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

[Eli_Havelock]

One thing that always confused me about this game is a question. Is the game supposed to be set in the Britannia of Ultima or some weird bastardized version of it?

"New Britannia"

Ever play Might and Magic 9? Same bullshit, but with elves and many other stock fantasy clichés.

 

[LostHisMarbles]

Was hasty and impulsive to pledge in this one, no denying that.
But was smart enough to smell the coffee real early on, sold my pledge back for exactly what it cost me, so didn't lose a single dime.
(couldn't you have waited mr. smartpants, sell at an opportune timing, make a profit on top? Maybe if i cared to, but i didn't; was 500bucks in, so maybe what? 100 bucks profit if i sold it for 600? Not worth my time honestly; and frankly not in line with my ethics, i hate the "intermediaries", or as they're so often called today, "flippers". These are your everyday vultures, laching on top of something and eventually bleeding it dry some, while of course fucking up the market by driving the prices up all around. I detest them.)
So all well and good for me in the end.

Reason i mention all this, what shocked me was how organised these boys where. Maybe still are?
There was this dude, who surprise surprise was 'Lord' something or other [aka big whale, 4digit pledge], that was "in charge" of ingame asset sales! Proper in charge! Like there was someone from the official team having blessed him with their permission to mediate between all and any interesting parties.
Talk about mafia practices.

And i really mean organised, due was on top of it pronto, had his method all set out, what, when and in which order, his 'special' SoA only Paypal account and so on. Took my pledge and held it, took the interesting party's money and then switched them over.
What profit he made i couldn't tell you as i was the one selling.

Cherry on top, in terms of my realising just how shady this all was, turns out this guy is also -by total coincidence- one of those fucktards, you find them in every forum, that gets to decide who or what is passable, agreeable, or worthy of being cancelled. Very unofficially of course. Just happens to coincide with the official line everytime.

Which brings me to the conclusion really..
Imagine how worthless, useless and blatantly incompetent in terms of design and coding they are, when they had such an amazing laundering scheme going on, such a wide pool of people willing to be milked over and over;
And yet they still managed to fuck it all up and scramble for pennies..

 

[Eli_Havelock]

Do you mean Lord Robert?

You might also be amused to know that after a while of sales being so bad Markee Dragon (the "Trusted Trader" middleman) couldn't even keep up one of the API sites, and that you cashed out when the getting out was good.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Was hasty and impulsive to pledge in this one, no denying that.

Username checks ou-

But was smart enough to smell the coffee real early on, sold my pledge back for exactly what it cost me, so didn't lose a single dime.

Never mind, carry on.

 

[grimace]

To be fair . . .
the price of a large pledge for digital (not real) real estate was the cost to fly to Disney World.

Nerds chose to vacation in a virtual world than to risk exposure to sun burn.

Re-selling virtual items was hinted at by Lord British since the kickstarter days. The big tease was SOTA would be ULTIMA ONLINE II TWO 2!

Everyone was hyping and hustling everyone else. Some of us were entertained and enjoyed our time amongst the crazies and fanatics. It was an escape and an engaging role play for a time. If anyone truly believed episdes 2-5 would be like World of Warcraft expansions and the user base would increase I do not know.

 

[LostHisMarbles]

To be fair
. . .
If anyone truly believed episdes 2-5 would be like World of Warcraft expansion

You're not being fair. Not in the slightest

Your way of phrasing this suggests maybe episode 1 was like 'x' successful other game and it was only past 2 that some decline occured. And it realy wasn't, to put it kindly.

You're using a strawman*, which can lead to assumptions; be it in regard to your viewpoint, or to the intellect of everyone else's.
A game doesn't need to have 12 million subscribers to be successful, nor did anyone, ever, got into an Ultima game, at this day and age, expecting it to become a major hit.
People gave money expecting an online 'adaptation' of what had not been seen since 1999; and that's assuming you count IX as worthy of your time, 'cause we all know it was shit too. The count therefore had stopped even earlier.
In short, what was alluded to and what occured varied vastly.
This was pure and self-conscious money grabbing, nothing more. He learned his trade with Zynga, went on to apply it to titles (supposedly) more dear to him. Goes to show about the man.

* Not directed to grimace, unless he's an alt; speaking of strawmen reminded me of Hiver! He still around? Anyone typed a strawman, was like he had an AI scouring the codex, he'd be on them in seconds, lol

 

[ERYFKRAD]

He still around?

Haven't seen him around for years, actually.

 

[grimace]

Let be be more clear LostHisMarbles

I paid for 5 episodes. There was one release of one episode of story content. This is a failure to deliver. Shroud of the Avatar failed to deliver many promises (included a published Tracy Hickman novel in hardcover or something. It was cheaper to by the book from Walmart.)

