Rapid Reality has announced via an open letter to the MMORPG.com community that they are shelving their MMO title, The Chronicle.

When Rapid Reality opened its doors last year, the idea was to rapidly bring games to reality. As we moved into production on The Chronicle, however, our vision for what the game could be began to outstrip the technical capabilities of our original platform. We faced a tough choice: lower the bar or pursue our vision. We chose the latter. To build the game you want to play and we want to build, we needed to control our own technology. We thus acquired the Aura 3-D platform in December 2005. Our programmers spent the next six months upgrading the graphics, re-architecting the server layer, and expanding the engine's capabilities.

Read the letter here.

The link takes me to the mmorpg.com games list, not the letter.

I am not surprised, but I would like to read the letter to find out their reasons for shelving The Chronicle.  I think the biggest reasons are Vanguard; Saga of Heroes, Lord of the Rings Online, and other AAA mmorpgs coming out soon.  Competition is getting fierce.

I would have liked to see The Chronicle, though.  Its always a shame when a mmo gets canned, because there are always going to be players who would have really liked to play it.

I think the goal was for them to create not only one mmo, but several, all at once, and with a very fast turnaround.  It seems this was too much of a task for them, and it's no wonder, a single mmorpg has been known to take many years to complete.  So maybe in the future we'll see The Chronicle, when Rapid Reality can make it the way they want. 

My biggest worry is if this will effect the development of the mmo called Africa.

That’s -1 For the Kaneva engine/platform.

Good idea in practice... but i didn't think it would work to well. Its a shame too, I was hoping that one of these middleware platforms would become successful.

Originally posted by Tymora

The link takes me to the mmorpg.com games list, not the letter.

Same here for me.

/whine

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

That’s -1 For the Kaneva engine/platform.

Good idea in practice... but i didn't think it would work to well. Its a shame too, I was hoping that one of these middleware platforms would become successful.

"Rapid Reality, LLC completed terms today in acquiring the Aura Game Engine Platform developed by Aaron Boucher and the X-Src team"  November 21, 2005.

Source: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setview/features/loadFeature/320/gameID/196/from/features

I don't mean to be some prissy person who needs to correct people but I just felt like putting it out there. The kaneva engine was tossed out of the game development over a year ago so it was already sorta canned to begine with.

The funny thing about it is that one of the Kaneva representatives came to our class to give a presentation about the engine's capabilities and even then I thought it looked like nothing special heh.

When Rapid Reality opened its doors last year, the idea was to rapidly bring games to reality. As we moved into production on The Chronicle, however, our vision for what the game could be began to outstrip the technical capabilities of our original platform. We faced a tough choice: lower the bar or pursue our vision. We chose the latter. To build the game you want to play and we want to build, we needed to control our own technology. We thus acquired the Aura 3-D platform in December 2005. Our programmers spent the next six months upgrading the graphics, re-architecting the server layer, and expanding the engine’s capabilities.

While we’ve made great strides in technology, we did a poor job of communicating our progress to you, our customers. Many of us here at Rapid Reality have been frustrated about the lack of communication, but were not in a position to do anything about it. That has now changed. As of last month, Rapid Reality is under new management and creative direction. Things will be different from this point on. We apologize for how you’ve been treated in the past. If you pre-ordered MMOCenter for The Chronicle and would like a refund, we will send you the funds ASAP, either via Paypal or by check. Luke, our community relations manager, has been VERY eager to make this happen for you.

Despite our company’s past missteps, we – the programmers, artists, designers, and staff who now make up the studio – will continue to push the envelope on game design. We’re all here because we share a common vision of making great games. We’re passionate about what we do and we enjoy the creative challenge. 

Looking ahead, we will make it our policy to keep you informed about what we’re working on and where we’re going in the future. In that spirit, we want you to know that while we have produced over two hundred Gigs of art assets for The Chronicle, the code still has a long way to go. We’re at least two or more years from completion. We’ve thus asked the MMORPG.com staff to take down this page while we weigh our options on the title. The project is on hold, since we need to put the company on a path to profitability in the coming year. 

Our plan for Q1 2007 is to launch our first title, an MMOFPS based in part on the original Endless Ages. The game showcases the technical excellence of our server layer and the efficiency of our render pipeline, as well as the beauty of our graphics. We’ve made some fun innovations in the MMOFPS genre and look forward to sharing them with you. We expect closed beta to begin at the end of January. This title may, in time, become part of the MMOCenter Service, but until we have multiple titles to offer for one low price, we are going to hold off on launching the portal. This new game will thus be its own subscription.

 It’s been a long and bumpy road to get to where we are, but as a team we’re excited about the year ahead. We can’t undo the past, but we can and will be the kind of company you deserve in the future.

Sincerely,

Rapid Reality

Rapid Reality. Rapid reality has come over them, they were more dreamer than realist...

The letter:

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setView/overview/gameID/196

Thanks for posting the full letter.

Sad to say, this became obvious a long time ago.

Any small company that claims to have stumbled across a miracle system that allows it to pump out several top notch MMOs faster than other larger companies can put together one is suspect from the outset.

The constant delays, and inability even to create a website for the game also made it clear nothing much was going on.

I feel sorry for the people who believed in this and handed over their money; buy hey - that's capitalism. Some investments pay off, others do not.

Either way, the signs were there for all to see.

My apologies!

Seems the original link I placed in there was bad. It's all fixed now!!

I have to admit this was a great disappointment to me.  I had subscribed to The Chronicle and looked forward to their publishing.

After almost two years of delays, they finally announce to the community that this title would be shelved indefinately.  I hope they manage to publish, but they should probably change the name.  There is alot of dissatisfaction surrounding their title.

In their defence, after they made this announcement, they offered refunds to whomever desired them.  I received mine so I assume others received theirs.

This kind of nonsense hurts the whole game community.  I can tell you that I will not be pre-ordering any other games any time soon.

They lied right to the very last minute. Period. They get no remarks of sympathy or "in defences of" from me. And offering Endless Ages 2 as a consolation? Please. The first EA is a pos (it's listed here in all it's non-glory, for those interested), why would the sequel be better? Speaking of which, doesn't it strike anyone else odd that the whole time they screwed us around, they have suddenly got a sequel to their first "game"? Amazing, isn't it?

As I've found myself saying on countless occasions with these non-talented, lying wannabe "devs", at least I got my beta access through an mmorpg.com contest and didn't pay real money for this shit.