Shroud of the Avatar – Update of the Avatar #313 and #314
Greetings Friends! Here’s what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:
- Crown Store and Web Store Changes in Early 2019
- More Portalarium Staff Leaves
- Duke Reward Changes Again
Crown Store and Web Store Changes in Early 2019
Portalarium is making some changes soon to the Crown Store and Web Store. To that end, Chris Spears made a forum post about this. Feel free to read it below. The most important things to take away are:
- improved in game store
- converting existing crowns so that 1 crown now becomes 100 crowns after the conversion to allow more granular pricing; so it will become 1 Crown = 1 cent instead of 1 dollar
- they admitted that the regular prices for stuff have been quite inflated, the new store will have more correct regular pricing
In all honesty, I knew that ppl buying anything in the add-on store items were being way overcharged. Sadly this happens a lot with micro-transactions in video games. Bethesda under fire for doing the same thing with some Christmas themed items they were selling. Their complaint about how tough ti is to turn on/off sales is something that doesn’t surprise me either with how the website is. Less sales and lower regular prices will be good for them.
[Forum post by Chris “Atos” Spears]
Greetings avatars! We shared a lot of information yesterday in our short live stream and it was both exciting enough and potentially confusing enough that it deserved a post in writing that people could read and absorb.
Our history is pretty well known and our “cash shop” has been with us since the start. For years it has been a burden in terms of public opinion, usability, and time consuming maintenance. When we compare ourselves to other live online role play games with a similar money model, we find that we are almost the only game in the entire crowded market that has a vast cash shop on a website and then almost nothing available in game for purchase. We also added premium currency long ago but never really made full use of it in game.
Time for that all to change! Within the next 2 releases we will move to a store model similar to 95% of the other games in the field. Our website will primarily only sell Crowns and rewards programs and possibly 1 single item for episode 2 access. There will probably be another small section that will be hidden for stuff like POTs and support.
All the items in the store will be available through the Crown Shop interface. From what we’ve been seeing, most players don’t even know this exists but if you look at the interface buttons in the upper right hand corner of the game, the second one in from the right is a Crown Shop. Click this and you can access a few dozen items from the game anywhere, without needing to talk to a merchant.
When we mentioned this during the stream I saw a few people scream, “No! The interface is slow and doesn’t show the items or have information!” They are right and that is why our biggest task with this switch is moving to a whole new interface!We’re currently working on pulling all the information for items on the web store into the interface. Items will all include a detailed description, most will include a screenshot, and those that don’t will show the actual model for the item when selected.
Also, currently the in game crown shop is SLOW to load even with a small number of items. We are fixing this to prebake this data instead of loading it all from thousands of item definition and data files. This slowness was actually the reason we stopped adding items to the in game store for a while but a fix is almost ready to go live.
In addition to matching the features of the web store, by moving it in game we can improve it in a number of other ways as well. The web store has no good system for localization which means it is only available in English. The new crown store in game will be localizable just like any other in game text!
In game you will be able to filter and search and sort items. We will have items tagged for different categories so instead of clicking through pages and pages of goods and scrolling you can just click “Weapons” and “Elven” and it will show you just the items tagged with those! If you’re shopping for new lights for your house, just choose “decorations” and “lights”. We are also hoping to have other data in them so you can do things like show “Recently added” items or just “Sale” items.
To make sure existing players are aware of the in game crown store and go try it out, I’ll be adding a number of small “blessings” to the game. You’ll get one at random with any crown store purchase. I have about 25 different small blessings designed and it will apply one at random. These will last a day and will basically be shorter, possibly weaker versions of existing in game blessings or obsidian potions. We’ll probably keep these around until a release after the store work is finished to make sure people go and find the crown store in game since even the seasoned adventurers I talked to didn’t know it existed! I hope to have these live in a patch next week.
Have you ever noticed that sometimes our sales stay up longer than promised. Well some of that is due to us wanting to be nice to players outside the US who have time zone issues to deal with but the main reason is because currently it is complicated to turn on/off sales and only a few people can do it. The new in game system will be broken down to allow anyone on the team to turn it on or off and we’ll also be able to schedule sales to start and end.
So as for sales and pricing. This is another area where we’ve looked around and identified that we’re a bit off base on many prices. Part of this is due to us knowing we were doing big, week end sales and so we priced stuff higher than we should have. With this major transition coming up we’ll be adjusting many item prices down to somewhere in between the current price and the sale price.
Once the new store goes live we will have far fewer sales and they will be much smaller percentages off. Most items in the new store will be cheaper than the current full price store BUT when on sale, they’ll roughly the same or slightly higher than the current prices. There will be some exceptions to that rule but that is our general target. Going forward we’ll probably also do fewer or no “Everything is on sale!” type sales. This is largely done this way now because of the less than stellar system we use now to put stuff on sale.
So again, repeating again for clarity. New store prices will be adjusted. In general, new store prices will be lower than current full price store but slightly higher than current sale prices.
Another big thing that we will be fixing during this time is our actual premium currency! While the $1 = 1 Crown thing is easy to understand, it does not give us the resolution we need to price things correctly. For instance, to match the cash shop, we would have to do things in full $1/1COTO increments. The resolution also means we have to make drops of them very rare.
