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

[ADL]

Have to say there's some dark poetry to the mood of dead mmo worlds. Take that lonely disco queen and expand that to entire towns with barely an inhabitant, but left with the furniture, hopes and dreams of gamers that have gone and won't ever come back. And in the midst of that, the last few, still going around, doing the same thing over and over, pretending nothing has gone wrong in that decaying world of their dreams doomed to be plugged out.

I'm almost tempted to actually install the client to visit it and feel the hollowing.

That's a better pitch for this game than back when it was "alive".

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Its installed but I quit as soon as i made a character....

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

What's bad is now i only have hotspot iphone internet in a shit zone so 30kbs is a damn blessing (pfffttt yeah.... blessing ). Won't be testing shroud anytime soon ... or much of anything.

 

[thesheeep]

What's bad is now i only have hotspot iphone internet in a shit zone so 30kbs is a damn blessing (pfffttt yeah.... blessing ). Won't be testing shroud anytime soon ... or much of anything.

Did you move to the crystal caves at the core of the planet?

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

No... just between eugene, veneta, and crow.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

+50% more lights in Sucker Towns!

Even the last remaining site willing to regularly touch this shit with a very long stick is ripping on them.

Fucking lol.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Lordy.

SOTA still has players

I'm rather impressed its at that level. I know some barely at 4 players.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

The only thing this "game" really offers is the lulz from their players. This is what happens when two stalkers fight a war of alternate accounts. It's a perfect parallel to how many people multi-box this. Some do by the dozen.


For a "MMO" Chinese gold farmers wouldn't touch for obvious reasons - yet on MOP you can still find the rare white knight actually trying to spin this mess. It's almost as hilarious as watching Chris Spears trying to do the same thing.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Looks like they say loot drops suck. I'm not seeing a decent bestiary either. No concept art and no ingame mob art. Their wiki sucks ass.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

Looks like they say loot drops suck.

"2020 will be the year stops sucking!"

Still one month left to go! /whiteknight

I'm not seeing a decent bestiary either. No concept art and no ingame mob art. Their wiki sucks ass.

You'll have to go to the Unity Asset Store for all that.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I am curious about what kickstarter recipients received. Didn't Loubet do some art? I mean he's like the ultima go to guy for art. Maybe EA cockblocked his quill.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

OMG 81% of the 16 reviews in the last 30 days are positive! DAAAAANCE PARRRRTYYYYY!

bravo dev team and new players

Indeed! Thanks for posting this.

I hadn't looked at Steam reviews for quite a while, so I just went and read the last few months.
It is really encouraging to see so many people enjoying SotA, warts and all.

Kool-Aid until the bitter Digital Jonestown ending.

I am curious about what kickstarter recipients received. Didn't Loubet do sone art? I mean he's like the ultima go to guy for art. Maybe EA cockblocked his quill.

Most of them received a steaming pile of Tabula Rasa 2 and so there's more ex-players roasting this turkey than playing it, because like NCSoft wanting to get rid of Lord Goldbrick they're wanting to get some entertainment value for their money.

 

[Tehdagah]

The literal Ultima Online 2?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ_A6KkKQtY Ultima Online: New Legacy Announcement Trailer

Looks awesome but apparently there's no item insurance, hype killed.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Yarr... hijacked by new UO eh? SOTA plundered.

 

[gurugeorge]

What amazed me about this game every time I gave it a hopeful dip now and then was how avatar control has remained unbearably clunky throughout.

I always thought that the abilities system was pretty neat though. I could imagine a decent endgame with interesting sets of powers. And some of the environments were quite nice. But the experience was so exasperating on a basic level that I could never play it for more than a few days before ragequitting.

 

[Inconceivable]

If you ask me (and you should, 'cause I'm pure genius), the problem with these grand developers of the olden days is that they lost their passion for gaming and escapism, and became lazy and greedy assholes just looking to use their past fame as some hack to make lots of money for retirement.
They promise all that their fanbase wants to hear in the Kickstarters, but as soon as they get the money, they deviate and try to turn their game into a perpetual money generating scheme. Which translates into an MMO with subscription or microtransactions or some such crap that nobody wanted.
Heaven forbid they actually finish and release a single-player game, and then actually HAVE TO MAKE A NEW GAME TO MAKE MORE MONEY???!!! Gosh!

This is pretty much what happened with all three Kickstarters I cared about: Ultima, Elite, Star Citizen.

Fuck 'em, old, lazy, greedy bastards.

 

[Fishy]

Heaven forbid they actually finish and release a single-player game, and then actually HAVE TO MAKE A NEW GAME TO MAKE MORE MONEY???!!! Gosh!

The mad thing about this one is that it constantly gets defended by part of the gamer crowd. It's the "oh they need to pay for the servers", "well they need to make money", "how are they supposed to fund the patches/updates?" arguments. The idea that you should live out the rest of your life on the back of a single product that you "maintain" by nickel and diming low-effort "it's-not-p2w-because-it's-cosmetic" amazes me, but credit to the gaming industry, they managed to convince enough of their customers. I think the battle was won when console gamers accepted to pay for online gaming. Once they got away with that one, the rest was always going to be easier to justify.

 

[thesheeep]

the problem with these grand developers of the olden days is that they lost their passion for gaming and escapism, and became lazy and greedy assholes just looking to use their past fame as some hack to make lots of money for retirement.

I honestly don't think this is the case.

I think the truth is way more sad.
Most of these people were never as good as their reputation. The games they worked on that were great were always great due to an entire team, of which they were only a part, often a part whose contributions were apparently exaggerated.
Now they are older, mildly famous and - not even due to their own fault, as it was everyone who hyped them up - were made to believe it was them who had the spark of genius.
And coming from this assumption, they attempt to create something new and... well, we know how that often ends.

