As you may already know, I have made the decision to take down the Echoes Open Beta. The project is now back to being a closed, invite-only affair and will potentially re-release to the public at some point in the future if things work out.
We originally decided to release Echoes into a persistent beta as an experiment, at a request from our community. Unfortunately, this experiment has not worked out as too many people have decided that exploiting an in-development server was the best use of their time. Ultimately, this has led to developer burnout as little actual work was being done, and finally culiminated in our most key developer leaving the project.
Echoes of Angmar has been mostly a three man effort since its inception three years ago, with only two developers working on the server core. With one of us gone, we cannot continue to provide the level of support that a live game demands while also continualy developing the core and content for future phases.
It's hard to say what's next for Echoes as individual know-how is extremely hard to replace on a project like this. For now, I would like to thank all our players who participated in the open beta and contributed bug reports and feedback. A big thank you as well to the Echoes developers, past and present - it's been an honor.
I will see you in Arda.
- Brieman, EoA lead dev