When this change goes live, after the maintenance down time concludes, you will log in to find that all of your crowns turned into 100 crowns. This will happen in your inventory, bank, and even on decos. The decos will look like a single crown but when picked up, they will turn into 100. For Vendors, we aren’t sure which option we’ll use but we’ll either adjust your numbers on your vendor or, more likely, we’ll cancel out all your crown sales/purchase orders. In game, you will still see crowns drop but at 100x the rate of the current ones. This also lets us do things like sell dyes individually if we choose. Previously we would bundle all the cheap items together in large packs because we couldn’t do sales smaller than $1.We’ll also be taking advantage of the new greater crown resolution to adjust our prices. While we knew what our targets numbers were before, we couldn’t actually get there because of rounding error involved with the low crown prices.
- Price = Count
- $10.00 = 750
- $20.00 = 1600
- $35.00 = 3200
- $60.00 = 6300
- $100.00 = 10750
Also, going forward do not expect to see many if any crown sales. We plan on moving crowns back to being the stable bedrock of our pricing structure and keeping the sales primarily in game. If do any crown sales it will only be for major events like Lord British’s birthday or the release of some major new content and will only be a small discount.
Also, we’ll likely make some small adjustments to the rewards program to make sure it stays the best exchange rate for buying crowns. I’ve had a few people point out that due to the crown sales, currently it is promised to be the best rate but you can actually get slightly better with a large crown purchase on sale. You still miss out on all the extra stuff so we still consider it a great deal but we’ll be fixing this going forward to live up to its crown promise.
One more exciting thing coming soon is the ability to upgrade deeds in game for crowns. The current plan is that you will be able to right click on a deed and get a menu showing you the cost to upgrade it. We plan on making it so you can upgrade for the price difference in the crown store. No trade deeds from the story-line will likely be upgradeable but remain no trade but we’re still evaluating that option.
Also, in case you missed the stream, the other exciting thing coming is the ability to purchase a permit for row house demolition. There will be a cheap option to turn a row lot into a an empty lot with no houses on it that can be used for whatever. We see this as a huge win for players who have their main lot but also have a row lot or two in storage from the storyline. Now you’ll be able to put down a row lot to turn it into a play space, crafting area, or a dedicated garden.
Wow, that ended up being a crazy long post! Lots of stuff to talk about. For those with short attention spans who just skip to the end, here is the tl;dr version:
- Current crown target of $1 = 1 COTO will turn into $1 = 100 COTO
- All your existing crowns will turn into 100 crowns
- Many prices will adjust downwards to be between current and sale price
- Sales will be smaller and fewer and for the most part
Thanks and you can look forward to these changes in the near future!
More Portalarium Staff Leaves
January 11th, 2019 was Serafina’s last day at Portalarium. She made a forum post and will be working for Cloud Imperium Games (aka Star Citizen). I am sure this will affect the bandwidth when it comes to customer service requests. I know I still have some that were never responded to and others that never even got the auto response email on either.
Tassilo Philipp appears to have left as well. He hasn’t been in the Stand up Corner posts for a while and he hasn’t been seen on the Forum either for a while. If Tassilo is gone, best of luck to him.
Duke Reward Changes Again
Back from the Kickstarter days, Dukes had a “Custom Duke Head” reward item. This eventually became Lord Forged items that would replace that. Starr recently talked about this in a livestream (13:00 mark in the vid) and confirmed that most feedback was bad on this reward replacement. Due to this, it wasn’t fulfilled still. The proposed new item is a unique dungeon throne room and duke heraldry paver(s). In looking at this, I believe this means you would force Duke and higher pledge players to have to use the new Player Dungeon system to even make use of their reward. I personally find this disappointing. Pledge rewards should not have to cost you $ (real life money or in-game game) to have to make use of it in the game.
What are your thoughts on this?
It is disappointing to see more people leave the company, but it isn’t entirely shocking either. What I did find rather shocking is that they think the dungeon throne room and heraldry pavers to be an equitable replacement for the duke head reward. As you mentioned Golem Dragon, you are forced to buy more crap in order to use these items and I don’t find that to be a fair exchange in any capacity. It is a sad state of affairs the way things are being handled and the continued lack of transparency.
After Portalarium finally goes out of business, I hope Ultima Codex can contact some ex-devs and put together a post mortem that chronicles the entire history of the clusterfk that this game has been since day 1. Five years ago they raised over $1.9 million which is almost twice what they were going for, they raised millions more since and even did a SeedInvest to sell equity in the company which raised over $700k. They had a team of industry veterans with decades of experience, and the goodwill of over 22k fans who contributed to the Kickstarter.
The end result has been a buggy, incomplete game only kept alive by fans blinded by nostalgia and afflicted by the sunk cost fallacy of all the money they have spent so far. Now they are trying to milk these loyal fans yet again to keep the company afloat when it’s clear that none of the issues with the game can or will ever be addressed and they are simply trying to buy time until the inevitable bankruptcy of Portalarium.
Shame on you Richard Garriott. The way you and your company are abusing the very fans that made Ultima a success in the first place is despicable. Forsaken Virtues is a very fitting title for the hellspawn that you have created.
Damn, Truth, living up to the name. Can’t agree more though. I fortunately haven’t sunk another cent into SotA since I saw the first release (I foolishly spent more than I should have before then.) I hoped to see it turn around, but got the feeling early on that it never would. I’d love to hear some of what’s really been happening in those meetings and planning sessions, even though I get the feeling it would only infuriate me more. It’s possible we never will however, as I suspect our fallen lord has been liberal with the NDAs.
Remember when people were saying. “This is the pre-alpha. It’s going to be -way- different and -way- better upon release.” And now we see it wasn’t pre-alpha, it was the beta, and it was shit. This game is such an anomaly at this point. Before, there was at least hope for the fulfillment of potential, now you have this bizarre, what I can only assume as cultish following. And I say this is the nicest way, you have a majority of whales who put a lot of stock into that potential and feel burned.
