MMOs Sorted By Player Count!! kzfaq.info/get/bejne/Y6xjnK-GnNGmiqc.html 🚀Catch Episode 2 Here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/itGAoZiQldeZl2w.html 🚀 DOWNLOAD CRASHER NIRVANA: bit.ly/3XUa5Qc Thanks for watching! Like and Sub for more!

I love that 9 MONTHS AGO the writing was on the wall for "The Day Before" and oh how this video aged like fine wine :)

"Don't buy the game until it's finished" is good advise for all gamers, full stop. We seriously need to stop preorder culture given how abusively game devs and pubs have gotten about failing to produce decent or even playable games on release.

I think it's important to point out that the girlfriend only spoke up because he brought her up in his list of tragedies he'd gone through, leaving out how he and his lies were the key factor in their breakup

I love how easily satisfied Day of Dragons players are. They wanted to play as dragons and are happy.

I remember a coworker of mine would spend all his money on Chronicles of Elyria. He would talk to me all night about the game. He told me if i played later, he would let him into his kingdom. I can't imagine the amount of disappointment he has for spending thousands on that "game".

I think what's worse than these being scams is that it hurts the reputation of legitimate developers/kickstarters. If someone is making a real product, but ends up having a costly delay due to something out of their control, they can instantly be labeled as untrustworthy and a scam.

The way you predicted how The Day Before's launch day and state of the game would go was just FNtastic...

The really sad part, clowns like this ruin any chance for someone to be taken serious in a Kickstarter anymore. Generally never been fond of the idea to hand my money to anyone based on promises for the future, sad but true, you can't trust anyone anymore.

some of these judges that dismissed cases should be investigated for corruption, you cannot take millions of dollars for something that was literally a scam and false advertising.

My rules are; 1) No crowd funding and 2) No Early Access. Which is a shame because these scams leave a sour taste in consumers' minds, making it harder for sincere indie developers to secure funding.

You definitely made a right call for The Day Before. It was up all of 4 days, didn't deliver anything promised and the studio is no more. Steam has even issued refunds in an unprecedented move.

it's like you had a crystal ball when you were talking about 'The Day Before' 😂

My guess with Day of Dragons is that it’s kept alive by the combo of an interesting premise, it being playable in it’s current state, and a reasonable price tag for this age in gaming. People go in expecting a demo for a $20 game and enjoy it, it beats shelling out $60+ to a AAA studio for a game in a state that’s best described as a buggy mess.

i had wondered what had happened with CoE, so I read Jeremy's blog and found out his court case got dismissed. I was angry when i read that and in his blog post he writes how he was so happy. It also felt like he was dancing and giving the middle finger to those who filled a law suit against him. I scrolled further om his blog and he post the usual no tangible update posts. Where he writes long posts just to show how "busy" he was, how this one feature he's trying to do took so long. Ever since he won the lawsuit, he hasn't bothered updated his youtube page. I know he was just using the youtube page to show the courts he was still "working" on the "game".

The worst part about the scammers is that they put people of the idea of crowd-funding, something that may well lead to the death of indie-development and making the gaming scene even more dominated by AAA-studios.

Really amazing job. Usually people miss some details about The Day Before because there's just so many red flags out there, but you did an amazing job at making sure to include all the details. Great job, sincerely.

i feel like 80% of the MMos that come out today are scams

My favorite thing about most crowdfunding, like what happens on sites like kickstarter, is that they are universally known as a system wherein you give a person, that you do not know and have literally zero reason to trust, your hard earned money with no legal recourse to demand anything in return and hope for the best yet people seem to lose their minds when they're part of the ~61% of projects that never release. You actually have better odds on a coin flip yet people honestly seem shocked and start talking about laws and corruption when the project never releases...

This aged well

Scammers like these should be held to account. There is a colossal absence of culpability and regulation in this industry. It is actually criminal.

The next announcement for The Day Before will be how sad they are but that there are unexpected causes and issues that had made them make the hard decision to cancel the game...☺

I remember getting scammed with Chronicles of Elyria and spending around 300$... After that, I guarantee I won't ever crowdfund any game again

First vid of this channel I’ve seen, super proffesionally done, entertaining and important. Impressive! Subbed!

I think it's necessary to ensure that the individuals who do things like "Dreamworld" are fully revealed and identified in public and location etc so that they are reputationally "moderated" back to the level appropriate to their honesty and aim at criminal charges or at least enforcable undertakings that prevent future business etc like any fraudsters or bankrupt businesses etc.

