Let’s talk about The Exiled.
The Exiled is officially three years out of its Early Access launch and it is probably long past due to proclaim this game dead and move on. For those who really want to see what The Exiled is all about, you can download the game from Steam for free and play with no restrictions. Go for it.
So I’m not being hyperbolic when I say that The Exiled has been effectively exiled (ha ha) by its developer Fairytale Distillery, who has confirmed that no further work is being done on the title. Steam charts show that the game hasn’t been graced with more than four or five players concurrently since early 2017. The last patch notes were in October 2017.
So what happened? I have some thoughts starting with one simple phrase: open pvp full inventory loot.
1. Limited Server Availability: Absolute anti-customer idea that did not help The Exiled gain traction. In order to deal with an already low player base, Fairytale Distillery decided in August 2017 that the best course of action was to funnel players into being online at the same time. In practice this meant only having the servers online for three hours out of the day. Servers were open from 8-11 in the evening Eastern Standard Time. The limited availability was removed in October but by then the damage was done; people had downloaded the game, saw the servers were offline, and never came back.
2. Gank Box: I did a review of The Exiled where I made the following comments on the game, its developer, and certain members of the fanbase. They weren’t happy with me but I was right.
“I’m not making any big discovery by saying that this is a niche game in a niche market, if you could take the perception that games like The Exiled has and give it a physical manifestation, it’d be somewhere in the realm of opening a store, locking the door, hiding the key under the doormat and standing at the window giving the middle finger to whichever carebear customer has the gall to ask “are you open?” And if the store owner himself isn’t enough to drive away customers, you can bet that the tiny vocal minority of obnoxious, mostly toxic cult followers of the genre will do their part to make the game as intolerable as possible, be it running train through the starting zone to harass new players, shouting “gg kill yourself” in chat, and generally operating “for the lulz” because the game lets them do whatever they want and they’re too busy telling people to go back to World of Warcraft to notice the population decaying around them.”
The Exiled did not have much hope for advertising to a huge audience and thanks to a small coalition of clans, the toxic cesspit that was the dedicated player base ensured that new players wouldn’t be staying long by spawn camping starter zones with high leveled characters while spouting vitriol and harassing new players. All while Fairytale Distiller sat back and watched their child get murdered.
3. The Grind, THE GRIND! The Exiled advertising itself as fast-paced with no grind is the scam of the year for 2017, considering the game was anything but fast paced thanks to the clunky controls, absolutely atrocious server performance, and characters that moved like they were jazzercising while submerged in jello pudding. The whole “no grind” aspect was a complete lie as well.
If anything, The Exiled has more grind than your average MMO. You need to grind levels, to grind the same three repetitive “events” or mobs for resources to build better tier weapons and equipment, and you need to grind mobs in order to gain scrolls that drop randomly that must be safely taken back to a town and used to buy/upgrade abilities for your class. And all of this gets reset monthly.
4. Utterly Stupid Limitations: The Exiled has instituted a number of utterly stupid limitations on players from the three hour server window, a limit on how many times you can die per day before the game locks you out, a thirst meter that must be replenished, limits on leveling for solo players, and the only effect that this seems to have had was to lower the potential player base even more. In addition to the massive grind, players needed to feed large quantities of resources into a chest within a certain amount of time otherwise the server would just shut down.
And on top of all of this, the servers reset every month as a new “season” begins. Don’t worry about the mind-numbing grind or the potential for gank squads to basically have the power to temporarily ban someone from the game, all of that’s going to be negated in a few weeks anyway.
I don’t know who at Fairytale Distillery thought punishing people in such a way would foster a loyal player base, but they got it way off the mark.
5. In Conclusion: The Exiled has this as its “why we’re creating this game” tagline:
“To make a long story short: We love PvP but we hate having to grind for it.”
Fairytale Distillery set out with one goal and utterly bombed at it.
I hope that Fairytale Distillery is working on its next game and doesn’t just fizzle out and disappear, because I think The Exiled is a great learning tool about how to get so many things wrong and what to avoid in future products. Also The Exiled was basically free so it’s not like anyone lost much.
MMO Fallout 