At this point SotA feels either like a middle finger to the fans or futile effort to carrying on the belief this baby is getting over the finish line. I can’t tell which one it is. I can’t imagine the millionaire RG with his millionaire hedge fund manager wife decided to ruin his good name with Ultima fans by putting out a shoddy product. But when glossing over his career, will gaming historians make sure to focus in on the abomination that is SotA?
This is a good point. I seems unlikely that Garriott needs the money, but that does raise the question of the psychology involved here. It was very obvious very early on to me as a player that something had gone very wrong in the development of SotA. A lot of the systems weren’t working from a game play standpoint. Combat didn’t feel great, the conversation system was a flop, the UI was a horrendous mess, and yet none of it was ever pulled back and reworked. There was always this push to move ahead to the next checkbox instead of looking at what had been “completed” already. To this day, they’re more interested in adding new vanity items than considering what’s not working.
In fact, the most infuriating aspect of it all is their insistence that everything is fine, and that SotA is a success despite that a quick glance at Steam Charts tells me that they’re averaging less than 150 players at a time, and haven’t peaked at over 500 in almost a year. (How accurate Steam Charts is has been debated before since this game is available in both Steam and non-Steam versions, but even if that’s only half, or even a quarter of actual players, or heck, even one tenth or the actual numbers it’s ridiculously low, and not a maintainable population!) I can’t imagine that there’s any real money being made off those numbers. Even if they were all whales, there’s no way that number of people is funding the entire studio. If they would admit their failings, and openly state “Hey, we’re working on making it better” I could find some way to support them, but instead, all we get is these ludicrously upbeat beg-a-thons where they seem intent on convincing us everything’s hunky-dory. We’re not investors or board members, we’re gamers, and we can log into the game and see the state of things. There’s definitely an obfuscation of reality going on here, but is it on the players, or themselves?
“How accurate Steam Charts is has been debated before since this game is available in both Steam and non-Steam versions”
We’ve known for some time a very close value for how many people have tied Shroud to Steam, because the exact sales figures were included in the Steam database leak back in July;
https://www.reddit.com/r/shroudoftheavatar_raw/comments/aa09ku/leaked_steam_data_shows_estimated_sota_owners_to/
At the time, it was 50,554. Portalarium stopped publishing their own sales figures just before “Launch”, when it was 68,606 accounts sold. That’s not unique individuals of course, but it gives us that Steam accounts for 75% of all Shroud accounts, which remember cannot be traded away as they are tied to a Steam account; which in turn indicates the actual playerbase, and not those who have multiple accounts to sell on to others.
(There’s a few in there also purchased from places like G2A by RMTs to put up positive reviews every time Shroud dips into Mostly Negative, on throw away accounts used for trade scamming etc, but not enough to make a difference…)
I’ve argued the actual facts time and time again though, because we could use even the looser definitions of Steamcharts & Steamspy to guestimate the actual percentage even before then, and the figures have always come out somewhere around 70% of accounts were via Steam.
https://www.polygon.com/features/2017/1/30/14406074/richard-garriott-book-interview#414676963
You’ll also notice that I point out we can use the dates to estimate how many of those accounts were also pre-Steam backers, and thus the numbers of disillusioned who simply weren’t going to be coming back no matter how much they spun the game. You can also see that, until they stopped releasing the figures, they’d only sold another 22k accounts since going live on Steam, and only a few thousand since “Persistence” in July 2016.
We know now that Portalarium ALWAYS planned to make a game around the F2P model; it was in the contract they signed with Blacksun in 2015 as a promised source of revenue for the purchase of the rights. They just hoped they could use the support of their fans to leap frog into building it from the Kickstarter, and by the time those backers realised what it really was, they thought they’d be earning all that lovely F2P cash and it wouldn’t matter. So the reason they keep going down this path is because they always meant too, and it’s now too late to change anyway, they’ve burnt all their bridges with the former fans and RMT is too ingrained into every facet of the product.
But why the last remaining community doesn’t see it? Because the only people left are either the genuinely cult like and deluded; even when the game goes under, they’ll blame everyone but their beloved Portalarium, despite the evidence piling up that they were never worthy of the admiration. Whilst many of the most toxic have quietly slunk out and pretended they were never THAT foolish, those who are left are sadly the true believers now.
And there are those who have sunk so much financial cost into the game they can’t bring themselves to see disaster approaching… It’s better to keep in investing and keeping the moment of self-realisation away just a bit longer for themselves personally.
And there’s the dishonest and pure hateful who are consciously lying and deceiving in order to protect their real businesses, or act out their weird hatred for anyone who was ever critical. One particular “Trady” recently quit of course, then came back and doubled down on the toxicity in defence of the game again, because apparently going Shroud Cold Turkey was too hard. I notice too another RMT who has once more taken to trying to push the claims that after using his real name and facebook account on MassivelyOP to try and manipulate the coverage, having failed to prove “Vladamir” was his real name and get critics banned that way, once more pushing the idea that by quoting said account name he’d somehow proved you were “doxing” him.
Yes… it’s the worst community and company I’ve ever had the misfortune to run into in my entire life, made even more appalling by the fact it’s the same people, and supposedly all done in the name of, the same virtues and games that inspired me as a child to lead a much better, selfless life.
I kick started the game way back at the beginning. I just recently actually sat down and started playing single player and haven’t played multiplayer (i didn’t want a multiplayer game, i wanted single-player, so I waited until that was ready to play.). I’ve played an active 43 hours on steam.
