Jason “Lothgar” Ely posted an update to the Elderlands Discord server yesterday, announcing that development work on Lothgar Online would be ending. If you’ve never heard of Lothgar Online, Jason helpfully explains what it was in the announcement:

Originally Lothgar Online was created to be a new home for Dransik players after the TKO/PMG purchase of Dransik. The original launch was in 2005 and the game was always meant to be temporary, while I worked on a new technology base. Once we debuted the new tech, we were still using the name Lothgar Online until I had a name for the new project… Elderlands.

Over the years we’ve had community members who were very upset with the direction that Dransik was going. They came to us and asked us to bring back LO. By that time EL was already in development and was the focus of the company.

We did bring LO back a few times. Each time had a negative impact on Elderlands timeline. I wanted to please everyone and would switch gears to LO. Honestly, I never should have switched gears. I should have left LO for what it was intended… A sandbox to play until new game was ready.

This latest attempt to revive LO started alright. We have some great game features including having PvP and PvE on the same server. This time, however, the issues were from asset creation. Maps, art assets such as props, terrain, standard avatars, Epic avatars and much more. A major issue for me was that LO was using some sprites (quite a few) that are also used in Dransik. TO avoid any possible legal issue, we were creating all new assts from scratch. Unfortunately, were not able to get the required assets. This pushed us back months.
It appears the tide was pushing against us. Honestly by this time, I’m convinced that Lothgar Online is Cursed. I never should have moved focus from Elderlands to LO. That, I believe, damaged my reputation and both games. It was not fair to the entire community.

So I’m going back to my roots, removing all other projects and focusing on Elderlands, as I should have. It was unfair to the Patrons and the rest of the EL community for me to try to support anything other than Elderlands.

We are taking some of those newer gameplay systems planned for LO, and will add them into EL.

With Elderlands, we have all the assets we need to make a great game.

Buried beneath this announcement is the news that Jason has left his role at Cloud Imperium Games; he’s no longer working on Star Citizen, apparently. But on the other hand, this frees him up to devote more time and effort to Elderlands.

That said…if you’re a fan of Elderlands, I’m sure Jason would — on account of having left his paying studio job — appreciate your support on Patreon.