Originally Posted by
Parthuin
I want to clear up a few things the best I can, but I don’t have all the answers to what happened prior to my becoming the owner of Trials of Ascension. Some may think I'm a longtime fan that got the rights for free or some meager sum of money from Forged Chaos, but this is utterly untrue. I'd only been following the development of Exile for under a year. After I played the alpha it was only developed for about 6 months, give or take, when Forged Chaos stopped working on it. I was in the midst of a small project myself with a few others and saw an opportunity to help bring this game back that had so much passion from the fans. After some discussion with Forged Chaos, looking into their background and their projects, Forged Chaos sold the rights to me. This wasn't a lightly-thought decision, a lot went into purchasing the rights and what that would mean for both Trials of ascension and my own future. As soon as I got the rights and all the content, I began working on both Exile and Trials of Ascension immediately and seeing what I could do to bring them back to life.
Forged Chaos, by what I could surmise with what as given to me, never began anything near a tangible product for the MMO, they only ever made Exile and originally their plan was to create the MMO through Exile’s success. That didn't happen and originally, I was going to try making Trials of Ascension using Exile. After looking through the project for a few days I realized that that couldn’t happen, not with the current state of Exile. I began working on ToA but I was also starting to get quite a few messages about what would happen to Exile and originally, I was going to keep it dead since I couldn't get it working properly at the time. After some requests by folks in the Discord (and after I was able to get it working), I put a version of Exile on the Steam store that could be bought and played.
As for ToA itself, Trials of Ascension has been in development for 5+ months, which I started from the ground up, and development has been going very well with some of the assets from Exile, some custom made assets made by a very talented artist as well as assets from the Unity asset store (some temporary, some not). You can check social media and the site for progress we've made.
I don’t intend my response to change anyone’s mind about the past, or even the future, but I wanted to at least clear up some of the controversies and hear it from me directly instead of second hand. I plan to start public testing in the near future, but I’m not going to set unreasonable goals or dates, as I’d rather under-promise and over-deliver. It’s also true that yes, I intend to put the project on Kickstarter eventually for a multitude of reasons. Some might see it as a cash grab and honestly, there’s nothing I can say that will change that reasoning until months down the line when ToA is released. So all I can say is, look at everything we release, whether it’s tangible or intangible, and see for yourself that it's not a scam.
I encourage anyone to come to the Trials of Ascension Discord, talk with everyone, DM me, and discuss the games. I welcome criticism and feedback, as even the most negative of feedback can be good if looked at in the right light.
I hope to meet some, if not all, of you soon!