I can’t comment on the internal problems or the if the game was really planned to be F2P from the start as some claim. All I can say is, I’m having fun playing it.
Is it the game i hoped for? No. I hoped for a game in the vein of Ultimas 4-7. Single player feels like a single player follow up to Ultima On-Line. Which, coincidentally, is something else i’ve always wanted (I run private shard that only I play on because I wanted this.). I’ll agree the conversation system is a clunky, but the rest of the systems feel reasonable to me.
It sounds like part of the problem is a lot of people were expecting something else, which is fair. And I can see why the game doesn’t appeal to everyone. But like I said, I’m enjoying it.
Also, remember that kickstarting/backing something is the same as being a venture capitalist investor. Its gambling. We invested money in the game, with no guaranteed ROI. The ROI for kickstarting a product is the product. And just like investing in the market, backing a game doesn’t always have the ROI that you want. I’m happy with the ROI that I got, even though it wasn’t what I was hoping for. I got the physical goodies right before I left to visit family for Christmas, and it was a nice Christmas surprise for me.
And if you aren’t happy with your ROI, that’s also fair. investors aren’t always happy with how an investment plays out. Venture capitalist projects don’t always work out they way they hope. The best you can do is learn from it.
Finally, i think a large problem in the entertainment sector, games, film, books, TV, etc, is poorly managed expectations, both on the consumer and producer end. everyone hypes everything and non one has realistic expectations about anything. “My new game is going to be the greatest, back it now!” “Yeah! Its going to the greatest, take my money!” Five years later, its not what either side expected and the people who made it are trying to keep it going, the people who like it are defending it, and the people who don’t like it are trying to destroy it.
We all need to start tempering our expectations for things. Garriott & Co need to stop trying to make a new game changing game, and set out to make something fun. Historically, each Ultima was an incremental improvement upon the previous. Ultima I set up the standard, Ultima II expanded the story telling. Ultima 3 added a party and a non BBEG boss ‘fight’. Ultima IV created the gaming concept of the Karma meter and RPGS as something more (it was the biggest game changer of the series). Ultima V gave us improved interaction and story telling. Ultima VI stepped those up and improved graphics. Ultima VII gave us our first taste of a virtual world. Maybe instead of going for an immediate Ultima VII, they should have started with an Ultima I. Lay out the basics and plan to do more down the road.
And we as fans shouldn’t have expected an Ultima VII. By now, in the gaming industry, we should know better than to buy the hype from anyone. Developers regularly dream bigger than they can deliver. And we do our selves no favors by dreaming just as big. Because as unhappy as many are with SotA, it won’t be anything compared to the poop-tornado that will hit the Internet when Half-Life 3 is released and its nothing like people have been hoping and expecting for the last decade.
So true, in regards to expectations. This is why so many people are still waiting on CDPR’s Cyberpunk 2077, with as little expectation as possible. It is why so many were not getting their hopes up with many movies lately too. In general I tend to waffle between highlighting some of the good things with the game, when did my last “review/state of the game” and the downsides, such as the lack of completeness of content is still a heartbreaker too for many, when you look at the NPC town list Sergorn Dragon put together and which I went through in game and confirmed.
SotA being such a niche game, it will never get the attention main stream games get. Thus issues like the incompleteness, the failure to still complete KS backer rewards like the book and duke items, certain bad decisions and bad behavior from the devs and community members, and other things will never get much attention. Like with Bethesda and Fallout 76, while there will be those who have fun with the game and find it to be a positive experience overall, it doesnt diminish that the criticisms of the company and the game are still warrented.
I know it often feels like people are piling on Portalarium and SotA. For many who criticize them, we still admit to the quality things in the game as well as the things they did follow through on. I put in only as much time as necessary in offline single player mode as to beat the main storyline because I wanted to give not just an honest review, but also cause I wanted to at least experience the story. I was amazed how many hours that actually was, but none the less, it was not a good enough $ per hour of fun ratio as I would have liked. Another way I like to look at it is this… Those who do criticize things, while happy for those who do enjoy it, just want the game to be better for the joy of everyone. The most frustrating people, I would say, are those who blindly refuse to see the issues, as well as those who refuse to see the positives.
For those who are having fun playing SotA, great.. wonderful… good for you… While I don’t know how much you pledged on KS, for those at higher pledge amounts, I know the frustration is often far higher in regards to the ROI concept. It is to the benefit of consumers, that gamers are responding more and more to not buying early access and pre-orders as much. The lowering of expectations due to more mainstream game failures and failing to understand their audience, have helped reduce what I saw as too much reliance on hope and expectations to fund games. I sometimes wish demos were as popular as they were back in the day. I think it would lend itself in a positive way for gamers and devs for feedback and in providing a way to reduce the meeting of expectations.
This is what I appreciate the most from your reviews Golem, they are honest and fair, always backed by verifiable facts.
While I don’t wish for the game to fail, I cannot emphasize strongly enough how absolutely disappointed I am with this game. As an original Lord Kickstarter pledge, I was really excited by the idea of “selective multiplayer” next iteration of Ultima game, NOT an MMO. Much along the lines of what Elite Dangerous and Divinity Original Sins 2 does. Instead the game went the MMO route with a barely functioning single player and a limited “selective multiplayer” mode, now that they force you into open play in towns and overland map.
To make matters worse, single player offline is almost IMPOSSIBLE to beat alone. Even with the addition of the companions it’s still difficult since their AI is terrible and are very “squishy”. It took me grinding hours of gameplay to level myself and them, up enough just to run through the necessary scenes. To make matters worse, certain quests were created solely for multiplayer and cannot be completed alone. The perfect example of this is the Kiln sewer. You need another player to flip switches just to open different gates. You cannot do it alone. It is very disappointing.
