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KickStarter Shroud of the Avatar - Lord British's Not-Ultima Online 2

taxalot

I'm a spicy fellow.
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Codex 2013 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
This is what the Shroud of the Avatar fanbase actually believe

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Steve-3-steve-carell-34466407-400-225.gif
 

grimace

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Greetings Avatars,

Now that we are almost complete fulfilling our Kickstarter promises (brewing coming online in R55, physical rewards shipping very soon, progress being made on castle defense, etc.), we are adjusting our team size to better match our current monthly revenue. This will give us the balance we need to begin work on Episode 2 while ensuring we can support the online service. To do that means having, at least for now, a smaller team.

Right now we will shift our focus from creating new content to polishing our existing systems. This means making a stronger new user experience, fixing bugs, reworking the quest system, performance improvements, user interface polish, and more. At the same time we will continue the Tier adjustments in progress which will rework our existing scenes to more appropriate difficulty levels based on our current player population.

You will be a big part of our preparations for Episode 2 as we relaunch the Stretch Goal Store! You will get to vote on some of the Episode 2 features by purchasing rare items related to Mounts, Flexible Lot Placement, the Elven Playable Race, and Pack Animals. Stay tuned for more information soon!

Darkstarr & Lord British

DarkStarr, 56 minutes ago


The Kickstarter (and some pledges from the official website after kickstarter) includes 5 complete Episodes.

Delivering all the Kickstarter promises (except episodes 2,3,4,5) will be a major milestone for Portalarium.

The "voting" for Episode 2 features via the Stretch Goal Store means account holders purchase digital items (without added features?) that will be coded and pushed out in a monthly release patch.

Episode 1's Stretch Goal Store did not meet any of the goals and those features were not included in Episode 1.
 

taxalot

I'm a spicy fellow.
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Codex 2013 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
People are defending this on their Discord saying its normal for a game company to have lay-offs at this stage of a project, before starting a new. This is true, EXCEPT :

-There are A LOT of other warning and worrying signs showing that Portalarium is not doing well.
-Normal small game companies do lay-offs when a portion of the game is complete ; it's usually art. But there is nothing in SOTA that feels complete : art, story, programming, design, nothing in that game is complete.
-You're doing lay offs just before starting on creating a new huge chunk of content, an entire new continent with new quests, art, monsters and while the game is still buggy and unfinished ?

Nothing to see here. Move along.

I mean it : buy SOTA if you want, it's your own choice. But do _NOT_ invest in it. Do _NOT_ buy lots, items, towns, or virtual furnitures. Portalarium is not painting the full picture about its status.
 

grimace

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Has SotA found it's niche? (If so who?)
To what degree does Portalarium have their core audience hooked?

It's an interesting story that's unfolding before our very eyes. The state of the video/PC game market seems to have reached saturation. Consumers are less likely to kickstart/fund projects now.

Will Portalarium attract and hire new talent that can polish and improve the core game code and art assets?
 

Max Heap

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I genuinley tried to like this game. But in the end I couldn't even drag myself through the free trial.
I might give it another shot one day.

But finishing it? After what I've read from taxalot I think they'll shut down the server before that happens.
 

grimace

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Max Heap taxalot

The log in servers operating costs are about $100 a month. These servers can be kept online til 2028 and beyond!




[4:39 PM] Atos: Guys, I can't say too much for legal reasons. I think Starr's post was pretty clear and honest, we adjusted the team size and makeup to fit what we needed to get from here to episode 2 and get us to a more repsonsible burn rate. What I can say about the servers is I engineered them and installed them myself to be cheap and eternal. It is not in the cloud but in a colocation center and our total costs per month with just a few tweaks is under $100. No cost for bandwidth or CPU time and everything has redundancies, automated backups, and every drive in there is on at least RAID 6 box. So the servers are not going away ever but neither is the team to be honest. We're just going to change course a bit and focus more on bugs and performance and new user experience, which is LONG overdue.



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Last edited:

taxalot

I'm a spicy fellow.
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Codex 2013 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
By the time my review gets online, who knows if the game will still exist at this point !

From WTF Dragon

Gone now:
ARTISTS
Bob Cooksey
Fletcher Kinnear
Kevin Wells (UglyFist)
Matt Schmitz: (Gix)
Kat Wenske (Bread Vendor)
Reid Rollo

DESIGN
Chris Wolf
Damien Foletto
Scott Jennings: (Lum)
Steve Zaldivar: (Sorcerous Steve)

TECH
Erik Touve (Scrambler)
Kory Kirk (Kor)

STUDIO SERVICES
Mathew Anderson: (Berek)
Rhys Romero: (Attenwood)
Andrea Vinyard: (Lexie)

PRODUCTION/OPS
Michael Hutchison: (Hutch)

And here’s who is likely still on staff:

ARTISTS
Damon Waldrip
Scott Jones (Scottie) – (part time)

DESIGN
Brandon Cotton: (Bzus)
Dan Brennan: (PlagueOfLocust)
Keith Quinn: (Sannio)
Travis Koleski (Vas Corp Por)

TECH
Jason Yenawine
Joaquin Del Canto: (WizardSmoke)
Justin Gilbert: (One and Only)
Ken Phile (Burning Toad)
Tassilo Philipp (Tass)
Bobby Thompson

STUDIO SERVICES
Rick Holtrop: (Chaox)
Sarah Dworken: (Serafina)

PRODUCTION/OPS
Richard Garriott (Lord British)
Chris Spears (Atos)
Starr Long (Darkstarr)
Dallas Snell (Gorn)

To hit art & design so bad when it is the game's biggest flaw, but also one that is probably the hardest & most expensive to fix is basically admitting the game has a scale problem that is never, ever going away. They're basically now only doing support, fixing bugs, etc... Whilst preparing for so called Episode 2? But how are they going to do it ? Are they going to rehire those guys after funding ?

One thing of note though : Portalarium has a partnership with Travian who specializes in pretty shitty web based games. As Portalarium's troubles increase, Travian appears to increase their participation in the game. I would not be shocked if in the following months they take total control of that game. And what that would mean for its future I am pretty not sure.

And in the meantime.



I asked him if he was still sure that BItcoin would be reaching 40k$ this year but he hasn't responded :(

He did add this though :
Capture du 2018-06-22 07-05-26.png


SOTA : A 100% not a scam.
 

Zep Zepo

Titties and Beer
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taxalot ,

It's apparent InfinJew isn't going to post it, or water it down so much it will be meaningless after "editing".

Post it or please PM me the original as sent to the News Jew.

Thanks,
Zep--
 

grimace

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Messages
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Shroud of the Avatar - The Trail of Virtue


Shroud of the Avatar
Published on Jun 28, 2018

Journey into the vast world of New Britannia and prove yourself as a legendary Avatar. Uncover the rich possibilities of a medieval fantasy sandbox and settle together with your friends! Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues is a multiplayer fantasy RPG and the spiritual successor to Richard Garriott’s wildly successful Ultima and Ultima Online games. The game is regularly updated on a monthly basis with new content and features.




https://youtube/hqIvWnoJnhU
 

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