Chronicles of Elyria would not be the first game to refer to itself as having a living breathing game world that constantly changes and adapts, if Chronicles of Elyria had actually said any of that (I said that), but every other game is wrong.
I’ve heard many publishers refer to big open sandboxes as “living”, “Dynamic”, “growing” and other buzz words implying actions can have real impact on the world. The closest game to this ever being true is probably EVE online and even then there will always be constants we cannot control.
Chronicles of Elyria looks to change that, they have taken everything we have come to expect in an MMO and thrown it out the window. Albeit at this stage a concept by Soulbound Studios looking for Kickstarter backing. (I’m too cheap to back it but it could be incredible so click here and give them your money).
The Key thing everyone is talking about is that you character will literally age and die… permanently. They suggest characters will survive for about 10-14 months before old age finally causes them to keel over and pass on, over this time your character will physically age and will change in appearance to reflect this. This isn’t what makes this game look great though, if they realise everything they aim to they will genuinely create a living world, where quests only come from other players and NPC shops are actually Player shops. Towns are run, guarded, built, even ruled by players and all of it can be destroyed.
They are essentially looking to create a life simulator, albeit a sped up version with much higher chance of monsters and death but a life simulator none the less. I can’t think of anything worse than logging on and spending my evening running a virtual shop, but I know people who would love that idea. If they can create this it will be a sandbox to rival Eves freedom and break us out of the vicious cycle of reskinned copies of the same MMOs. We can dream.