As you and others have mentioned before, they need to stop introducing new content and focus on fixing what it there. Sadly, there is no money in that so it probably won’t happen. While I am happy for those that like Shroud in it’s current form, I cannot help but think many others are like me and view it for what it is…Forsaken Virtues…
Kickstarter was supposed to be a way of supporting artists and actual art, not venture capitalists. If you think we signed up in order to exploit each other in order to make a Return on Interest, you’ve not understood at all why the original Ultimas were so influential with regards to the Virtue system. It’s precisely because so much of the game was dragged off into supporting profiteering, and with it the resulting viciousness and toxicity within the community because they saw criticism as getting in the way of their ROI, that drove so many away.
My own lunatic stalker once outright stated it was because I was “shitting on (his) investment” that he spent two years trying to hack my accounts and sending rape and death threats towards an ex-girlfriend whose emails he’d read after he somehow got mine (and another critics) shared account details from Portalarium.
And if we’re going to talk in terms of Venture Capitalism, just plug “Venture Capitalist Sues For Deception” into Google… producing an entirely different product to the one backed is not just illegal, but loathed as a concept within that industry too. Because people with the most money are the most determined to protect it and demand their rights; It’s ONLY because gamers and fans in general are such easy targets for being exploited that so many companies piled into Kickstarter, and haven’t been held to account for their deceptions since. That, and that anyone who tries to puncture that bubble is hated by the community they’re trying to warn; Look at Derek Smart and “Star Citizen” for instance, what ever his personal failings might be, Star Citizen is still years from beta, but the backers don’t want to hear it and would rather gang up on him.
And after Portalarium failed to make any return on Port Casino and Ultimate Collector, they no longer had enough genuine venture capital open to them because the real financial players knew how terrible they were. And when GamesIndustry.biz pointed out the actual financials for the SeedInvest, went and broke venture capitalist law by deleting the Risks section to hide it from their naive or inexperienced actual backers. But you, the gamer, have no clout there, or in the media, so they got away with it again.
So… when I say in response to GolemDragon below stating;
“For many who criticize them, we still admit to the quality things in the game as well as the things they did follow through on.”
… that Hitler had many good qualities too, including being a vegetarian and loving his dogs, I’m making a serious, if extreme comparison; it’s not a sign of decency to try and see both sides, not when you’re dealing with something beyond all standards of decency overall. Once you pass that point, no matter how little or much further beyond acceptability you go, there is never any counter-balance, because you’re not being honest to what something truly is.
And Portalarium, and their product overall are unworthy of even token respect.
Whilst you might get tired of hearing about such things, or want to keep far away from it for your own peace of mind… that’s not a moral stance either. People’s suffering isn’t valued against your attention span, and just because the product doesn’t mean that much to you, that doesn’t mean the harm it’s caused elsewhere ceases to be. What indeed were the early Ultima’s supposed to have taught us, if not to donate blood to the ill, gold to the poor, and to give our lives to listening to and caring for others on the path to Avatarhood?
At the very least, I don’t think it’s “unrealistic expectations” to expect the people who once wrote such games to not engage in malicious actions with someone they know is genuinely disturbed and criminal, just because as they apparently brag to other people in Portalarium’s offices, they love to try and hurt the people they call “trolls”.
If I ever heard of a company doing that to any of you, I wouldn’t consider myself a decent person for claiming that, say, some of the Portalarium staff were decent at scene building and apparently were appalled by what they heard in the office. And I wouldn’t have put up with it myself either; when I worked on UO, I walked the walk and just resigned rather than let Mesanna treat me like crap any further, no matter how much I loved UO or wanted to keep on struggling to improve content for the Europa players.
There are more important things than a computer game, and always will be.
Well, at least you acknowledge the extremity of the Hitler comparison; Godwin’s Law is alive and well, I see.
I think you go a bit too far here. SotA is a letdown on many levels, and it does indeed seem that some stuff is going on behind the scenes that is both lamentable and unethical. But if SotA succeeds in anything, it’s not a bad thing to point to that as a success, even if it isn’t particularly redemptive.
Replying to myself here, because once you go a few comments deep the option is removed from the lower posts. And you also can’t use Steam etc credentials to do so…
“Well, at least you acknowledge the extremity of the Hitler comparison; Godwin’s Law is alive and well, I see. ”
Godwin’s Law was only that such a comparison would occur, not that it wouldn’t be relevant.
I remind you though that not only did I pass on 3 different crime reports to Portalarium, but that my stalker copied everyone at Portalarium into his demands that they act against me because otherwise he would harass me until I went mad, that he was simultaneously sending his insane comics through their PM system, and despite knowing I was copied into his demands too, Portalarium decided to ban my account and then tell him they’d done so, so he could appear across the internet using the court portraits of a Canadian serial killer gloating “We both know it’s thanks to me you’ve lost everything”.
And then when taken to the American Arbitration Association, not only didn’t Portalarium dare turn up, but had never paid the fees to be part of the scheme in the first place. They are still to this date, and again knowing I have the legal correspondence proving it, claiming in their EULA they have AAA coverage when they’ve been ordered to remove any reference to them as they have been blacklisted.
All because someone at Portalarium believes it’s funny to smear myself and others, criticism we only made because they in turn planned from the start to ignore their promises at Kickstarter.
