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

[taxalot]

And the ironic thing ?
Garriott doesn't need money. If he wanted to do games, something good and successful, the likes of Nox Archaist and that other one (SKAGD the name, I think). He's perfectly able to program and design games like that. I am more willing to admit that he might have a couple of good ideas to make games like that enjoyable.

But he hasn't. He wasn't interested. A quick reminder that SOTA's codename was "Ultimate RPG" which pretty much tells you all you need to know about his desillusions of grandeur.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

From an inside perspective from another who has worked with him for him to take all the press credit.

Fun Fact: A previous great firing at Portalarium as a result of Zynga killing the farce of Ultimate Collector* in 2012 - right before Christmas - was followed up a few days later by one of Lord Brexit's lavish parties for end of the world 2012.

Truly, no fucks are given to his employees, his companies, anyone he's worked with, or the many fans he's been screwing in drunken begathons and investment fraud (KS and actual SeedInvest) for Shroud. RG might have ripped off enough Tolkein and D&D while taking credit from his classmates and family who helped him a hell of a lot more than he now pretends for his legend, so without the supporting people to take credit from he fails alone even on basic game design he once took credit for. (Like, who is that Raph Koster guy anyways? Now behold some online game with no skill caps so the whales who spend enough can bot while we turn a blind eye and punish only those who haven't paid for the privilege! A 'honeypot" that had no alarm notifications and took digging to find its use.)

Let's not forget the "writing quality" of Ultima before other people started ghostwriting for his legendary status. This includes Roe R. Adams III, who worked upon just about every RPG in the early to mid 80s and was the obvious influence for an extrapolation of the seven deadly sins that became the Virtues and core basis for the money cult now being exploited hilariously while their leader is off playing celebrity tourist. Those remaining to tend the cult are begging people to stream this shitshow.

LOL.

Yeah, L Ron Hubbard once wrote science fiction before he crawled up his own ass to basically disappear from that scene; RG is not that different. He IS now absolutely irrelevant to the modern video game industry. But there's still morons who see him and throw money like religion.

* - The entire game was about going around and collecting bits of Richard Garriott's ego in rubbish sales. I wish I was joking. Even worse - before then, RG got several million to make Facebook casino games.

 

[kaisergeddon]

What could Garriot do now for money? Wasn't he selling one of his estates in Austin recently? It seems like he burned whatever goodwill he could have pulled from the public that still recognizes his name. There's no recovering from Shroud.

 

[Fishy]

What could Garriot do now for money? Wasn't he selling one of his estates in Austin recently? It seems like he burned whatever goodwill he could have pulled from the public that still recognizes his name. There's no recovering from Shroud.

What about that hoverboard business?

 

[taxalot]

He is married to a rich woman, no ?

 

[ADL]

He is married to a rich woman, no ?

He certainly keeps rich company.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

What could Garriot do now for money? Wasn't he selling one of his estates in Austin recently? It seems like he burned whatever goodwill he could have pulled from the public that still recognizes his name. There's no recovering from Shroud.

As taxalot pointed out, he's been living off his wife as he keeps selling off his cash-out money pits. Nobody is buying the properties for all the janky shit he's done with them, so he keeps having to go down in price. Castleton got another $10M taken off the asking price and Britannia Manor was famously demolished after it was sold off. Makes you think about the above picture a bit, no?

The SOTA party being over was exactly how Shroud of the Avatar was sold off to Chris Spears for cheap. The cult is shrinking, almost gone except for a few die-hards and people with more money than sense. King Robert is still throwing good money after bad. "2x LoM2. 2x Duke. All RF. And LotI. Pot (biggest). Blood Buyer (forgot the name). Bundle buyer many times over. 150k easy in the game." The presence of the cult was obvious to even the general game journos who covered the whole blood auction thing. Some more of the cult got an awakening when his "Legendary" Mac & Cheese Recipe was guessed at for a couple of pages while other people shared much better than his reveal of a spoon of Kraft Cheez Whiz mixed into Kraft Mac & Cheese with the obligatory pages of backstory before the recipe. This is the most design he's contributed to SOTA in years.

