Jesus fuck, I'm now reading the stories from this
https://www.reddit.com/r/shroudoftheavatar_raw/top/?t=all and it's so sad. If you didn't know it was about a game, you'd think it was a forum for abused husbands whose wife had cheated on them. The community is incredibly pathetic.
BOOOHOO I STILL HAVE MY ORIGINAL FLOPPY DISK WITH ULTIMA 1 BUT NOW I HATE IT SHOULD I KILL MYSELF???
Well here's some background which might make it more clear for you all why people are so disgusted.
Links are available on demand, but I'm not including them for now so as not to fall foul of spam filters; No, it wasn't my wife, but the constant hints that if I don't stop criticising the game my loved ones would end up raped and killed is being directed towards a very specific ex-girlfriend. And the person doing this knows I know who he means, because some time before December 2016 he hacked into my email, and has since quoted some of the break up emails to me.
At the same time he got into another persons account, and our suspicion is someone at Portalarium leaked him the passwords they had there to see if they've been re-used. He has tried every week since Dec 2016 to get back in, including forging proxies to cities of the same name, but clearly doesn't have the skills or tools to get back in. He has tried to encourage me to commit suicide, and bombarded any account he can find until security temporarily shuts them down. He has posted suggestions he would like to kill people's children and bury them in a box in a desert, and endless abusive PMs including ones with entire comic series he's drawn ranting about how much he hates people via Portalarium's own forums; he's been caught purchasing accounts and then using them to futher abuse people; he's openly bragged he's using Portalarium's own staff to gaslight and harm others. He sent details about real life information, including the schools someone's children went too, and the social security number of a blogger called InsaneMembrane to multiple people via the forums. He then called that bloggers grandmother, and laughing bragged to her how much he was hurt and needed her help.
But he's untouchable on Portalarium's forums for some reason.
I've since had comments forwarded to me, claiming to be from some of the recently sacked developers, that they were aware of all this, but that
they knew he's untouchable too. Rumours were, someone on staff is actively protecting him.
I have two police reports active in the UK, and one in Austin, Texas which was about to execute a search warrant to force Portalarium to identify at least the credit card behind the individual bragging he's doing it; Portalarium knows about this too, because I've notified them of each one in turn, and given them all the contact details and crime reference numbers. Currently that is paused whilst I take Portalarium to Arbitration because since then the individual wrote to Portalarium,
and copied me into the thread to try and hurt me further, and demanded they act against me. Which they did, banning my access to my account and notifying him personally they had, because he went to Reddit to gloat about it. Even though I had all the correspondence and had
published it, they assume they're all so untouchable they could just ban me, and claim my letting them know I had police reports active was making "legal threats".
As a consequence, they received legal notification on June 4th 2018 that I was triggering arbitration as per the EULA. They're going to get
shredded trying to defend over 2 years of logged harassment. At which point both the police and the media quietly interviewing me behind the scenes are going to start up again with the story, because I'll have the court-approved evidence.
But that's just MY experience. You can find the developer Chris Spears ranting like a thin skinned bully all over the internet. You can find evidence of the lies, the ways they've deliberately built a F2P premium currency MMO and
knew they planned too right from the start, whilst deceiving backers that they were building a RPG like the early Ultimas; how they were signing contracts with outside publishers for a cut of the permanent add on store as far back as 2015 whilst lying to the press that they didn't need one; how they ran a SeedInvest to get more money, claiming they hoped for $50m in revenue, but at least $20m... but then deleted the Risks and Assessments paragraph they were legally required to included after the media started quoting how it said Portalarium had never turned a profit and were not expected to survive the next 12 months; How even now they bullshit their backers and claim sacking fully half the staff, and all the core ones, means they're getting ready, SOMEHOW to produce Episode 2... for the love of god, don't stop spending!!
Again, rumours that have also reached my ears is that they're hoping to focus on just polishing until they can sell the entire licence to someone else, and then run away from the game personally. They're looking for an exit strategy now. However no one, including Travian, are interested because they've seen the actual figures now.
And when the game goes, everything you've spent is lost, because it's server based like any other MMO.
And that's not even starting on the sheer malicious, dishonest nature of this whole shit show.
Do you see the 3 post wonder talking about all the community events in this thread? That's almost certainly a Real Money Trader on Reddit called "MrAdventur3" and "VladamirBegemot". See if you can find the almost identical post talking about dance parties, and fairy events etc he made as "Vladamir" on the main Shroud sub reddit. Then watch him melt down into toxic hatred again, and try and spin the following; He renamed his account on Shroud from the former to the latter so he could pretend on Reddit to be a newbie and that you didn't need to RMT to get a home, whilst on his main account, he merrily traded away and put up posts demanding no one undercut RMT prices or they'd kill the game, and organising people to go and manipulate the coverage of the game, including putting up lists of links for them to hit.
When I spotted he'd renamed his main account, he went on an unbelievable rant screaming he didn't want anyone to know this, and linking the two was "doxxing" him. He tried reporting me to Steam for the same thing, and posted in endless reviews that I was banned for "doxxing". Except, I wasn't.
When that failed to work, he was so outraged still... he linked both names on his Steam account himself, so he could openly use his trade feedback on the Shroud forums for trading through Steam now.
Then, he logged into MassivelyOP.com
under his real name, and tried to report me quoting his post as "doxxing" him again. When that didn't work, he tried it at Reddit. When that didn't work, he kept trying it until one mod, who didn't know his past history, believed him. All because I want to warn people he's a scammer and what you really need to spend with him to get the property he's talking about.
Once you clicked his account on MassivelyOP you saw it was his facebook account. Which revealed he'd stolen $2900 from people who thought they were supporting a turtle sanctuary, but was only to buy himself a 3d printer. There's no evidence he ever even completed the rewards in his own dishonest kickstarter, even though some of them were printing items off the printer you'd just brought him. On Gamasutra he has a public blog under both "MrAdventure" and the name he uses on MassivelyOP... and he also scams donations for a claimed unity game that again, there's no evidence he ever even got close to building.
And I'd bet you ANYTHING there he is again, trying to spam false claims about population numbers because he wants to rip people off to the last... and we do know the rough percentage of Steam client users by the way; when it says there was only 77 people online at once this week, that's between 50 and 80% of all accounts. The backers have started trying to claim they don't use the Steam client (and count HOW MANY Steam reviews say that their hours are low because they dont, it's not a coincidence) to try and discredit warning signs the game is within weeks of closure... but it's all because so many of them are running RMT businesses and are desperately trying to keep it afloat.
So ... Where, in any Ultima after IV, was harassment, stalking, threats of violence, abuse, lying, scamming, stealing, and endless toxic shitbaggery the lesson supposed to be taught?
Because THAT is why so many of us consider Portalarium have themselves burnt any fond memories of Ultima.
