News

Hello everyone,

Today I have some unfortunate but also exciting news to share:

Thralnor will no longer be developed as an MMORPG and instead the direction is switching to Single Player.

Over the past few weeks, I have been busy dealing with some personal things in life. During this time, I haven't been able to work on Thralnor. While I was detached from working on it, I had some time to think about the game and it's future. I came to a conclusion that the best move for the game will be to develop it for a Single Player experience.

I have many reasons that helped me lead to this result, some of them are:

- There is an infinite sea of MMOs out there with new ones arriving all the time, the competition is fierce for a single developer.
- Developing and maintaining a live service game is a full time job and I already have one of those I need to fulfill Monday to Friday.
- Many gamers prefer to play a game on their own time and not everyone enjoys online games given their fluid nature of always changing.
- A personal goal of mine has always been to finish a game in its entirety, and that won't be possible with a never ending MMO.
- I've never been a fan of micro transactions myself and for a game that's available for free, it's tough to fund the project without some steady revenue streams. Going the route of a Single Player experience will give me the opportunity to eliminate any micro transactions from the game and introduce a single flat fee to purchase it instead.

The list can surely go on, and all signs point to releasing a Single Player game as a first game. It was a great thought to try and develop a full scale MMO and put it out there for all to enjoy. Unfortunately, it does not look like the right direction given the amount of time needed to achieve that goal and all the above mentioned reasons. I know this will probably disappoint many people that were looking forward to this style of game, my apologies.

With the idea of a Single Player game in mind, I can take my time a little more and not feel like I have to constantly maintain the live server. It's nice to unwind from time to time and just detach from working all day, every day. Also, it will be easier to test things given that a lot of functionality in the game currently requires multiple players to test. More offline testing will help me to release a more solid product overall.

All of this is to say that I appreciate all the time and effort the testers of the game spent in Thralnor. I hope you all had a great time enjoying it while it lasted. I will be continuing on from this point forth to turn off new account registrations and remove all of the accounts from the database. Updates will be made to the website to reflect the new direction the game is taking.

Everyone is welcome to stick around as I transform this MMO experience into a Single Player experience and test play the game as it is being developed if they wish. Who knows, maybe one day, I could change Thralnor into a "host your own server" style game if it's so desired. Only time will tell what the future holds for Thralnor.

Thanks to everyone for their time and I hope everyone understands this choice is to allow the best chance of releasing Thralnor one day. Until next time, feel free to stay tuned.

Athacus