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

[Angthoron]

Probably a remote team webcam larp dinner and an in-game dance party

 

[taxalot]

Next Marathon livestream will be in Starr Long's car.

"Guys, if you give me 1000 € then I can make rent, if you give me 2 000$ then my family will get to eat. 3 000 $ and possibly I can find time to make a new sidequest or some other bullshit..."

 

[taxalot]

Oh , forget it, Starr Long already has a new job

https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-acceleration-agency

We use design thinking methodologies that accelerates business success

 

[grimace]

This is an Atos (Sota backwards, Sota meaning Shroud of the Avatar...) game.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/391407762

 

[grimace]

day 2 of Atos livestream

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/391890748

 

[Eggs is eggs]

This is speculation, but I don't believe that Starr is an official employee of Portalarium anymore. His only official affiliation is as a part time consultant through his "The Acceleration Agency" company.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...ming-worldwide-support-and-publishing.153301/

Effective immediately Portalarium is resuming worldwide support and publishing for all territories. This means that all customers formerly serviced by Black Sun will now be supported directly by Portalarium. We feel this transition will allow us to better serve our worldwide customer base directly. This follows on the previous transition last year away from Travian Games.

We want to thank Black Sun and Travian for their support and partnership over these last few years.

Black Sun customers will just need to login to the shroudoftheavatar.com website and change their email for the transition to be complete.

 

[taxalot]

It's always hilarious how they spin it positively.

"We haven't been let down, we are taking matters in our own hands ! ". The day I get fired from my job, I will tell my wife : "Honey, it's time for me take care of my own destiny."

 

[Angthoron]

It's not retreating, it's just advancing backwards.

 

[FireKing]

Lord Shittish and Dorkstarr aren't even involved in the day to day operations of this scam anymore. It looks to be the Chris "AssToss" Spear's show now.

 

[grimace]

Happy One Year Anniversary since LAUNCH!

And congratulations community on 64 months of releases.

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/release-64-instructions.153439/

 

[grimace]

So I guess today this game officially launches.
The story trailer they released seems pretty solid:

Here's to another year and another episode of Shroud of the Avatar.

:cheers:

 

[taxalot]

It's really interesting to see how Richard Garriott has completely disappeared from the surface of the Earth, once again. It's also interesting how his Lord British persona is basically made absent of the game, leaving New Sosaria in the same state of Portalarium : broken and nonsensical.

Time to reflect a bit on what went on, I guess. I never had much hope for "Ultimate RPG" to be very good, but I at least expected decent and sure did not think it would turn out into a catastrophic scam.
I wonder how long they can pull off the "working from home" bit : I'm pretty sure anyone on the staff is seeing the writing on the wall and will find another job at the first opportunity. Good luck hiring to work on SOTA.

The shame is that they do not admit it and they still sell ingame items and housing at a ridiculous price.

I think it is now safe to say that Episode 2 is _NEVER_ happening. They do not have the ressource to pull it off.

 

[grimace]

https://www.youtube com/watch?v=UgoRYEN6SaM

Compare 2013 to 2019.




https://youtu be/HKZCm5wVIpM

 

[Infinitron]

http://ultimacodex.com/2019/04/in-which-i-tire-of-waiting/

In Which I Tire of Waiting
BY WTF DRAGON · APRIL 4, 2019

A few months ago, I posted a short update regarding my yes-dammit-it-still-hasn’t-arrived-or-even-apparently-shipped Shroud of the Avatar box, with all of its attendant feelies:

Ostensibly, according to the last Update of the Avatar from 2018, some people on the list of Phase 2 recipients have begun to receive their boxes. Mid-January was specified as when the major portion of Phase 2 shipments would be sent out. Mid-January was specified those of us who are still awaiting our physical backer rewards are bidden to watch our email accounts for a message from Stamps.com confirming that something is being shipped to us.

To date, I’ve not received any such shipping notification, and obviously I haven’t received a boxed copy of Shroud of the Avatar. Part of me wonders whether I should just order one via Amazon; would it arrive before the copy I should have already received for backing Shroud of the Avatar on Kickstarter back in 2013?

All of the above remains true; Phase 2 shipments have gone out to many backers, many of whom I’ve heard from…but I have yet to receive even a notification as to the status of mine. And I continue to contemplate ordering a box from Amazon the next time I have to travel to the US for work, just to see if I get that one first. In fact, if I remember to do so, I will probably try and arrange for that; Amazon is ostensibly handling fulfillment of any such orders, and I’m a Prime member. It wouldn’t be difficult to have a box shipped to whichever hotel I end up staying at.

