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

[Caim]

New merch?

Community member Shawn Butts has opened a Shroud of the Avatar merchandise store with Catnip Games’ approval.

Didn't know Lord English was into stepsister stuff.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

Lord Brexit has been a confirmed furry since Sherry the Mouse so anything is on the menu.

 

[kaisergeddon]

I thought you could cook the mouse when I played Ultima VI. A wasted opportunity.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Hah! And feed it to British!

 

[Late Bloomer]

 

[Saduj]

taxalot gets some screen time at around 28:50 in the above video.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...mmunity-rules-guidelines.161693/#post-1359016

Also added the following verbiage to the MODERATION ACTIONS verbiage:
"Please note that if a player is banned, they lose all claims to accounts, in game assets and access to any platform where Catnip Games or Shroud of the Avatar has an official presence."

Not content with just banning the community for saying anything that goes against the current narrative, (which for a while was anything about the KS), now they're extending that forum ban into the game itself.

"The Catnip Games Team loves the community ... "

Anpu like this.

Fucking LOL of course.

 

[Grauken]

There are people still *playing* Shroud of the Avatar? Wonders never cease to be

 

[Eli_Havelock]

There are people still *playing* Shroud of the Avatar? Wonders never cease to be

Indeed, Batshit Games is increasing the perception management efforts to game ban those who have been forum banned but still might play.

If there's problems with population now, what's it going to look like after this latest effort to keep kicking their own asses?
You get a forum ban because a cultwhale / dev ass lamprey is mad seeing someone complain about jank and waves around the purse with the devs' balls in it / dryhumps the report buttons everywhere they can? That then now automatically turns into a game ban under this new policy. Are you going to return?

The fascinating part about the devoted community is that they're really this intent on helping the game keep cratering so the walled garden's walls appear taller from their perspective.
You'd think they would be a lot more welcoming and gracious since R106 proved a lot of their cope hard wrong, but nah. Fuck it. Go Full Cult

 

[OndrejSc]

This whole game will be incorporated as one of livable planets into Star Citizen, when ready.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I have it for OFF-LINE ONLY. (Wonder if I should dl a patch? Dunno if any new offline content is available).

I’ve played many older games with less appealing graphics or sound. Fuck the online bullshit. That video was pretty damn informative on RC’s actions. Even if I owned all of Origin & the separate game IPS like ultima; I would NEVER EVER EVER GIVE IT BACK. The community would be free to produce what they want with no fear but fuck RC. That dude is fucking spoiled nutz.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Patch Notes​

This page is for patch notes for the live server. Patch notes for the QA servercan be found here.

Release 116 — July 2023​

Build Number 1668 – August 2nd, 3:15 PM

• Monthly Fishing Contest 2023 Community Cloak created. SOTA-71578
• Explorer’s Shovel is now placeable as deco.
• Fried Frog Leg recipe has been set to not teachable.
• Necropolis: Corrected offset of teleport volume for the exit door to Midras Ruins. SOTA-71602
• Northmarsh: Rotated a rock to hide that it has no visible bottom. SOTA-71603
• Port Harmony Cistern: Fixed a typo in Annora Jenkins’ responses. SOTA-71583
• Port Harmony Cistern: A specific torch under water cannot be turned on. SOTA-71585
• Port Harmony Cistern: Blocked the edge of a cave tunnel that players could see behind. SOTA-71584
• Port Harmony Cistern: Removed teleporter volume that was blocking access to the Blessed Cavern. SOTA-71601
• Port Harmony Cistern: Adjusted a feedback light on one of the water threshold archways.
• Well of Aldur: Reduced collision on a column. Moved a crystal that was spawning close to that column. SOTA-68507
• POT Dark Caverns: Added new underground Village southwest of Estgard in Novia.
• Castle Stone Arena Basement: Fixed an alignment issue with several doors. SOTA-71594

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?page_id=32989

 

[grimace]

Taxalot taxalot • Oct 11, 2018
Hello @RichardGarriott
You have been removed as CEO of @Portalarium according to the website
of Shroud of the Avatar.
Do you have any comment about this ?

Richard Garriott
@RichardGarriott
Ha! No we had thought we had to have an official CEO, so I reluctantly
adopted the title a while back, as the senior staffer. But it turns out we
don't need that. So I decided to be called creative director, which is what
I really do. Didn't think it would cause a splash.
12:17 AM • Oct 12, 2018

 

[Eli_Havelock]

Funny thing about that Twitter exchange, Richard really wouldn't know as it's usually his brother Robert Garriott helping to write fantasy in the company ledgers as CEO.

Using the company as their personal ATM was why NCSoft tried to get rid of them.

 

[Aemar]

Richard Garriott is one of the hall of famer, all time great names in video games. A pioneer. A legend. Unfortunately, he tarnished his legacy with a last run at changing the online world, and he finds himself in the court of public opinion. The verdict? You decide. For me, he remains a man that literally changed the game, but tried one too many times. Still a legend, no doubt. But with a terrible end to what would otherwise have been an incredible story.

 

[grimace]

It's not surprising that Lord British will be in the hall of fame while people like Roe R. Adams III are only referenced in deeply researched circles.

Adams was more directly involved in the development of Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar and according to some accounts it was he who came up with the idea of the Eight Virtues.