I saw both 'The Day Before' and 'Identity' and I was interested in it but I held back because my gut was saying it's too good to be true, I was hoping I was wrong

Imagine one day, The Day Before releases, and it's all they promised, and more, but it's 2027 and not only is it not impressive anymore, people are so worried it's a scam that nobody buys it so nobody sees it's a finished game, no content creators to record it or stream it, and it just sits there like the spark of hope locked in Pandora's box with everyone too afraid to open it XD

I remember playing an early version of Chronicles of Elyria, but it wasn’t to move around as a character but more of a point and click… I didn’t actually pay for anything, so naturally when people started to get land and mansions/castles in exchange for real money, I noped out because I was cheap and in high school. 😅

I am actually shocked to hear the lawsuit against Soulbound was dismissed.

Gotta love the Scalies keeping that dragon game alive, because I don't know who would be playing it otherwise. haha. Great video!

"The last game you'll ever play" that almost sounds like a threat 😂

Very fun video, and informative! The things that hurt me about these scams is that... even if the developers are in over their head or not, they end up taking advantage of people's trust, promising something they can't deliver. I remember Identity, I used to go on the website and read what people were saying. I was a little kid, and I'd never tried investing in a game before. I didn't know how it worked and didn't have a good concept of what a very obvious scam would be. And I wanted to be nice, so when other people started getting vocal about how obviously the developers weren't doing anything, I tried poitning out the few models the developers had posted, as if the mods showing off a shiny new beachball and desk meant they'd actually done anything. It's awful, because yeah, in retrospect, I was being naive. And I was lucky to have only bought the early access key and nothing else, so it wasn't like I lost a ton of money. But... just... argh. It's easy to say "this is obviously a scam", and sometimes it really is just easy to say that and turn away. But I can't help but feel bad for people who wanted to be trusting and support others. And I can't help but be upset at developers who took advantage of others.

Informative video, and very well put together. It is certainly wild the future we are entering, where it's becoming so easy to create a beautiful game without doing any work and trick people into thinking it's the real deal. This applies to a lot more than gaming, of course, as you well know. I wonder where we go from here.

I think the lesson to be learned is that if a Kickstarter for a high-end looking game doesn't either request at least a million in funding, or talk about funding from other sources, it's a scam. Games are expensive. MMO's are _incredibly_ expensive. You cannot make one on a low budget. If someone tells you they are going to, _it's because they have no intention of making an MMO_

For some reason The Day Before was on my wishlist without me ever remembering seeing anything about it before. I probably just forgot about adding it, but it's weird to think that it somehow wormed it's way onto peoples wishlists.

Day of Dragons is basically just a chat room at this point. People just get on, roleplay, and that's about it.

I am going to give you the most revolutionary MMO ever for 2 million dollars and 18 months of work. That alone is so unbelievable I can't believe that so many paid in. I am happy to see Lucky is getting better at not laughing during the sponsor spot. It is amazing how little people know basically about game development that they think anything good could be made on these shoestring budgets and short timelines.

Funny the egoistic world we live in: ppl are willing to donate millions of dollars for potential games and obvious scams, but not for irl donations or charities to really help other people.

Welp, the day before was indeed a scam and a half. It’s so bad, after 4 days, they removed it from steam and nobody can purchase the game. Make matters worse, the studio is shutting down completely.

I’d say another common theme of these scams is they promise a game where “you can do whatever you want” in the game

The Day Before can be described as "bait and switch", it a legal term in which you are sold something and at the last minute you are given something different. Usually of less quality than was promised.

In some cases, I think many small teams misjudge the enormous amount of effort that goes into making and publishing a game. In others there are people who simply don't want to make an honest living, because anti-scam protection on crowdfunding sites is still pretty weak, so they can just get away with it. As for The Day Before, I doubt it will ever be released, but not because of the obvious plagurism - it feels more like a portfolio submission, to show prospective studios what they can do with an existing engine. This happened before with Project Offset, which was briefly pitched as an MMO in Unreal Engine 3, until Intel acquired the project and its staff... ultimately no game was released, but the modified code helped Intel optimise their Discreet GPU hardware in R&D.

Awesome description, every commonly asked question about any video is there, congratz and subscribed!

3:24 The placement of the laughing man was golden. 🤣🤣

I along with most of my gaming group got suckered in by Chronicles of Elyria. Not happy about getting screwed over, and I'll probably never back a crowdfund again.

Interesting video. Loved it! Are you planning on doing more in the future? Maybe even focus on one game and do a deep dive.