Stretch goals were altered to be delivered without meeting the criteria the developers set for the goal. My point is that spending a thousand dollars on virtual items to enjoy a virtual vacation is about the same amount of money a man might spend to fly to Hawaii.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

You paid for 5 stand-alone MMOs?

• Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtue is the first of a 5 game series of full-length, stand-alone games (each using the same game system), referred to as Episodes 1 through 5. Estimated availability of Episode 1, Forsaken Virtues, is October 2014, with Episodes 2 through 5 estimated for subsequent yearly releases.

Aside from that, and the FAQ stating "Though Shroud of the Avatar won’t be a massively multiplayer online role playing game, it will be a multiplayer game." Shroud IS UO2! Remember that part of EA closing UO2's development because it would have been in direct competition with UO itself? Apparently nobody learned since, not even Richard Garriott himself, and that's what happened to your other four games while whatever they're tinkering with on the current CEO's personal Player-Owned Town "Castle Atos" is called "Episode 2".

And some bonus hilarity given how the design of this shitshow turned out:

Shroud of the Avatar Kickstarter Revealed!

Richard Garriott, the award winning designer and creator of the Ultima franchise, makes his triumphant return to the genre that earned him a place in the Hall of Fame and a Lifetime Achievement Award. Shroud of the Avatar is the first installment of Richard’s new vision and represents the reinvention of the classic, fantasy role-playing which he pioneered. A fantasy role-playing game that will focus more on player choices and discovery than on level grinding.Richard Garriott, the award winning designer and creator of the Ultima franchise, makes his triumphant return to the genre that earned him a place in the Hall of Fame and a Lifetime Achievement Award. Shroud of the Avatar is the first installment of Richard’s new vision and represents the reinvention of the classic, fantasy role-playing which he pioneered. A fantasy role-playing game that will focus more on player choices and discovery than on level grinding.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

• Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtue is the first of a 5 game series of full-length, stand-alone games (each using the same game system), referred to as Episodes 1 through 5. Estimated availability of Episode 1, Forsaken Virtues, is October 2014, with Episodes 2 through 5 estimated for subsequent yearly releases.

So ... uh.... those other episodes?

 

[grimace]

http://noezgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/A_Demo.png

Does this look familiar to anyone?

 

[Eli_Havelock]

http://noezgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/A_Demo.png

Does this look familiar to anyone?

Oh, that's still around with it's old-school Unity Asset Store feel. Quite the story, to be brief.

The single-player remnant of former Team21 that split off and took Aledorn in spectacular shitshow while the remainder of Team21 went to VR MMOs with an even more dubious KS.

 

[grimace]

http://noezgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/A_Demo.png

Does this look familiar to anyone?

Oh, that's still around with it's old-school Unity Asset Store feel. Quite the story, to be brief.

The single-player remnant of former Team21 that split off and took Aledorn in spectacular shitshow while the remainder of Team21 went to VR MMOs with an even more dubious KS.

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...f-arkania-like-rpg.97683/page-22#post-7851923

There's hope for the Ultimate Collector to enjoy the Shroud of the Avatar assets in a real single player RPG.

 

[Sargon]

Was hasty and impulsive to pledge in this one, no denying that.
But was smart enough to smell the coffee real early on, sold my pledge back for exactly what it cost me, so didn't lose a single dime.

Same here. With Ultima Online being possibly my favorite game of all time, I got way too invested in this project. I had a decent amount of discretionary income at the time and pledged significantly more than anyone should have. Lucky for me, I got out while RMT was still allowed and before the bottom completely fell out, and I was able to recoup most or all of what I spent initially. Had I waited a few more months, I likely would have been out thousands of dollars. I'm not proud of my unwise investment, but at least I recognized the warning signs and came to my senses before it was too late.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

Good thing you didn't report an actual profit or else you'd have someone stalking you for years. Here is one example.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

While I was ag the library syncing up my ipad I still had the old exe file to Shroud (but i deleted the data in Georgia in 2020). So, I reinstalled/patched and booted it up
Offline. It works. I tooled around a few combats and turned it off. My gaming blahs for games is bad. I don't think it would matter what i boot up.

 

[BritishAccentsGetTheGirls]

Good thing you didn't report an actual profit or else you'd have someone stalking you for years. Here is one example.

That was also the name of the account that turned up at Ars Technica, as per my last commentary here way back when; hence why it was immediately banned and publicly declared by the editorial team as "weird stalkerish behaviour". Because, y'know, Ars Technica amongst others had actually seen the evidence I had... and knew what I was claiming was backed by the facts. So too did the commentariat there, as you can see; outside of the blinded SotA cult and the self defeating, self-absorbed "the only criticism that matters is my criticism" MMO forumsphere, what was happening with and around Shroud was blatantly obvious to anyone who took the time to genuinely look at what I (and so many others) was putting out there. Which is why I kept doing so. It helped keep a lot of good people away from an absolute shit show.