But, I digress.

My patience has worn thin, and so I’ve added a new widget to the site header, which is counting up the hours since I shelled out the additional international shipping fee, the one that was supposedly the barrier to my Shroud of the Avatar box shipping during Phase 1. I realize that Phase 2 didn’t begin until some months after the deadline for the international shipping fee, but that’s the date I’ve chosen.

And the counter will also serve as a canary; if you see it disappear, you’ll know that the package I’ve been awaiting — now, unfortunately, with steadily diminishing enthusiasm — since 2013 has finally arrived.

taxalot

 

[Angthoron]

Part of me wonders whether I should just order one via Amazon

Fucking why

 

[Sceptic]

Part of me wonders whether I should just order one via Amazon

Fucking why

Stockholm Syndrome?

 

[taxalot]

Maybe Richard Garriot's next game will be good.

 

[Fishy]

Maybe Richard Garriot's next game will be good.

I want the RG/Chris Roberts/Peter Molyneux crossover game we all deserve.

Three billions for Fraud British up in the sky,
Seven for the Godus lord and AI overblown,
Nine for Fig Investors doomed to die,
One for Citizen Roberts on his dark throne
In the Land of Kickstarter where the suckers lie.
One Crowdfunding to rule them all, One Crowdfunding to find them,
One Crowdfunding to bring them all, and in the darkness scam them,
In the Land of Fig where the whales multiply.

 

[Infinitron]

http://ultimacodex.com/2019/04/shroud-of-the-avatar-update-of-the-avatar-325-and-326/

Shipping Counter on Ultima Codex & Recap on Shipping

If you haven’t noticed yet, in the header portion of the Ultima Codex’s website we now have a counter that is tallying the months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and yes even seconds, until Withstand the Fury aka WTF Dragon receives his SotA Box. In fact, he wrote a whole article on why a few days ago.

If you haven’t been keeping up with the Shroud of the Avatar news, Shroud of the Avatar has been negligent in getting kickstarter and the post kickstarter pledge backer rewards out to individuals. In Q4 of 2018, “phase 2” was another set of boxes out to backers finally, however there is (what I would call) a significant portion of backers who have yet to receive their box or even the rest of their boxes. There is also the fact that not one backer, eligible for the print copy of the Blade of the Avatar book (Patron backer level and above) or the Citizen and above “signed by Richard and Tracy Hickman print copy of the book “, has received theirs as well. This is cause they decided to “self publish” the book. Let’s not forget the lack of tracking numbers too. Which as someone who has had a number of packages lost or stolen when delivered by USPS, is rather frustrating.

Now I understand that there were some missing addresses and missing unit/apt/suite type numbers as well. From one individual, it sounded as if some boxes even were returned to Portalarium due to invalid addresses. There were address verification issues as well. Plus on top of this all, there are dozens of emails that were sent to Portalarium with questions on the boxes that were never once responded to (even after multiple attempts) nor did they even get the typical auto-response email back confirming receipt of the email question, such as, “Thank you for contacting us! We have received your request and are working on responding to you as soon as possible. Since we are a small team…” So this lack of communication among other things certainly leaves much to be desired from Portalarium.

Some news was leaked in a stream, however surprisingly that video on twitch was deleted as of the last time I looked. I was able to find it here. Chris stated he “[didn’t] even have a good list of addresses…”

However . so I assume this was tied to one member of the dev team being out, so they are probably trying to put together decent list of addresses of people who still need their boxes. This certainly leaves me wondering why they don’t have a customer database of who already had boxes shipped to, who had boxes returned, and who never even had them shipped. This also calls into question why this documentation isn’t available to all dev team members securely via cloud/online file storage in case someone needs to take over the duties, as has happened. We also learn as you hear that the book is being worked on still to some extent.

So, I look forward to seeing how long this counter will have to go, my guess is one of two things will occur: 1) WTF orders one of the boxes from Amazon using Amazon prime and since it is in the Amazon Warehouse he will actually get it in a timely manner… or 2) WTF waits and the box either never arrives or won’t be shipped until Dec 2019. Maybe we will get lucky and Chris ships out one to WTF Dragon faster, or so I can hope. I hate to see any good friend of mine feeling frustrated.