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/roe-r-adams-iii.140199/post-8007736

xEnd3r says:

When Garriott moved to New Hampshire, they met. Adams helped Garriott with Ultima III manual and then they developed the virtues system. I'm quite sure the original idea was by Adams. He was much more literate than Garriott and he did a similar Paradigm shift with Wizardry IV (his idea was to give the player the control of the bad-guy Werdna and fight the teams of heroes that were actually created by players of previous chapters of Wizardry). But something happened between Adams and Garriott. They parted ways and later Garriott stopped mentioning Adams when speaking about Ultima IV gameplay revolution.

 

[kaisergeddon]

That makes sense. The more I learn about Garriott, the more I come to understand he's one of those guys who you can tell an idea to and he'll respond "That's awesome! I'm glad I thought of that!"

 

[Grauken]

Just call him scum, its what he has been for some time

 

[Jaesun]

I sat through and watched that whole thing. This is sadly a good documentary on how this project just started to landslide and fail. It's rather sad, but this is what happened.

While I don't expect anyone else to even watch this, or care for that matter, the beginning part does go over the early career success of Richard from Alkabeth to the eventual collapse and fall of Portalarium. It was rather fascinating to see how much money he initially made with the Alkabeth game (and how lucky he got that a certain person got a copy of his initial 12 games that sold) lol. Also interesting how much money Ultima 7 budget was given at the time (a LOT).

 

[gurugeorge]

It's a depressing story. But what I did discover that I hadn't known - his dad was an astronaut, so that makes perfect sense of his otherwise bizarre-seeming rl space excursion.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

It's a depressing story. But what I did discover that I hadn't known - his dad was an astronaut, so that makes perfect sense of his otherwise bizarre-seeming rl space excursion.

Definitely has some Dr. Thaddeus Venture vibes on that, especially with how just this year his grandstanding Explorer's Club negligence of skirting regulations by calling passengers "Mission Specialist" for celebrity tourism had toothpasted some kid.

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

The Ultima games were some of the earliest I played from when I finally upgraded my creaking C64 to a brand spanking 486 DOS IBM clone. I loved them. Ultima V is still one of my favorites. I even enjoyed the remake mod of Ultima V in Dungeon Siege. I liked the IDEA of Shroud of the Avatar. I just wish that translated into a good game. And I'm glad I didn't actually put any money behind this one. What a shame.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

Early Ultima was lifter PLATO / sci-fi writing down to the Fuzzies and Time Lords and Balrogs. The last gasp of this was by Roe R. Adams III of the ubiquitous Skara Brae providing the basis for the Virtues as well as he did for Wizardry IV's lore. Early folks remember when Hawkwind was in nearly everything major CRPG.

There was already some SCA involvement from the start, but with IV onward the influences were definitely seen down to the gypsy fortuneteller; I think it was VI which showed the grestest collaborative effort in world creation. There was Herman Miller making gargish. Yet with human Kickstarter Stretch Goal Tracy Hickman this game went right back into the same tired tropes which inspired the gargoyle twist. It went from making the last elements of Ultima "borrowed" from others to make it wholly its own to some Our Elves Are Different, Part 25 Years Later.

The cosmic irony here is that had Lord Dick did exactly what he said he was going to do with Shroud, the same thing that Larian started out by cloning Ultima, then ... well, fucking Larian results would have happened. At least.

But no, Lord Brexit has to be everything he blamed at EA as Mobile fever forever and absolutely pozzed him and Peter Molyneux.

Like what the fuck was the writing pitch here?

"I want you to make a shameless virtual property cash grab not seem like a shameless virtual property cash grab even though that's exactly what I am going to boast to the press to ward off anyone burned from Tabula Rasa."

For a reminder, or the first time for some folks, Richard Garriott's Pre-NCSoft "Meddling" Tabula Rasa:







No wonder aside from verbal feature baiting it got laughed at in the Vanilla World of Warcraft era and was memory holed about as hard as EA Google-bombed Origin into being a download client.

Then, after NCSoft pulled Lord Dick's head from his own ass at great expense to everyone else relying on the publisher to survive, the TR we all would remember that would get people to play it in the Burning Crusade era:



Fast forward to 2022...

"Hey, you heard of them NFTs?"

Not even a pretense of caring about world building to cover the get rich(ard money) quick scheme.

 

[gurugeorge]

I was just watching an old Gordon Ramsay re-run, you know the type of thing where he comes across a restaurant or hotel where the owners or the chef or whatever have "lost their passion" for doing whatever it is they do.

Maybe he's one of those cases - he loved fantasy and videogames at one point, and was very good at making them, but he's lost the passion for it, so all that's left for him is to trade off his reputation and abscond with whatever money he can make off of it.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

I was just watching an old Gordon Ramsay re-run, you know the type of thing where he comes across a restaurant or hotel where the owners or the chef or whatever have "lost their passion" for doing whatever it is they do.

Maybe he's one of those cases - he loved fantasy and videogames at one point, and was very good at making them, but he's lost the passion for it, so all that's left for him is to trade off his reputation and abscond with whatever money he can make off of it.

Well, yeah, been like that for some time. That's why Ultima 8 plays like Shitty Prince of Persia that the common insult was Super Avatar Bros. for how well it was pulled off.

If you count everything lifted from the start then it was just fatigue of using everyone else's things and taking credit for creating the genre.

Despite his claims, Richard is a bad designer, a high conceptualist at best, but ever since blowing the EA publishing deal for Ultima IV because Deathlord was copying his design too closely he's been proving his own ego is more important than his own job and that of anyone working for him.

In retrospect by his own actions, Richard is quite an accomplished liar.

No wonder his own jester decided to hard bail the impending fail way back when. EA did it! NCSoft did it!

This time? Richard did it!