Game started development in early-mid 2015 when Chris Perkins revived the dead project, drastically changing almost everything about it but the name in the process, and it then slowly started to form the new game on the backs of a skeleton crew for the first year. The last two years has seen the team hire legitimate talent in programming and art, and they've now secured enough investment money (Series B funding) to see them through to launch. With the team looking to expand by roughly 10-15 people in the next month or two, mostly artists and animators, they should be able to make a huge push on world building in 2019, especially now since all twelve classes and most races (M and F) are in the game. A lot still needs to happen for this game to be a success, but since Chris took the day to day development over from Brad, the project has been on an upward trajectory.
In terms of other big western MMOs Grim, I think it's just Ashes and Elyria. Ashes is probably too PvP oriented, and Elyria is doing some new things, but not sure people want their character to be forced into perma-death eventually. I certainly do not. Aion 2 might be in that mix, probably not.
I do disagree with Ravishing though. I think there is a big market for the game they are trying to make, even if younger gamers don't really know it yet. Everyone likes challenge and strategy, bringing that back to the genre is good. Bringing back some of the iconic EQ1 classes and the support role is a good thing as well. The negative aspects of EQ1, specifically the tediousness, they can limit or remove most of that. Now, in terms of sub #s, we'll have to see, I don't expect anything near WoW though.
I've gone from "this game is vaporware", which it absolutely was, to "this new guy seems to know what he's doing, maybe....", to "this game might actually launch by 2025", to "not entirely sure how it happened, but this game looks legitimately promising", which is where I'm at now. I'm still not sold they can deliver on their promises, but as they hire quality and proven talent and the streams continue to show improvement, I think it's more likely than not that this thing could be decent. I do expect a late 2020 release. I expect Alpha mid-late 2019. Short, six month beta.