 

[Virukansu]

I was this close to backing the game on Kickstarter, happy I never did. I've seen someone donate their box to LGR, probably so they don't have to look at it.

 

[Infinitron]

http://ultimacodex.com/2019/04/shroud-of-the-avatar-update-of-the-avatar-327-and-328/

Richard Garriott Signed Book Tweets

So the inquiring continues from fans on the Tracy Hickman and Richard Garriott signed copy of Blade of the Avatar that is still due to every KS and Pledge/Backer level that is eligible for it. Recently on Twitter, one Ultima Dragon reached out to Richard who appears to state that the signed book already went out. We know from Starr Long and Chris Spears that this isn’t the case, and as you can see Richard quickly back tracks to “I’ll have to check on that.” I would go so far as to say he is out of touch with what it going on with Shroud of the Avatar. Hopefully we get an update soon though on this. While I don’t care if I get my book or not, I know from some backers have vocalized how frustrated they are and even future plans should this not be fulfilled in a timely manner.

Meanwhile, in the comments, our friend Titler aka BritishAccentsGetTheGirls continues his crusade:

” I wish during one of these “Ask Us Anything” telethons they would answer some of these questions because I feel the players have a right to know! ”

I’ve submitted some of what I’ve been told behind the scenes to Ultima Codex, and if it was true Richard Garriott checked out long, long ago. I’ve fought long and hard to get the information out to people, but there’s only so much I can do. And honestly, it’s pretty depressing how you have to fight even the community you’re wanting to help every step of the way…

Did anyone see the brief resurgence of City of Heroes over the weekend? It turns out that not only were people raising money for successors or emulation of the game sitting on a private server for more than 6 years, but it seems some in the media, in particular Bree Royce of MassivelyOP knew about it; this would be the same Bree who censored any attempt of mine to get the truth of Shroud out, and STILL rages at me when I try to post the facts… even though MOP has turned on Spears specifically since they’ve seen what he’s really like. Meanwhile they only released the CoH server to the public to gain some goodwill I suspect, but NCSoft’s lawyers have already shut it down.

God, what has gaming become? I regret ever giving so much of my time and professional life to the industry some days.

Here’s the thing, without journalistic engagement, I can’t prove the Dev comments I’ve received are valid either. Especially as my lunatic stalker has spent 3 years trying to deliberately gaslight me; he’s even gone as far as making fake profiles as either a girl to try and seduce me, or as a friend who tried to forge me “hacking” his Reddit by sending me his password, and when that didn’t work, videos pretending he controlled me; I see through it every time, but to get a VALID, public interest story out there, I need someone independent to cross check the facts I submit.

Journalists can also provide anonymity (see the recent Anthem story, for instance) to the claims made. I can’t offer that to any sources I have, at least not that they can hold me to account for. I can provide the proof for my own facts, but not yours.

But how do I know if they’re not seeing attachments because spam filters are eating them? How can I provide proof if they don’t respond and let me know I’m whitelisted to get the information out there? What’s the point when much of the community is so literally stupid or addicted to drama that they don’t even read, let alone understand the information given? Over at MMORPG.com I got temporary banned for my first video, even though it had proof and my stalker appeared (using the profile of a Canadian serial killer no less) to gloat he’d indeed got my Shroud account removed… and then banned again when I posted the result of Arbitration, and I didn’t cheer people on the forums who claimed to have watched the video but hadn’t even seen the timeline under it where I linked to the parts they claimed I hadn’t done…

What makes that so especially self defeating is that now they’re all getting banned as well, what defence do they have either? Because they were so easily distracted by trolling and their own toxicity that it’s now impossible to defend themselves, because they wanted to discredit the people who fought for the truth so much better than them.

So yes, what you say about the staff sackings agrees with the information I’ve been given of what happened. Out of left field is an understatement. And UltimaCodex has that in text form only, so it would get past any filters. I’ll quite gladly take any legal hit personally; I’ll state publicly this is what I’ve been told, either as an actual staff leak, or part of an even more obsessive attempt to discredit me, under my own accreditation. UC can provide my real name and address for Portalarium’s lawyers to come and try and sue me personally after publication; Portalarium’ll have a wonderful time trying to defend it in a UK court, because I’ve got the entire papertrail of trying to address the support for harassment, and I can state I did what I could to cross check my sources.