So, to repeat what I said again, once you cross the moral event horizon, it doesn’t really matter how much further into the black hole of evil you disappear; what really matters is whether people are prepared to step back over the line and recognise the totality for what it is, and not allow “But that bit is good” to excuse it.
I didn’t say that acknowledging the good was an excuse. But I don’t see any need to deny the good because there’s a lot of bad.
Making the trains run on time? Good thing. No harm in saying that.
Holocaust? Very, very bad thing. Doesn’t make the trains bad in turn, though.
“Holocaust? Very, very bad thing. Doesn’t make the trains bad in turn, though. ”
Which is precisely the logic I was explaining; isn’t there a rather more important point about the 1940s German trains than their timetables? Where they’re going, for instance? Or the fact that precisely because individual components, such as the drivers, don’t see themselves or their part in it as evil that they CAN go where they’re going?
Of course in day to day life, it’s very hard to make a truly ethical decision, even when not under threat from a totalitarian state; even vegetarian food may involve animal suffering for instance, because integrated farms will often use the corpses of battery hens as fertilizer in the fields. Seen with and struggled with that myself, after visiting a farm and treading on a chicken wing and asking where it came from. Mad cow disease in turn developed from feeding dairy cows back to dairy cows.
But you don’t have to make excuses for it, to try and justify not feeling guilty. You should feel guilty. Guilt is supposed to be the emotional warning that something is wrong; and life is complex and often horrific, but something you have to deal with and try and adapt too and minimize the damage in as much as possible.
People however prefer to hear “good” things because it’s easier for them to cope with personally. Maybe even we need them occasionally because no one could possibly carry all the ethical problems in the world at once on their backs. But that’s the back door through which an awful lot of evil sneaks as well. Including what you think was an extreme example; It is extreme, but of the same nature, on the same scale as saying “but the graphics are nice”. Maybe, but is that worth sweatshop labour and burning out developers with “crunch”, say?
So again; it’s not moral to say something nice if you’ve not done the actual costing for it. Maybe I wouldn’t have been personally brave enough to say “I reject your trains run on human blood” in 1940s Germany. But I should ASPIRE to doing so. And I certainly should feel guilty about the thought I might not have done. Not congratulate myself for noticing that an individual train is not technically Hitler; Hitler wasn’t technically Hitler either, not to Blondie anyway. But Blondie’s view shouldn’t count, not in context, and a thinking, moral human has even less excuse.
User name isn’t Third Reich related by the way; it was actually my baby brother trying to spoil a Christmas Gift, the game Elite, but I was getting “Tit-luh” for Xmas apparently. Considered using a different one, but this is the Steam account that Spears apparently rants about so much, so I keep it for consistency’s sake.
There’s plenty I feel a deep and abiding sense of guilt and shame about. Just ask my priest (or don’t; it’s not like he could tell you anyway).
Liking the well done parts of an overall mediocre game is not on the list, however.
The problem with your statement is how personal the story is. We have only your side of the story and we can’t know how much what you report about SotA and Portalarium are malicious, and how much appear malicious because you are on the defense.
I’m not saying you’re a liar, or that what you’ve stated hasn’t happened. I’m just saying that, by default, we only have your account of things, and a one person’s account of an apparently three sided event can’t give us the whole story.
I had never heard of the AAA until your post, and reading about them tells me you would have been better served by getting a lawyer and actually going to court. A person behaving as your stalker has should be reported to legal authorities, not a non-profit arbitration service.
Lastly, the aspersion that I don’t understand the virtues of the Old Ultimas or such because I called kickstarting what it is, is nothing more than an ad hominem attack. I spoke with honesty. Kickstarter 2013 is not Patreon 2018/2019. Kickstarter wasn’t to created to support artists, it was created to fund projects, Patronage is different animal to what kickstarter is. I have backed Four projects through crowdfunding sites. SotA, two books, and a CD. The CD was a standard patron style funding system. you fund the artist for the creation of art rather than a specific product or project. And even in a patronage system you don’t get what you expect. The Pope paid Michelangelo to paint Biblical scenes, he didn’t pay Mikey to paint insults to his personage in everything he did. But that’s what the Pope got.
Does it appear, from the outside, that Portalarium hasn’t kept to the Virtues? Yes. But that wasn’t the point I was making. I specifically stated I can’t comment on those subjects. This is because I don’t have enough information to form a reasonable judgement on the subject. even with every negative comment and review i’ve read i’m still only getting one side of the story. Further, i state that people who are unhappy with the game are allowed to be and have their reasons to be, but point out the issue of managing expectations because expectations are the ONLY thing a person can control in these situations.
What I mean is, I can’t control what Portalarium does. I can’t control what your stalker did. I can’t control your justified anger at both parties. I can control my expectations. I don’t expect to make anyone suddenly say, “I love SotA!” My hope was to get people to considered their expectations. The relationship between fan communities and creators needs to change. My goal was to invoke some reflection.
I hope you can find a reasonable resolution for your issues. I still feel like dealing with that level of a stalker is best dealt with through law enforcement. The one stalker I had didn’t reach that level of severity and I lost them with a job change, but that was 15 years ago and tech was different then.
Clarification:
My first sentence, in retrospect, isn’t as clear as I wanted. I’m not saying that YOU are being malicious in report, i’m saying we can’t know if Portalarium’s actions were malicious or not.
“The problem with your statement is how personal the story is. We have only your side of the story and we can’t know how much what you report about SotA and Portalarium are malicious, and how much appear malicious because you are on the defense.”