16:40 it's scary how accurate this was 9 months later

Kickstarter needs to be held accountable as well as the developers. They allow scammers and even promote them lol

I just found your channel because of your FF14 videos and now you drop a video on one of my favourite topics - scam mmos. I got lucky this week 😄

The only game I supported on kickstarter was my time at sandrock. Only because my time at Port was so good. I felt comfortable supporting sandrock and I'm glad I did.

The fact that you predicted The Day Before downfall 9 months ahead of time...now they shut down the company. Lawsuits incoming...wont do anything, they are unreachable.

Some of these should just be called _Money Laundry: The Game_ Seriously, when he said that four people donated $2k each I pictured Jason Bateman with his hands tied making a scrubby motion saying "Let me wasssssshhhh your money, hombre"

"Let The Buyer Beware" gives a digital license to steal. P. T. Barnum would be a Happy Man in today's world

One thing I found quite Amazing is during the Identity section when talking about how he set up another studio to be hired by his main one for that Furballs game - in the sidebar of the website you are showing - it has the devs as: Phony Games Inc. While this might be inclined to make you think mobile phone games - it seems more spelt like Phony meaning 'False'. Like a tongue in cheek way of letting you know it's fake. . . LOL.

'Don't pay for games that are not yet finished' is not just good advice for the games in this video. It's good advice for all games that exist and will come in the future. Stop funding early access, betas, and preview versions. The entire pre-order culture has never brought anything good.

As a game designer, there is no bigger red-flag from anybody than "I'm making an MMO." It is the most common thing you hear from new students at university. The only people in the world that don't underestimate what it entails, are the people who have already worked on an MMO. Even then, not all of them. If someone tries to sell you their idea for an MMO, be sceptical. If someone who has never worked on an MMO tries to sell you their idea for an MMO, don't be just sceptical, become the divine avatar of the god of disbelief.

Yeah, most of these were devs getting in over their heads at best and true scams at worst, But Day of Dragons I have been following since the Kickstarter, was a backer and not been disappointed at all. Jao was actually very vocal to backers. I think the problem was him not being as transparent to everyone else. He had told us backers actually in the proof of concept alpha that that is all it was. Proof of concept. and readily told us it was store assets. The initial kickstarter was actually specifically to replace the store assets with custom ones(just the models I think which is why it was so low). And he got WAY more money than that so he added more stuff in terms of tiers. The 4 lines of code thing was just him testing out that networking stuff in steam. and not the actual game, that part had been totally mis-represented. He then showed us backers where the money was being spent as it was being spent. Modelers, animators, sound, music ect. The current game is more than what you said. There is survival elements (food and water and being able to sniff out sources of them and sickness in early forms), you can spawn as a new baby OR be hatched in to a pair of players. and there is a whole inherited traits system to try to breed up the stats. There is "crafting skins" system, that part I am not too familiar with. They have also shared the roadmap and updated it several times, and staying pretty close to it. So at least that one has done pretty well, yes it took him longer than he thought. But it is getting there. I actually mainly play on the offical rp-pve server tho do try the pvp one from time to time. Will probably switch to CvC or DvE when 1.0 comes out... speaking of which.... 1.0 is just around the corner too btw, with new game modes, planned, more AI stuff to fight to go along with that (can't wait fo the giant crocs like creatures). They are finally releasing the elementals for factions, ie servers that are dragons vs elementals. which is what pve was originally supposed to be, instead of the lil bug things running around to kill and eat now which is the new pve(elementals won't spawn, and I am unclear if elementals will be AI, players or both) clan vs clan, so only clanned dragons can fight each other, but the ai buggos and elementals can still be fought by un-clanned. and then of course the true pvp free for all servers... right now they just have the pve (ai buggos) and pvp Still fun tho. Right now testing still uses the old alpha desert/oasis map which was that asset store map, and live uses the custom mountainy forest map. With 1.0 if I remember right the new megamap will be launching too.. can't wait for it. ALSO a new weather system coming, and there will be a new dragon down the road that can summon lightning during a storm, they showed it off on the test server to Anthomnia... looks awesome.

Kickstarter is part of the problem, they should control the projects on their platform to prevent scams. i just find absurd people give away thousend of money away for games developing, i think as all firms the investment should come from the companies themself, not the gamers...but it's not my money, everyone is free to do what they want with them.

the ad segment seamlessly integrates to the list of scams

Looks like they started working on The Day Before the day before.