So sorry to you personally if I sound arrogant, but I’ve actually had the balls to FIGHT. And my stalker has desperately tried to dent my self confidence, indeed he even bragged to Portalarium they had to ban me to save me from his attempts to harass me until I went insane. And I’ve got an archive of THAT too. So also not sorry in general to be arrogant. You have to be, to keep fighting. But unless someone with REACH picks up the story, it’s pointless.

Here’s the truth, Kotaku, Eurogamer, another website my stalker doesn’t know I’m on, and a medium level YouTuber were looking at publishing the story, but the communication just trailed off for unknown reasons. You guys have leaks? You guys have an interest in the story? WRITE TO THEM YOURSELVES WITH WHAT YOU KNOW AND ASK THEM TO COVER IT. Tell them you know Titler, I’ll do the hard work on the behind the scenes stuff again, oh yes I’d be glad too. But right now the entire Shroud community looks like single figure numbers, that the media can’t be bothered to work out who is closest to speaking truth or where the story is.

You say a Dev has talked to you? Tell them what you have, give them the name, and ask them to get in touch to cross check it. They’ve all had mine. But I’m just one person. Two or more might have the actual truth though. Give it to them.

” If something goes up on the site that Portalarium deems a matter worth pursuing legally, then as the site owner/operator, I’m going to be in the crosshairs of that.”

As long as you have done due diligence on the story, you as publisher cannot be held to account. It would depend then upon whose name was on the byline of the reporting; which is why I offered to do it under my own identity. It would then fall onto me to prove I had cross checked my sources to verify the claims made, as being convincingly lied too is a cast iron defence in law. If I was unable to get anyone from within the staff to confirm what was passed on to me, I would continue to not use it publicly, because total honesty and integrity is currently the hardest line of defence I have. Unfortunately this cycles back into the problem we’re discussing, someone has to take a stand and speak out to do that.

I understand why they don’t; when I worked on Ultima Online, my contract with Electronic Arts forbade me to even mention they’d ever employed me until 3 years after I left the business. The gaming industry is also incredibly tight nit and burning one bridge brings the whole down upon your head.

I however can provide all the documents for my own case at the American Arbitration Association, but I need a secure line of communication to get them to you, and thus discount any attempts of forgery etc. Actually thinking about it, there is one thing I can do to start proving that with just text, as the value of hiding that has been compromised already. I’ll send it in now.

The problem I’m having is as mentioned above; people are too scared to take the risk publishing, or the player numbers are now so small it’s not going to be a big enough story to bother risking.

WTF Dragon's response:

This:

As long as you have done due diligence on the story, you as publisher cannot be held to account.​

…is precisely why I haven’t published anything based on what information you have sent, and why I haven’t followed up to obtain the rest. Golem tried to do some independent verification of the information you did share, and it turned up nothing; this was discussed in another comment thread a few weeks ago, if memory serves.

I’ll watch for your email and see if there’s something we can do to corroborate whatever it is you’ intend to pass along thereby. But due diligence in this matter requires that we are able to verify things without just resorting to the supply of information you present us with.

 

[taxalot]

It's getting pathetic really. The last attempt at doing community is a deco contest everyone shrugged at.
The patch notes are getting ridiculous. Here's the latest release addition

• Decoration Scaling
• Female Peasant Wearables
• New Rare Random Encounter Merchants
• The Vault
• Tamed Pet Balance
• Crafting Balance
• More Young Dragons
• Wave Battle Improvements
• Lord British Cupcakes
• R60, R61, and R62 Livestream Items
• Performance Improvements
• More Bug Fixes
• and more

I'm not saying that each month they should add new continents or something, but it's a sign that they have given up fixing base mechanics, empty towns, and broken quest lines.

It's been ages since anything quest wise, content wise, or Episode 2 related has been showed. They're also down to making videos from home and you can only think they're in their underwear doing that. It's so fucking sad. Everybody who is still getting a paycheck on that MUST be looking for another job on the side because they can clearly see it coming.

This is a game that is clearly dying : that they continue to sell expansive items and lots is close to a scam.

 

[Fishy]

Lord British Cupcakes

 

[Eggs is eggs]

That Titler guy keeps posting that he has some kind of inside information on Portalarium and he has shopped it around to various news sites (including Ultima Codex) but that none of them will publish it. Why doesn't he just publish it himself on reddit or in a forum?

I'm curious to know what Port was doing for the first few years of the project when they had millions of dollars, tons of good will from the fans and a solid staff of ~30 working on the game.