Codex Review RPG Codex Review: Shroud of the Avatar

[FireKing]

Has this piece of shit failed yet, so I never have to hear about Richard Garriott ever again!

 

[taxalot]

I've been playing yesterday. So, no, it's still up.

For now.

 

[FireKing]

I've been playing yesterday. So, no, it's still up.

For now.

Is it any good? I never got beyond a few hours and it still seems buggy as fuck.

 

[taxalot]

I've been playing yesterday. So, no, it's still up.

For now.

Is it any good? I never got beyond a few hours and it still seems buggy as fuck.

Read the review.

BTW, I see improvements once in a while, but they are mostly not enough or retarded. I remember mentioning in the review that one of the castle in which a major story development scene happened, was absolutely empty besides 2 or 3 characters which made the entire thing ridiculous. Well, apparently Portalarium took notice and now there are like 15 or 20 characters in there for exemple.

It's just sad that it's the same character that has been copy & pasted 15 times.

 

[Tavernking]

3 years later, I wonder if the game is better now? It's been receiving constant patches and I hear it's pretty good.

 

[Blaine]

3 years later, I wonder if the game is better now? It's been receiving constant patches and I hear it's pretty good.

Where did you hear that?

 

[Ninjerk]

Jaesun hasn't been active since July of last year.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Jaesun hasn't been active since July of last year.

Hence the question

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

What happened there anyways, where did Jaesun go?

 

[Ninjerk]

What happened there anyways, where did Jaesun go?

I think the saga is somewhere in this thread. TL;DR You know that game that means everything to you because it came along at a special time in your development? Ultima was his.

 

[ADL]

3 years later, I wonder if the game is better now? It's been receiving constant patches and I hear it's pretty good.

It's free2play now right? I recommend checking it out on that basis alone because I don't think it's that bad of a game. It's an interesting one that does a lot of things that you haven't seen in an online game like this for twenty plus years. Also the people still playing it are batshit insane and are fun to play with.

 

[Blaine]

Yes, that's a very special type of person—the same basic type who plays the commercial online MUDs that are still running.

It's the type of person who earns a six-figure salary, then spends half of it annually buying shit in an online RPG that he or she spends all of his or her time playing.

Such a person can only ever BE insane.

 

[grimace]

Is there an official release date for episode 2 (of 5!) ?

 

[Junmarko]

It's an interesting one that does a lot of things that you haven't seen in an online game like this for twenty plus years.

Lord Brexit jumping ship is something we haven't seen for twenty plus years, sure.

 

[Virgil Brummond]

It's been nearly 5 years since this review was published and 2 things have remained the same:

Still no Episode 2 for SOTA.

The individual who goes by "britishguys" in this thread (or more often know as "Tittler") is still ranting about SOTA-adjacent craziness:

https://www.reddit.com/r/shroudofth...0sil/an_olive_branch_from_rshroudoftheavatar/

Hey, remember when you nearly got the entire sub reddit shut down because you were posting addresses in Manitoba for jamma to SWAT, because 3 days later the fatal SWATing in Wichita happened, and you had to go back and edit your post, then raged at me for days because you finally realised how off the rails you'd gone...?

Which ultimately led to Reddit itself forcing Digibond out, and appointing their own mod? Which got MassivelyOP to *finally* start covering the toxicity in the community, but at that point didn't have the honesty to admit that the entire subreddit over that Christmas had been taken over by rape and death threats towards me, and family members and loved ones their stalking had identified... leaving the suggestion hanging in the air that it was the *critics* that were responsbile for the toxicity... because neither the posters here, nor MassivelyOP wanted to admit yet that they'd been horribly, *immorally monsterously wrong* about the prejudices they held?

"titler and jamma alts"....? I didn't even have any until you all stupidly lost track of the fact that I was documenting harassment in the community both for my own attempt to serve court papers, and to warn decent people away; and far too many of you got caught up in the drama and attempted to get me removed from the critical community and Reddit itself out of personal animus and stupidity, which finally got my original account struck down because one new reported thing, *after 4 years of obsession* appears to have stuck.

I've since got *one* account that I used to still keep in touch with this shit show when I want to be clear it's me; *this one*. And I have been on Reddit all along on a different one that I've continued to post as before, one that never was banned there because it never posted there, and it never visited your little fiefdom because you were no longer important. It's many, many years old now, and thousands upon thousands of karma because, outside of the Shroud hotbed of insanity *normal people don't think the way about me that toxic idiots here did*.

A Mod position by the way, you only got because it amused me to seed the idea with the outgoing Reddit appointed mod, because he had no idea how to handle the insane harassment that you, as well as jamma, had personally stirred up over the Christmas of 2017/Spring 2018. I thought it would be funny to then make you clean it all up; If I can be bothered, I'll pull the archive of all my PMs with him where he too claimed I was sockpuppetting his shut down poll; even though he had no idea which way I wanted the subreddit to go; I downloaded my entire comment history ready for potential court appearances, so I still have those too.

The fact that someone utterly lacking in intelligence, but drowning in obsession managed to confuse so many of you that I was doing what he obviously was, because you were petty, vindicitive, and so very limited is one of the saddest elements of this whole shit show. You couldn't even ally with the people supporting the cause you claimed to be interested in, because you were so easily highjacked by idiots.