This is a really high quality video. Thoroughly enjoyed watching it, keep it up

Promising unrealistic goals Check Asking for laughably little money to do said goals Check Asset flips Check Several delays before a failed/dropped launch Check And all these people probably graduated to crypto scammer. Remember folks, if somebody is promising something too good to be true, chances are it is. At the very least I'd just be skeptical and watch before shelling money into it.

17:17 You called it, nice job!

why ANYONE would shell out ANY amount of money to random strangers who promise them something is beyond me. i know a fellow who sent a vast portion of his inheritance money to some guy in China to fund a "Children's Orphanage". an orphanage which he sent pictures of once it was built. however, how could you ever know if this was a building that was built recently, or had already been built? and how would you verify it was even an orphanage, and not some other building? trust should not be given, it should be earned. if you do not know someone, don't blindly trust them. especially where money is involved...

Clicked on this thinking oh this will tell me what happened to Chronicles of Elyria. I kickstarted a couple games, but never pulled the trigger on CoE, and couldn't explain why. I was certainly excited for the snake oil they were selling.

Some of the games I have bought in to during early access that I have not been disappointed by are Satisfactory; 7 Days to Die; Timberborn; Grounded; Green Hell; The Forest; UnReal World; Raft; Stone Shard; Rimworld; Project Zomboid; Ark: Survival Evolved; Valheim; Neo Scavenger; and Lords & Villeins. Honourable mention goes to the developer of Under the Ocean. So the game did fail during early access which sucks. But the developer was open and honest about what happened between him and the other person working on the game and even offered to refund everyone's money who bought the game. For those who decided to not refund the game, the dev gave a steam key to another game he made called Fistful of Gun. So while the game ended in failure, the dev wasn't human garbage and tried to amend things with the community. There are probably some more that I have forgotten that I purchased in early access that turned out well in my opinion. There is also a huge list of games that I am glad I did not get that were abandoned by their dev team.

This was the casually amusing story that I needed for the afternoon. Thanks! Btw, what game is that in the thumbnail? I think I've seen it in a lot of thumbnails, but never elsewhere.

I'm glad there's a name for this. It's happened so many times and I used to get so hyped up only to be let down. I don't even pay attention to new MMOs anymore because of it.

I was actually following Chronicles of Elyria. I didn't have extra money to spend supporting this game, so I dodged a bullet, but I was kind of hyped that this could be what invigorated my desire for an MMO after getting tired of Lord of the Rings Online. Then it came out that everything was a scam. I also heard about the Day of Dragons scam. Not the other ones, though.

On The Day Before: "I hope they prove all of the doubters wrong, but as right now history would suggest this game will be sold in early access before dropping in a state that is completely unfit for release, ultimately being abandoned by the developer again." Saying that you had "nailed it" nine months ago would be a huge understatement.

A lot of these games came out or were conceived during a time when the phrase "Fake it till you make it" was popular. I think a few of them took it to heart.

"Don't give these people money until we have a real, finished product." is great advice for buying games in general. Don't preorder anything, ever. Make them prove themselves worthy of your money first. If it's not in your hands, it doesn't exist yet, and there's always the chance it never will. This goes double for kickstart projects. People with brains know if you don't have the funds to do the thing: You don't try to do the thing anyway and then go the extra step and try to make others pay for it too. Assume all game projects on that and similar sites are likely going to be scams. Learn from the mistakes other people have made, and don't invest. 😎

A video about MMO scams promoting a MMO scam, isn't ironic.

You had me at "Zealots without a brain" how fun. Look there are a lot of people who will try to take something from you without giving you service, keep your own head on your shoulders and play smart, make the right choices. I very much think that these public scammers should be criminally charged via civil lawsuit. You have their names, you have their promises and everything is documented, including their failures to perform.

Watching this now and seeing the absolute state of The Day Before, shutting down sales after less than 4 days and the game servers entirely after 45 days......

16:42 holy prophetic

Whoever contributed to these kickstarters are as smart as a box of rocks. lol

Damn, imagine spending 10K to be royalty and own a plot of land to call your own. And all you end up with is getting royally pissed that you got scammed.