Here are the AAA documents, edited to remove mine and my lawyer’s real life details. Note that on September 4th the AAA ordered Portalarium to remove any reference to them in their EULA. Go and check for yourself if they have, even now.
https://i.imgur.com/65HaTtt.png
https://i.imgur.com/1EqvC6v.png
https://i.imgur.com/Cvxlbha.png
https://i.imgur.com/jhWlzwA.png
If you’ve read up on the AAA, you know that it’s specifically a low cost alternative to full US court, because the costs for which can lead to crippling people seeking justice: the alternatives are Small Claims, which I will struggle with as I am not a US citizen, or now the EULA has been violated, I have the right to full Federal Court, but then you’re looking at thousands of dollars per hour paying for evidence gathering.
And this path was taken on the suggestion of my lawyer, because the issue is, until I get an actual name and location, I can’t serve an arrest warrant on my stalker. He’s just a forged IP address until then. Portalarium knows who he is, at the very least his banking details ($1 to post on the forums remember, and he’s running tonnes of sockpuppets as well as the known account he sends harassment from) and have resisted multiple attempts to get them to communicate with the UK and US police, indeed Chris Spears has openly mocked the evidence I sent in and tried to turn it around and claim I’d done it to him. Eventually they openly co-ordinated with him to ban my account, which opened up action under their own EULA for malicious actions. The hope was we could compel disclosure under an AAA appeal based upon this, and then co-ordinate my local and his local police to serve the warrant. Only as you can see, they’d never even paid the fees to claim coverage by the AAA, and just ignored the various summons.
I’ve spent the last few months attempting to get the media to pick up the story; I’ve even deliberately asked UltimaCodex to communicate with me to see if they would cover it, but despite everyone in comments asking for someone to blow the whistle, no one dare take the step themselves. I have, but now I’m running into the problem few of you care, and even less will actually read the evidence put out if I try and show why you care.
After all, I and many others have been disillusioned with Shroud for years, and when we tried to warn you about why, those of you still believing in the product mocked and condemned us then too. And not all of us were doing it in a trolly way like InsaneMembrane, but we got condemned all the same.
So… if you can’t see why defending Shroud is beyond the moral pail… sorry to say, it’s because you simply weren’t paying enough attention to what was happening to other people. Maybe I wasn’t either when I was still defending Shroud in 2014 say. And I was wrong then too.
On the one hand, it’s nice that the comment threads are active again; we haven’t seen this much activity on a regular basis since the Aiera, days.
On the other hand…
The thing is, you are still just one voice. Even scanned letters, however seemingly-damning they may be, aren’t sufficiently dispositive to warrant us publishing a big, explosive, whistleblowing article. We have your side of the story, as much of it as you’ve been willing to share. And you’ve given us no reason to doubt any of the particulars of that story. Yet, it remains your story, your retelling of events shaped and coloured by the negativity that your experience with Shroud and with Portalarium have stirred within you, emotionally.
Before we can do anything with what you’ve brought to us, we need to do what we can to vet and verify your claims; as you can see, Golem has even made attempts to do so. Thus far, we’ve been unable to corroborate anything, but should that change in the future, then so can our approach to this matter.
In the end, I don’t just write things — here ore elsewhere — because I am asked to; I’ve got a big family, a busy job, and some extracurricular pursuits. I’ve been asked to write many things by many people, and in most cases I’ve turned the work down, because there just isn’t time for it in my life right now. Golem is in similar straits.
I don’t know how much more attention I could have been paying, given my involvement in the Shroud community as a moderator.
The thing is, I try and separate — mentally — the developers from the product. I find I have to; many game developers (including many at Portalarium) champion things I regard as deeply immoral, and yet work on and produce content I have an interest in exploring. So my default position is to consider the produced content on its own merits, wholly separate from the moral virtues — or lack thereof — of the developers who realized it.
Does Shroud have some merit, as produced content? Yes. Not as much as I’d hoped it would have, and not necessarily enough that I feel a burning desire to play the game over and above other options in my extensive Steam and GOG libraries. But it is not without some merit even so.
“We have your side of the story, as much of it as you’ve been willing to share.”
Well no, I’d share a lot more, but you’ve not contacted me yet so I can share more and help walk you through verification. Hint hint.
Now, of course, you’re just a hobbiest site, but having dealt with the mainstream media where you’d expect them to have paid journalists trained in sourcing information etc, the same issues occur there too; you can make yourself completely available, but unless you work your ass off constantly, and kick their asses in turn, it’s hard to get anywhere unless you start with an automatically viral story that basically runs itself… Indeed you can actually spike your own story by giving too much information right at the start, either through drowning them in it, or not giving a clear enough “pitch” that an editor will pick up and think they can sell. And they’ll hardly ever tell you if your “pitch” hasn’t worked.
So don’t take this as a criticism of you, but when you say;
“In the end, I don’t just write things — here ore elsewhere — because I am asked to; I’ve got a big family, a busy job, and some extracurricular pursuits. I’ve been asked to write many things by many people, and in most cases I’ve turned the work down, because there just isn’t time for it in my life right now. Golem is in similar straits.”
I have to reply yes, I understand that. But from the point of view of other people actually affecting change, unfortunately they have to push, push PUSH before anything is ever done. You have to be the squeaky wheel, unfortunately, and try and insist someone, anyone covers your story. Because quiet people tend not to be heard.
This is a somewhat personal criticism though;
“I don’t know how much more attention I could have been paying, given my involvement in the Shroud community as a moderator.”
