Another Kickstarter MMO dream just faceplanted into the dirt. Might and Delight's Book of Travels is sunsetting its servers on July 31st, 2026, and turning into a $4.99 solo offline single-player game with full mod support. The studio straight-up admits they bit off way more than they could chew -- "We took on more than we could handle. We could not deliver what we wanted to, and what we had promised." After raising $261k on Kickstarter in 2019 with all stretch goals met, it launched into a messy early access in 2021, gutted the team from 35 down to 10, halted content in 2022, and limped along in maintenance mode until now. Tiny playerbase, unsustainable foundation, core issues no patch could fix. Classic live service funeral.

They'll let you download your toons before the plug gets pulled, ditch the early access tag, rebalance the whole thing for offline play, and even set up a Discord modding channel because the original multiplayer vision is deader than disco. Braided Shore gets handed over to the players who still give a shit while the studio moves on to Twinkleby or whatever. This isn't a pivot -- it's a white flag after years of radio silence and broken promises. The foundation was rotten from the start and no amount of "we believed in the project" cope changes that.

Kickstarter backers and the handful of cozy explorers left in the world get to watch their serene online RPG shrink into a solo modders' sandbox. At least it's cheap now. Another tiny MMO joins the graveyard of overpromised dreams. Highguard ain't the only corpse we get to piss on this year.