Two months into 2019, and we’ve had a few folks asking us if we are still around. The short answer is yes. We’re busy. Busy building the MMORPG, busy working on the novels, busy working on the tabletop version.

The longer answer? We’re busy. Busy moving into Stage Two of our development. And Stage Two is a lot different than Stage One.



In Stage One, we were openly transparent about everything, to the point where we shared every single video of every single build from the moment we turned the servers on. Warts and all. Choppy frame rates, lag, rubberbanding, and more. Documenting our progress as nobodies with zero experience building a game from scratch.

We shared income reports with our supporters, and shared receipts from our purchases so folks could see where and how money from the pre-order store was being spent. Assets, licenses, lawyers, accountants, servers, website hosting: you name it, we shared it.

We also never required an NDA from anyone, because we weren’t ever testing actual game content. We were simply working on generic features and mechanics and getting our networking back end set up and our basic combat systems in place.

All of that is about to change.

Stage Two

The most significant aspect of Stage Two is the transition to alpha. This includes the closure of our pre-order store, and NDAs for everyone. We are no longer allowing our community to stream or share screenshots of what we are working on.

There are a variety of reasons for this.

Shutting down the store allows us to control the size of our alpha test group. We have more than enough players for what we are currently testing. We do not need anymore at this stage of our game.

We are beginning to test live game content in the form of quests, harvesting, and crafting. Recipes and quest content are things we want to avoid showing up on Wikis for as long as realistically possible. An NDA is one way to help us achieve those goals.

We are beginning to test features and mechanics that are unique compared to what other games have, or are developing. There are things that we want to surprise MMORPG audiences with, and that requires us to keep some information secret.



Transparency, while great to a certain extent, is a double-edged sword, and for us we’ve reached the point where we have to dial back on how much we are publicly sharing. For now.



Part of Stage Two also includes a unique transition for us as a business entity: we are bringing on investors and hiring full-time employees and we have a responsibility that goes beyond just us.

Development Snapshot

During Stage One we were primarily self-funded for the first section. The entirety of 2014 and the bulk of 2015 saw us covering all expenses out of pocket.



Since we opened our pre-order store in September of 2015, our generous community members have covered all of our expenses. Additionally, we received seed funding at the end of 2017 which allowed us to bring on half a dozen part-time contractors in 2018, which in turn allowed us to bring our game to a state where publishers started reaching out to us about potential partnerships.

Unanticipated, but highly useful to us as nothing more than passionate gamers who jumped headlong into building an MMORPG without any previous experience and simply a desire to build our dream game.

This showed us that we were on the right track with what we were building. It also showed us that we had a viable product, more than just the “hobby project” that we have come to be known as since our inception, since everyone on our team works part-time on this project outside of their day jobs (there are 14 of us as of this writing).

So When Is Launch?

MMORPGs typically take six years on the low end for AAA companies with 30 – 50 team members, up to around eight years for smaller teams with smaller budgets. They can range from teams of 30+, to teams of 1000+, with budgets from tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars.

We have not been, to-date, a fully-funded team working full-time on this project. The core team of 14 people puts in 20-30 hours per week outside of their day jobs and families, and we have had as many as 20 people working on the game at any given time. That being said, we’ve made significant progress in that time, and we have a fully-functioning MVP well on its way.

We first started programming our game in mid-2015. By mid-2019 we will be four years into coding. That’s roughly the halfway point for some projects, using the above maximum.



We do not anticipate taking longer than eight years to launch. In fact, that’s one of the reasons we decided to consider investors: we would prefer to launch sooner rather than later. The nine of us on the LLC side of things have been working for free since 2014 and, unlike our contractors, we don’t get paid for our time on this project.

Believe me when I say that no one is more motivated to release this game than we are, not simply for our own sake and sanity, but also because we have spouses and significant others who have been constantly sacrificing right alongside us and are eagerly waiting for us to start drawing paychecks for our time on this project.



