While the full MMORPG portion of Chronicles of Elyria may be a year and a half off (or more), the team is working hard at bringing not one, not two, but three early experiences for players.

The first will be an offline “prologue” with 22 feature areas with the purpose of testing several of the features that will go into the MMO. That will be followed by the web-based game Kingdoms of Elyria. Through this game, players will joust for power and help to shape the backstory of the game while also helping to test out the political system that will (yes) go into Chronicles of Elyria.

And believe it or not, but the final early experience will be an actual text-based multi-user dungeon called ElyriaMUD.

“The idea is that by granting players an opportunity to get into the game in a strictly textual format, we can exercise and stress some of the server-side game mechanics even before pre-alpha,” the team said. “It means that upon launch of ElyriaMUD, players will be able to create characters and walk around in the world, role-playing and interacting with their fellow players while helping us test the game mechanics. And to keep life super exciting, events that happen in Kingdoms of Elyria will be mirrored in ElyriaMUD and vice-versa!”