Oh, there was plenty of sockpuppeting in general; I have my suspicions who Narficus is, but it was never me, much as it amused me to see "VladamirBegemot" claim it was, then later go back and delete the post because it gave away one of his sockpuppets instead.

And I know InsaneMembrane was running multiple accounts on Shroud itself, many of which never got caught because he kept his criticism separate... because he told me who a few of them were; CaptinJackSparrow was him, as was quite a few of the older, flash in the pan posters here.

And I once used a single, absolutely ridiculous alt on MMORPG because I've noticed that some people use what looks like the genuinely mentally ill to sneak abuse and drama through people's filters; Time Lord on Shroud does that, I'm pretty sure. It amused me again to see just how blind the then incredibly toxic forums were to having the piss taken out of them.

I have toyed with the idea a lot of the drama was someone playing both sides; but it was always irrelevant, because as I pointed out to the lunatics, what mattered was that Shroud dev's themselves were weaponizing the harassment, and clearly happy for it to be directed against critics. It didn't matter then who was doing it, except that I intended to prosecute them for the rape and death threats being sent constantly...

What mattered was Portalarium clearly weren't concerned about *stopping* it, and thus I was keeping everyone else safe from it.

And I've long since proved my point, and used the Arbitration Court documents to form links with the people who really mattered, the gaming media.

Documents that, remember, you particularly tried to claim wasn't even real because at the time you were so emotionally limited you wanted to believe I was making it all up... honestly, the stupidity was *staggering*; quite apart from ignoring the well known internet truth that, once you start going the legal route, *you are advised not to talk about your case*, I needed to keep an absolutely clear evidential line that some of the posted harassment and threats were using information that couldn't possibly have been gained any other way than by leaking from Portalarium...

Which is one reason *why* they didn't dare turn up in Arbitration Court; they knew I had all the receipts.

I long since walked away with my held held high, and every point I needed to make proven to people who actually mattered and had any kind of morality or brains worth appealling too. That people here are *still* believing the idiocy of up to *8 years ago* is just the kind of sad, so very sad lack of any kind of personal quality that you should have grown out of decades ago.

And it continues to be so achingly, blackly funny to me today.

 

[Jaesun]

What happened there anyways, where did Jaesun go?

I'm still playing Shroud of the Avatar. I'm SO fucking utterly sick of Generic Fantasy setting #734.440.524 MMO. It's at least a bit different. The game is now VASTLY better than when it was released. But it still has it's issues.

Up next: Let's Play Star Citizen... (That's the next MMO I will be playing). No one here can give me any actual feedback or actual information for that game.... So I will just find out for myself.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I'm SO fucking utterly sick of Generic Fantasy setting #734.440.524 MMO

Such as?

 

[Jaesun]

I'm SO fucking utterly sick of Generic Fantasy setting #734.440.524 MMO

Such as?

Ashes of Creation, yet another boring generic Fantasy setting.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

It was pretty good until that part where they reset a month's of my progress and my character was back to just after I made it.

 

[Zurat-Yarkuch]

How is this game still going? Ultima fans can't be that blinded by nostalgia.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

How is this game still going? Ultima fans can't be that blinded by nostalgia.

I'm still playing Shroud of the Avatar. I'm SO fucking utterly sick of Generic Fantasy setting #734.440.524 MMO. It's at least a bit different. The game is now VASTLY better than when it was released. But it still has it's issues.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

How is this game still going? Ultima fans can't be that blinded by nostalgia.

like I said, I was having fun with it until I couldn't

the game has a lot of technical issues but the content is actually pretty good with quite a few very well designed zones/dungeons/quests

 

[Blaine]

It also had a design issue in the form of a pre-planned aristocratic caste of players. Even if their persistent virtual lands and holdings don't affect the gameplay tremendously, at the very least they guarantee the presence of an AIDS-inducing class of player, tethering them to the game and their purchases.

 

[Virgil Brummond]

It's been 5 years since the review was originally published (it's already June 29th in the Pacific Republic of Kiribati), so what has changed with SOTA since then?

I first tried SOTA (only about ~5 hours) in late 2021.

Didn't really strike me as a compelling RPG experience and I didn't get chance to really try any of the "MMO" functionality.

The graphical assets continue to have an uncanny valley effect as described in the review. There is little cohesion in terms of style or quality. Much older 3D RPG games (e.g. Morrowind, Vampire: The Masquerade) have a better looking world because there is an overall artistic direction.

5 hours is not really enough to review the overall quality of the writing, but the general impression I got was that it's mostly MMO-style quest given out by quest dispensers. Not really worth your time, better to replay Arcanum.

Combat was OK I guess, but I didn't play enough to get a feel for it's nuances or different playstyles.

Richard Garriott has long jumped ship and these days he is trying to play an "Elon Musk" by trying to save the Titan (https://massivelyop.com/2023/06/22/...ssing-submersible-at-the-site-of-the-titanic/).

Chris Spears, the current owner of SOTA has also checked out and is allegedly working on stealth startup project. This after his "involvement" in Garriott's never released "MMONFT" scheme with the extremely original title of "Iron & Magic".