​Knowing all of the above, it would be naive for anyone to assume that we will launch sooner than mid-2021. Which, by the way, is the six year mark from the start of programming on the Saga of Lucimia. Many games have launched within a six year window.

There is still a long road ahead of us. If all goes well, we could theoretically launch as early as mid-2021. While we can’t say for sure when we will release, you can use the above math to estimate calculations at your leisure, bearing in mind that none if it means a thing until we officially make an announcement regarding release.

What’s Next?

Stage Two is our closed alpha, which we anticipate to last anywhere from 18 to 24 months. It could be shorter. It could be longer. It all depends on how much funding we get, when that funding gets squared away, how many full-time employees we bring on board, and how long it takes us to find qualified people who not only have the skills required, but also personalities that mesh well with the rest of our family here at Stormhaven Studios.

We are officially closing the pre-order store on March 31st, 2019. Which means you have an extremely limited window to join us for the next stage of our journey: alpha. Once we shut down the store, those rewards are gone for good, and our Early Access community will be locked in throughout the entirety of the alpha stage.



We’ve had questions about the “why” behind us closing down the store. After all, we’re a business, and businesses should never say no to money, right?



For us, we’re far more interested in the integrity of our testing community than we are about hitting any specific sales goals this early on in our development. We’ve gathered the amount of people we feel we need for testing over the next stage of our development, and that’s that.



As such, we’re closing down the store for the foreseeable future.

Again: this is your last chance to pick up a pre-order for our game and get into alpha + beta. Once the store is shut down, the rewards are gone forever and you will be waiting on the sidelines until we open it ahead of launch, at which point we will only have a very simple Base Game + Deluxe Edition + Collector’s Edition (with none of the pre-order tier awards).

We will be dark for almost the entirety of Stage Two. At most, we will likely only publish something for the general public once every quarter. The only way to have your hands in the pie is to be part of our Early Access and under NDA.

We may reach out to credible media outlets from time to time during Stage Two to share official screenshots and videos, or to take part in interviews, podcasts, and vodcasts. Stay tuned for those when they happen.

Our newsletter + forums will be the best place for you to remain up-to-date with our development if you are not part of our Early Access.

Meanwhile, there are multiple other irons in our forge.

If you are interested in the lore of the world, Book One is already published on Amazon.

I am working on the first draft of Book Two presently, and I am simultaneously working on the first draft of the GM Guide + Player Guide for our tabletop game. I anticipate these drafts to be wrapped by the end of 2019, with an early 2020 publishing date for Book Two, and a mid-to-late-2020 publishing date for the tabletop game.

I will then start drafting Book Three for an estimated early 2021 release date, followed by Book Four in early 2022.

We will also be contracting a handful of authors to work with us in the world of Lucimia, so stay tuned for more information on that front.

We are huge fans of how the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms worlds were shared, and we are following in the footsteps of those who came before as we build our world into something unique and lasting, something that is much more than just an MMORPG.

Beyond that, I post weekly lore snippets and excerpts from Book Two over on my personal Patreon. Which, full disclosure, does not fund our game: it funds me, personally, as a writer/content creator.

To the doubters: you have every right to be cautious. We still haven’t actually published a game yet, so in the eyes of some we are an unproven team with zero track record. We’d like to think that our past several years of hard work mean something, but for some people it’s not enough until the product is on the shelves. We totally get it, and we respect your stance. We look forward to crossing the finish line together with you, regardless of when that date is.

To the supporters: thank you for allowing us to make our passion more than just a dream. Because of you, we have been able to get to where we are today, from just a fledgling group of people with an idea in their heads, to an independent game studio that is slowly but surely growing into something more. Something that is now bigger than what we ever imagined it could be.

We look forward to seeing where Stage Two takes us, and we can’t wait to share the ride with those of you who are off in the deep end with the rest of us.

Tim “Renfail” Anderson | CEO of Stormhaven Studios, LLC | Creative Director of the Saga of Lucimia MMORPG.