather than Old-School or RS3. There is no way to (2) tick or accomplish many things at the same time. You commit to one action and wait for it to be finished before proceeding with the next input.

If you craft anything and then cancel, the items you were trying to make will be completely deleted from your inventory, and you will receive nothing in return. This is painful, given that weaving hemp into craft able material is time-gated behind a processing mechanism that can take up to 10 minutes to complete.

Other forms of training are much less punishing, such as practicing your weapon skills on dummies, which is AFK because you will never log out unless the server kicks you out, allowing you to gain better control over your weapons.

This, however, will not raise your level. You must defeat adversaries to gain EXP, which will allow you reach higher levels and take on more difficult opponents.

Foraging & Gathering

Similar to other forms of skilling, such as cooking, you can harvest materials such as wood, berries, meat, fish and stone to craft and build things for yourself in the world. There is a progression for doing this, allowing you to gain levels, which should eventually allow you to obtain more expensive and useful stuff.

Looking past the issues

I wouldn't say that I absolutely despise the game. But rather, I do somewhat like what is being presented here with the nostalgic and old-school aesthetic. Including the progression and stat based leveling and proficiencies.

There are five key qualities that have a substantial impact on your character's abilities and gameplay experience. Although each seem to be auto allocated based on which class you decide to ultimately choose.

Strength = Capacity & damage.

Dexterity = Accuracy with bows and daggers.

Constitution = Health and durabilty.

Intelligence = Magic Damage.

Wisdom = Mana and Healing.

Kill creatures and monsters while you gradually level up all of your skills, or even  join guilds. There is also the possibility to rent out houses or even build your own which are just some of the potential things that are available in this world.

The Positives

The community

I play a lot of games that are from recent generations, and most of them have the most toxic and degrading communities you've ever seen. However, I met a lot of really nice people and even had the ability to jot down notes in my journal in game to remember them by if I really wanted to go down "memory" lane.

It appears like the makers have created something that will appeal to an older generation seeking communal gameplay and roleplay rather than elite try-hard content. However, there are open world PvP servers, for those wishing to cause a little carnage, though I am not one to enjoy that type of content unfortunately.

Conclusions

This game has continued to be a disaster

From the server issues on launch to the reset of servers on the 12th right up to nothing even loading in even as a subscribed member. They are out of excuses.

I'm all for traditional gaming. Despite the passage of 20 years, I continue to play Runescape. In terms of MMO gameplay, I've seen better on old classics that are no longer available today than I saw in this game in my 12 hours of exploration.

I don't see this game having a significant player base after a month or two, owing to its poor start and their boldness in refusing refunds to players who just felt cheated out of their money, even if it was only ten bucks.

As I previously noted, first impressions are the most significant thing a developer can integrate into their game rather than a slew of flimsy PR stunts to declare "It'll be fixed, it's our first launch, these things happen."

While I would like to give the developers the benefit of the doubt, there is simply too much here to warrant a scam or bad malpractice of duping people out of their money when the game is a dysfunctional mess and pretty much unplayable.

There are numerous old and new MMO games available to play right now, many of which are still free with a few microtransactions. At the very least, they are playable without trouble. I would like to end on the note that I actually liked the game for what it could be, but as of right now. No, it's not worth your time. Come back on the 12th and give it a try, but I have lost interest for the time being.

This concludes my views of this game; while my opinions may be met with criticism, that is what distinguishes gamers; you don't have to like the same things as others, nor do you have to agree with them.

If you want to catch me on one of my streams or locate me on social media, you may do so at the following locations, I'm always playing something new.

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- Pawkt