Outside of the cult (and symbolic of his recipe) Garriott is only good at popularizing other people's shit. He's an even worse grifter than Peter Molyneux though was a better marketing gimmick. EA knew what they were dealing with, as shown by how there's no more EA to blame yet he's being even shittier to his customers with even worse "game design".* Sorry, cult. The amount of money he burned for UO2/UOX and then Tabula Rasa was his typical "success" after other series got the talent he cadged credit from. And some still love it because of a parasocial relationship where HE SAID MY NAME ON STREAM AND TALKED TO ME OMG!!!

Lord British was last seen: No fucks given for months.

Will the real Pirt Snikwah please stand up?

* - Now going for longer than he lasted at Origin after EA acquired the company, about eight years.

 

[kaisergeddon]

The fact that he had the audacity to post that mac & cheese """recipe""" to the forums belonging to this blunder he spearheaded proves to me the guy is legitimately not self-aware in the slightest. It really makes me question everything he did during the Apple II days and since.

Lord British... SOTA """"""Developer"""""", alright.



Fun fact: I copied the link for the image from the forum and it comes from discord, so Lord British either posted it there first or took it from someone else without knowing. I wonder what goes on in there...

 

[taxalot]

Not Self-Aware ?

My dear, I think he just doesn't give a flying fuck.

 

[kaisergeddon]

That would be for the best, especially after having that hover board video taken down.

 

[Fishy]

Not Self-Aware ?

My dear, I think he just doesn't give a flying hovering fuck.

FTFY

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Is Fargo in a similar club as far as taking credit or is he chillax to the max? The manor got bulldozed? Yeesh. Any pics before, during, after?

I had to look this up.

Garriott believes the future lies in free-to-play games, where you can play for free and pay real money for virtual goods. The games should also be browser-based and easy to access, with no complex installation. And they should accommodate both synchronous multiplayer play as well as asynchronous (one turn at a time) play. Garriott believed he had to start a new company to come up with this kind of game. And after testing the waters with a poker game, Portalarium’s first major effort is Ultimate Collector, which Zynga should publish in six to eight weeks.

oh god... wtf?!


And a division of NCsoft destroyed due to Tabula Rasa? Eh? Didn't know myself.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

Is Fargo in a similar club as far as taking credit or is he chillax to the max? The manor got bulldozed? Yeesh. Any pics before, during, after?

Before

After vast improvements were made

Assholeton is still up for sale - yes, Ultima even had its very own shitty one street theme park. I hear the pirates are extra rapey.

I had to look this up.

Garriott believes the future lies in free-to-play games, where you can play for free and pay real money for virtual goods. The games should also be browser-based and easy to access, with no complex installation. And they should accommodate both synchronous multiplayer play as well as asynchronous (one turn at a time) play. Garriott believed he had to start a new company to come up with this kind of game. And after testing the waters with a poker game, Portalarium’s first major effort is Ultimate Collector, which Zynga should publish in six to eight weeks.

oh god... wtf?!

Then he went on to write this.

And a division of NCsoft destroyed due to Tabula Rasa? Eh? Didn't know myself.

It was part of his "build up a studio with the help of many others, cash out for great personal benefit, then forevermore be useless "leader" while blaming everyone else, until he bails and leaves people who will no longer work with him if given the choice" Molyneux Cycle. He is this way for Portalarium (now being wholly shittier than EA for longer than he was at Origin post-acquisition), he was this way for Origin (and that cash-out allowed him to buy Castleton), he was this way with Destination (his equating "Look, I did the same thing as my daddy!" space tourism to a real explorer, Owen Garriott). Garriott sold Destination to NCSoft, and once he got the paycheck then he mentally checked out and went off on a shopping spree - that time was to the tune of $30M, which he recovered by costing everyone else their jobs at Portalarium.

Lord Goldbrick was useless for that game. He could literally be in space and the direction around Destination Games was no different, maybe even better. NCSoft saw the white elephant in the room and tried to get rid of it. RG sued for a huge chunk of stock and that caused NCSoft to close the studio. Just like EA did with Origin. Just like he did himself with Portalarium. He's the common element, and now every publisher knows better than to touch him, including the CEO fanboy of Travian Games at the time, Lars Janssen: LOLNOPE, honeymoon's over.

