I think this one pre-dates Dwarf Fortress in a way.
Trials of Ascension, or that MMO that wants to do permadeath and dragons that can wage war with "an entire city of humans" but can't seem to make it to beta.
When it first started, they had something like a dozen races planned: elves, humans, dwarves, dragons, gargoyles... but it turned sour when the project lead would make wild and rash decisions at the whims of whoever he liked that week, alienating the community and delaying launch. No really, this is a game that back when I first heard about it (2002ish) had an open beta signup page, and
still only just hit Kickstarter.
These "wild and rash" decisions involve things like "can't communicate with anyone outside your race and using external messaging systems to get around that will earn you a ban" or "dragons can't communicate with each other" or "any non-dragon settlement trying to help raise a dragon will be turned into a smoking crater."
1 Because when a dragon has a fair fight against a whole city of humans, you gotta put limitations somewhere. And that somewhere ended up being on the survival rate.
Their most recent relaunch was about a year ago, taking donations at their website (you can see evidence of that in FAQ: "I earned Champion before Kickstarter, do I get early access?" "Yes") and severely limiting scope, only one race: human, with more to be added later, once the game's up and running and the money is rolling in. The kickstarter now shows
three playable races, adding back in the dragons (fire
and ice, with enough differences to make these effectively two races) and some giant spider thing I haven't seen before / don't remember, which which appear to exist for those people who want nothing better to do than
kill other players (permadeath, remember?).
They want $600,000 or the game will basically die.
Many of you have already given so much and we are forever grateful for your generosity. We couldn’t ask for better supporters, but our Kickstarter is our ‘do or die’. It is our proverbial fork in the road where the development of ToA will continue and become the game we all want to play, or it won’t.
1Not making it up, although not enough of the original forums remain retrievable with the internet wayback machine.
I do clearly remember concocting a cunning plan (for my 14 year old self) that would have forced the GMs to smoking-crater a good portion of the map: join forces with a dozen or more friends and have each raise a dragon to adulthood. Once there are enough dragons: fly four to a city and demand fealty: if a city is an even match for an adult dragon, then four should be overpowering. Conquer one city per dragon and install each dragon as lord, utilizing the city to benefit the dragons' further growth. Any city that doesn't cooperate is burnt to the ground. Any city that does, is nuked by the GMs when they find out about it. Instant immolation of a good portion of the gameworld.