 

[gurugeorge]

the problem with these grand developers of the olden days is that they lost their passion for gaming and escapism, and became lazy and greedy assholes just looking to use their past fame as some hack to make lots of money for retirement.

I honestly don't think this is the case.

I think the truth is way more sad.
Most of these people were never as good as their reputation. The games they worked on that were great were always great due to an entire team, of which they were only a part, often a part whose contributions were apparently exaggerated.
Now they are older, mildly famous and - not even due to their own fault, as it was everyone who hyped them up - were made to believe it was them who had the spark of genius.
And coming from this assumption, they attempt to create something new and... well, we know how that often ends.

Yeah. While I think Inconceivable's contention is also true in some cases, the general phenomenon is more as you say.

Can we think of any cases where a famed developer from the past has actually successfully done a recent game that's been actually good?

 

[Fishy]

Can we think of any cases where a famed developer from the past has actually successfully done a recent game that's been actually good?

Depends on what you mean by famed and good.

I'd argue that Brian Fargo did it with Wasteland 2. Sure the game makes it obvious where the funding limits hit, but it's a pretty good take on the genre, even though not revolutionary in any way. And of course, Fargo is nothing like the "dev celebrities" that Lord Brexit and Citizen Roberts made themselves into.

edit: oh, I'd throw Braben in there too, as much as I'm mad at his decision to make it a fucking mmo (which fails at being one, too), he managed a pretty successful revival of Elite, and the game does a lot of things well (and would do so much more if it wasn't a fucking mmo).

 

[Inconceivable]

I honestly don't think this is the case.

I think the truth is way more sad.
Most of these people were never as good as their reputation. The games they worked on that were great were always great due to an entire team, of which they were only a part, often a part whose contributions were apparently exaggerated.
Now they are older, mildly famous and - not even due to their own fault, as it was everyone who hyped them up - were made to believe it was them who had the spark of genius.
And coming from this assumption, they attempt to create something new and... well, we know how that often ends.

That is probably true to some extent (probably most true for Lord British and less deserving for David Braben, who has to be a legit genius to pull of what Frontier: Elite 2 pulled off at the time. Not to mention Elite Dangerous is one of the most accomplished releases, even if it isn't what most people wanted. But it seems these old legends actually brought a lot of the original cast back for the ride, so not sure how much it really applies. It does seem as if they are operating under a mindset of making this one last ditch effort - one big release for their fans, that should set them off for life. Seems like World of Warcraft really made an impression on this generation, and they are aiming for something along those lines to milk their fanbase for as long as possible with the least amount of effort.

The fact that their fans became fans because of deep single-player experiences is a negligible inconvenience that ought to be ignored.

 

[Caim]

Can we think of any cases where a famed developer from the past has actually successfully done a recent game that's been actually good?

Koji Igarashi made Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night which was pretty well liked.

 

[:Flash:]

the problem with these grand developers of the olden days is that they lost their passion for gaming and escapism, and became lazy and greedy assholes just looking to use their past fame as some hack to make lots of money for retirement.

I honestly don't think this is the case.

I think the truth is way more sad.
Most of these people were never as good as their reputation. The games they worked on that were great were always great due to an entire team, of which they were only a part, often a part whose contributions were apparently exaggerated.
Now they are older, mildly famous and - not even due to their own fault, as it was everyone who hyped them up - were made to believe it was them who had the spark of genius.
And coming from this assumption, they attempt to create something new and... well, we know how that often ends.

This is not necessarily correct in many cases.
Many of the early developers were working on their own. Garriot wrote Ultima I-V basically all by himself (except graphics and music), and this was the norm in the 80s, and in some cases (Bradley) even in the early 90s.
However, someone creating something awesome does not necessarily mean everything he touches turns into gold. There are a lot of writers who have one great book (often the debut, which they prepared in their mind for a long time), and then churn out mediocre follow-ups. Same goes for music (one-hit wonders).

Garriot iterated the same game four times before he got it right with Ultima IV (and he had one big miss with U II), and then improved upon it with Ultima V. And because of his success he attracted extremely talented people, who worked on VI and VII. When he took back more influence, he used it to create Ultima 8 and 9, proving already that he was not a genius constantly churning out good stuff.

Shroud of the Avatar looked like a shady cash-grab from the outset, and I don't know why he even tried. I don't think he was all that involved, and he didn't have the clout to attract the talent necessary anymore. As I said earlier, it looked like a team of recent "games academy" graduates who were taught how to use Unity.

 

[gurugeorge]

Garriott is listed as "executive producer" of my favourite MMO of all time, City of Heroes. I wonder how much he really had to do with it? I don't think much in terms of the original idea and design, but it was at least a successful MMO, unlike Tabula Rasa or SOTA.

It's hard to diss people like him though, even though more recent things they've done suck. I mean, they were the pioneers and did amazing things in their early days, virtually created a whole industry from nothing.

 

[taxalot]

There is no denying Richard Garriott was good in his era.

Polished products on limited machines ; grandiose sense of scale and exploration that had never been achieved before (Ultimas were mostly one man projects up to U4/U5), enjoyable gameplay. It took some kind of talent.

But what worked in the age of Apple Basic is not enough anymore in the age of The Witcher 3, middleware, and Unity.
I keep saying this but the strengths of the Ultima series have been picked up by the AAA studios in terms of interaction and world realism. And they have succeeded pretty well.

The game that reminded me most of Ultima that I have played lately is KCD. Everything is there. Richard Garriott cannot compete with that. He's way behind technically, and even in terms of design he has nothing to propose better.

Garriott was a man who reached his limits.