Edit: Hah, even Portalarium is now officially toast despite all the pretense when "Catnip Games" was made.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

FUZZIES

If intelligent eh?

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

The fact that he had the audacity to post that mac & cheese """recipe""" to the forums belonging to this blunder he spearheaded proves to me the guy is legitimately not self-aware in the slightest. It really makes me question everything he did during the Apple II days and since.

Lord British... SOTA """"""Developer"""""", alright.



Fun fact: I copied the link for the image from the forum and it comes from discord, so Lord British either posted it there first or took it from someone else without knowing. I wonder what goes on in there...

So what was the recipe? Pic saved so it never goes away. Derp... i read it nvm. Good grief that was retarded.

It is clear to me that I, Richard Garriott, am an essential ingredient of at least the Ultimate Ultima, if not more broadly the Ultimate RPG. Perhaps one day, now that the people who pushed me out of EA more than a decade ago are long since gone, EA will recognize that together, we could rebuild that franchise in a way that they have failed to do in the intervening years.
Richard Garriott is an essential ingredient in the Ultimate Ultima!

Ha... ok.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

Garriott sold Destination to NCSoft, and once he got the paycheck then he mentally checked out and went off on a shopping spree - that time was to the tune of $30M, which he recovered by costing everyone else their jobs at Portalarium.

Correction: everyone else their jobs at Destination. It's bad when this has been routine enough to mix up which batch of co-creators and partners this dude has fucked over for a greasy buck as part of his business model.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

And here i used to feel bad for the dude because EA were / are shit. Meh...

 

[kaisergeddon]

Imagine a timeline where Garriot didn't hamstring NCSoft with his ludicrous lawsuit. They probably would have been our Tencent in 2020, for better or worse.

 

[Saduj]

Thank God for the technical limitations of the 80's and 90's because the Ultimas would have sucked ass if they hadn't kept Lord Shitrib's worst ideas in check.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Super Shadowlord Brothers.... hmmm ultima skinned SMB.

 

[OndrejSc]

Gah, riot!

 

[Eli_Havelock]

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?p=126984

"Players can expect a variety of challenges such as a jump puzzle with a reward upon reaching its end."

The best part of Ultima since 8!

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Ultima Underworld had its share as well... both of them.

Where the fuck is?

 

[Eli_Havelock]

Some music to go with this update:


The last remaining SOTA fansites are being put to rest. I say "fansite" but it's really more like Multi-Level Marketing to try and get some of that sweet cash that... is no longer there.
(Though we know WtF Dragon will be there with his Richard Garriott waifu pillow till the very end.)

For those who don't want to click through:

It has been a lot of fun building applications to support Shroud of the Avatar. My passion for the game lead me to build tools I would enjoy and others seemed to enjoy them too. Traffic is not up or down for the site. It's around where it has been for the last year.

Unfortunately, that is not enough to support the cost of the site. Markee Dragon and myself both paid the bills over the past 4 years.

Thank you, Markee, for your unwavering support of the game and this site over the years! You went above and beyond going all the way back to 2016 when I believe we started discussing this site before an API or vendor email exports were even available, and you had reserved the domain even before that!

If the game had taken off and the player base had grown at all over the years, I am sure we had a model that would have been sustainable, but lots of things changed over time and the writing has been on the wall for the last 18 months. Shroudoftheavatar.net was never self-sustaining and never will be. You can view the game stats and see why.

A special thanks has to go out to Shawn Butts for being such a great patron of the game and a steadfast supporter and user of the site. Your commentary made the site better over the years and I think you know that. Any time we hosted contests you contributed to the prize pool, and I know you know that I will never forget it!

Another special thanks to Elgarion for being a breath of fresh air in the streaming community, so much so, that you became a part of the staff at Catnip Games. Your support of the game has helped a lot of people.

And, finally, to the developers of Shroud of the Avatar thanks for all the effort of the years. I think all of the players agree that there are special features in this game that you cannot find anywhere else.

The site will do down in the next 2-4 days.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

This game had fansites??