Regarding "making a profit" though, at the time I realised Shroud was becoming an outright scam, I wanted to remove as much connection with myself as possible, and put up everything I could off load from my account for no starting price in a 24 hour auction. I couldn't close the account entirely because remember they lied and claimed they wanted us to help test Steam integration, then said you couldn't sell an account tied to Steam without buying a new one for full price. But as Gariott went on to say, anyone on Steam was just a lower class of player, who was reviewing the game badly because they didn't understand the Kickstarter model... despite them deliberately locking in most of their Kickstarter backers onto Steam themselves.

And yes, I did make I think it was something like £80 over what I'd spent, including the £5 (iirc) fee for the "account splitting service" and the second £15 charge on the international postage that should have been included in the Kickstarter I backed, but they claimed they had to charge you for again, and you know now I think about it, should have been refunded if you weren't eligible for rewards any more (I wonder if they charged the new owners for postage again now they're eligible?!) and then never sent the actual goods to many of the backers, because they stole every penny they could before dissolving the company and running off... But yes, I got a much higher offer for the items because within a few hours the Cultists on the forums managed to bid themselves up to ridiculous amounts of money thinking they'd be able to flip what I was offloading again later for even more.

I wouldn't have cared if it went for nothing, because it was a moral decision for me; but I did later enjoy winding up my stalker, who was sending abusive PMs bragging that "thanks to me you've lost everything" after he begged Portalarium to act against my account, that no, I'd actually come out ahead. I also made sure to point out I spent it on a holiday with a then-girlfriend, which especially needled the anti-social fuckwits.

But there was a legal element to this later too; not only did it allow me to seed particular, identifiable and trackable obsessional behaviour to prove to third parties how toxic the Shroud community was (hence Ars above), but as it became obvious my lawyer and I weren't going to easily be able to get Portalarium to work with the police reports we'd made, my lawyer suggested that as the account was now blank, we prepare an Arbitration claim in case they were stupid enough to act against my account out of spite. It was why I deliberately listed my backer number in one of my videos so they could easily find it. And then we waited. We didn't have to wait long.

Now here we are, years later.

Player numbers are down to the mid-30s. Most of the toxic, hateful RMTs have cut their losses and run. Even ShroudoftheavatarNICE had to give in to reality in the end. Even those who formely volunteered for Portalarium, like WTFDragon (who once threatened to leak forum PMs from critics he claimed would show how nasty they were) turned when even they didn't get their rewards; and the lunatic stalker who did so much to destroy the entire community and prove directly that someone at Portalarium (almost certainly Chris Spears) was allowing rape and death threats as long as it was directed against critics ... well, he's desperately sucking up to the Raw subreddit these days, because even he knows now he's never getting his 1998 Ultima Online-esque |3o|\|e |)oO|) social griefing game now, and he can't stand the thought he's not on the winning side...

And Lord British?

He's now making an NFT based RMT game. And he's hired Chris Spears to help make it again. They aren't even pretending to care about their actual fans anymore, or hide what grifting techbro-wankers they are.

So all that insane hatred. All the damage done or hoped to be done. The ridiculous self-delusions, the lazy drama seeking, the sheer commited nastiness... and yet the critics were right all along. SotA was always a vile, incompetent con job.

But as well as fighting for the actual truth... I also made a profit indeed.

 

[Grauken]

It's ok, you can let it go, nobody cares about Bout of the Scamatar anymore

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

You can still play offline for free.

 

[Grauken]

You can still play offline for free.

You can play Path of Exile for free. Far more entertaining

 

[Eli_Havelock]

You can still play offline for free.

You can play Path of Exile for free. Far more entertaining

Why not both? You're playing the best part of Shroud of the Avatard right now. It's the shitshow that keeps delivering (everything but what it was supposed to).

In related news:

 

[Tweed]

That's bad news if the whales are finally leaving. Like I've said before, this was never meant to be a game. Shroud was always about Richard's cult roleplaying with him and paying for his retirement.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Can you play POE offline too?

 

[Mary Sue Leigh]

Tried Shroud since they gave it away for pennies and it might have been a decent single player experience, but in my opinion it isn't. They put too many trappings of MMOs in that make it too tedious, boring, and especially depressing to play by myself.
You get that constant "ghost town" feel when you stroll through the deserted lifeless cities that still have traces of player interaction, you know what I mean?
Even Ultima 9 didn't make me this uncomfortable.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Most solo rpgs feel like ghost towns to me.