Watching this after the day before release and fantastics closure is an amazing experience 😂

I have only sponsored 1 game, KOE. It's an adventure/fighting game based on learning Japanese. Learning the words help you level up and fight and unlock areas, etc. I thought it was an intriguing and reachable goal. The screen shots were not over the top nor was the promised game. A beta and some updates were released after a few years as he wanted to release something instead of waiting until it was really finished. The guy (and we the backers) found out it cost a lot more in time and effort than he originally imagined but he really wants to see it through as he will release it sometime at the end of this year, 10th anniversary of the project, 2023. It actually works in its present form so at least he got something out that works well. I guess I dodged a bullet as a backer although I didn't put in more that $50. Happy ending but a long, long slog. Too bad it took so long as my daughters are all grown and have moved on :)

I kind of feel like the Day of Dragon's one isn't as intentionally scammy, when you consider his Kickstarter goal was so low, and so over exceeded by the backers. So the dev had to start coming up with value based promises, that they initially never thought they'd have to. If you consider that they set out to make a $12k dragon simulator in 2 months, and compare that to what they delivered, it's actually not that bad of a story, (I've never played the game, or heard of it outside this video). I think the dev looks bad for lying about the code, for sure. But if you look at the whole story against the results, I'm ruling this one as a small indy dev, getting in way over their head after a kickstarter campaign ran away from them. No way they were expecting half a million dollars in success from that kickstarter, nor could they produce a half-million dollar game by themselves. People ended up getting what he set out to make, a $12k game where you play as a dragon, and do very little.

the day before has been officially cancelled as of 11december 2023. Fntastic announced their closure, stating that as their game had "failed financially" they could not afford to continue operating.

This was an awesome video. I'm just surprised Earth 2 didn't make the list.

I came here for the thumbnail

Starting to think all kickstarters should be obligated by law to sink the capital into say a bond or other relatively safe investment. Only then can they use the profits from the interest gained to keep the lights on. This way if the game fails the full untouched capital can be refunded to the investors, no harm done. If the project succeeds the capital is returned along with an exclusive collection of items tiered depending on how much you lent them. The key here is lending not donating anymore.

The amount or gullibility on one side and amorality on the other side is breathtaking.

Dang, how did the character creation screen of Elyria go from looking like a AAA titles to looking like something made with Rec Room Studios? 🤣

I loved the concept of Chronicles Of Elyria

I never knew this happened. Great advice. I will be more carefull when buying a pre-released game.

How much does it cost to get the tools I would need to make some of these mockups and how much real development work/experience does it take? I could see some real potential here for adding animated cut scenes to TTRPGs if it is really cheap and easy to do. For reference, I have some light coding/scripting experience, but my skills are pretty rusty.

Came back to this video because I could’ve sworn someone called that the day before is a scam… great call 😂

I remember talking about all of these mmos on reddit at one point or another, and there were countless smooth brain copium boys who refused to even entertain the thought of these games never releasing. Backers = 🤡

This is a great series of summaries of some of the most notorious crowd-funded games that under-delivered or never delivered at all. It avoids making unsupported accusations and labels speculation as such. Highly recommended!

I grew up in the good ol days of Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo. Not every game was winner, but there were SO MANY great games it wasn't a big deal when you bought one you didn't like. And yes, people often bought games they knew nothing about in those days, because there was no internet and only the real hardcore dudes read the game magazines. I think for most kids, if they didn't know anything about a particular game, it was the relative awesomeness of the box art that enticed them to buy it.

Chronicles of Elyria: that was the one that got me. I didn't give them much (about $100 or so, it's been a while now). I certainly couldn't afford the higher levels. I hung on every email/notification, etc. It was sad. The idea was incredible. But I soon realised that I wasn't going to see any game soon. I figured they'd get no more money from me.

Crowdfunding and Early Access is basically donations. It's absolutely a joke to expect a court to rule in your favor, it's going to be a rare occasion that you get your money back via a court order. On the other hand, there is a possibility to claim it on your income taxes.

Fun stuff to watch when i'm on my break

Great video, Everquest Next should be on the list. The only refund I was able to get for my founders preorder was in Daybreak currency.

Nicely done! I was one of the gullible people who bought into Elyria - thankfully, it was only a $25 early bird pledge, but still...

Yeah, you really have to be careful about being sucked in by con artists in the gaming world. There are only two early access games I paid for on Steam, and so far, they are turning out to be legitimate. Sometimes there are game developers that have a great idea for a game, but they never take off the ground. I once got really pumped up by a development by King Dino called "That Which Sleeps.," a fantasy cosmic horror god game. The project, founded by two friends in 2012, only lasted until 2015. They had a Kickstarter, TikTok, and KZfaq Channel reporting on what they had accomplished so far. It was not an Unreal engine type of game; everything took place on a map. I never laid any money on it, but I was hoping to see this game get published and come to life, as it was a damn good idea, and I thought it was unique. I would definitely play a game like that. I don't think they were scamming people it just never came to fruition. The dev partners cited personal life issues for ending the project, and the idea fizzled out. Damn bloody shame, I thought. I was quite disappointed.