Rune_74 tried to talk to you about his prior experiences; for a while, your interactions with him here were considered in the wider critical community as one of the earliest warning signs the moderation standards were bad if not corrupt. Now having worked on UO myself, I’m entirely aware the fish rots from the head in the software industry, and I don’t know what qualms you had, or raised, and how much you were ultimately responsible for; and before I go any further let me state that yes, I also mentioned 2014 because I’m specifically thinking of the SotaSucks blog that found the video where Portalarium admitted they’d pitched the Kickstarter only to “get out of the pickle” of near bankruptcy… and at that time, I was still defending Shroud too.
But here’s the thing, as I tried to make clear with the vegetarian example, it’s normal to not be aware of every single wrong at every single moment of the day. Most people eat meat without the slightest awareness, often cultivated so, of what it means to produce that meat. What makes us decent people is not that we know all, we’d be gods if we did; but that we never stop looking and learning and struggling to do a little bit better next time around.
We have a moral imperative to define ourselves as blind and be always trying to open our eyes more; we should not say “I didn’t know”, but “I should have known”.
So I should feel bad about not spotting it in 2014, as there was evidence there even back then. And you, famously with your interactions with Rune_74, should have spotted the moral questions then too. And Shroud now has 5 years of piled up examples of corruption, deception, incompetence and maliciousness surrounding it.
Which is another fancy way of saying I have even more evidence to share now; so I’m going to push, push, PUSH to get it published and applying the same standard everywhere else as I do to myself, I’d expect others to want to get more evidence out there too.
That doesn’t mean you have too. Or that you will. God knows I’m used to the world not having the same perspective as me now. But to be happy with myself, I have to push for it, because I do. Also, irrespective of anyone wanting to hear it… yeah, it’s a social good to let people know that Portalarium are running a EULA that’s not just false, but pretends you have protections you certainly don’t have.
So yup, email attached to this name again; drop me a line, I’ll try and provide any proof you feel might help you run the story, if you want too.
I’ve received many messages via the contact link above. And I’ve been lax in following up on many of them, which I regret.
None have been from you, mind. Which is not to say that I am doubting that you’ve attempted to send correspondence. But whatever attempts you have made have not gone through.
Probably this is because you are including too many links in your messages; I keep the allowable limit for links in message bodies very low as an anti-spam measure. If you’ve got multiple links to send, you’ll have to break them out over multiple messages.
And keep in mind that whatever you send me, I’ll still need to corroborate somehow. I’ve no interest in being a sensationalist or a squeaky wheel.
Finally:
Rune74 didn’t exactly cover himself in glory during those heady days, as I recall. His name came up in the moderation logs often enough, and then for legitimate reasons.
I certainly developed a negative reputation as a moderator amongst those who agitated for open PVP, and I don’t particularly regret that. For what it’s worth, I also noted (and complained, as I was able) that some of the moderation practices and decisions made by the development team – us mods were just volunteers, with fairly limited authority – would not be well received by the community. And clearly that came to pass.
But to paraphrase a lion in a book, do not cite the inner workings of moderation for the Shroud forums to me; I was there when it transpired. Back when I gave much more of a damn than I presently do about the game.
“Probably this is because you are including too many links in your messages; I keep the allowable limit for links in message bodies very low as an anti-spam measure. If you’ve got multiple links to send, you’ll have to break them out over multiple messages. ”
This may be the reason. If you cannot see the email address I am using on these comments, I will re-submit it shortly as a comment after posting this to begin sending more accurate evidence, if you’re interested in the story. But I will need to confirm it’s you first, because my stalker is not only aware of many of my accounts, when Kotaku asked me to publicly submit the story, he used the given email address to write a tonne of abuse and went berserk about “Tattling” on Reddit.
“Rune74 didn’t exactly cover himself in glory during those heady days, as I recall. His name came up in the moderation logs often enough, and then for legitimate reasons.”
Here’s the thing; via Reddit and elsewhere, “jammaplaya” was openly threatening his children. He has openly published guides to what he’s doing (substituting my name for his throughout) as well as using the justified anger at his harassment to mark his victims as supposedly mad and worthy of silencing. He’s also been running multiple different accounts that we know of on Shroud’s forums, “noganoo”, “starman2112”, “craftymethod” are all him: and he’s purchased more since from backers leaving; he owns the “Sempiturnal_Dragon” account now too, and when the friends of that former UDIC member pointed out it clearly wasn’t the original owner, all he’s done since is change the name to obsessions with me (and Baron Drocis and anyone else he wants to troll).
How many of the reports then came from his own sockpuppets?
And outside of that, the Shroud community was utterly intolerant of criticism in general, and are quite happy to join in the piling on of anyone who is considered to be outside of the cult bubble, and rune_74 fell victim to that too. It is not surprising then that he might have got intemperate at times. What is not understandable is that any decent person NOW isn’t aware that the bullying and identify theft and moderation manipulation was utterly toxic and designed to try and hurt or harass people.
Anyway, contact details incoming.
Your comment reminds me that there is some good to it. I thought they did a good job world building, it had a great atmosphere. I don’t know what people are talking about when they say cheap graphics. It’s not RDR2, or anything, but it looks good. I’m also really glad they let men wear dresses so I could role-play as an elderly, MtF transgender, hulking, prostitute. The 45 dollar admission fee was… well… pretty fucking hefty for the belly laughs, but there aren’t that many games that make me laugh that hard.
>And we as fans shouldn’t have expected an Ultima VII. By now, in the gaming industry, we should know better than to buy the hype from anyone.
I don’t see why not. Look at all the survival games that involve crafting, Rust games and the like. And the sandbox games like Terraria, Minecraft, or my favorite, Rimworld. Why is it so impossible to build a RPG sandbox? Why can’t they just do what Obsidian did and make a bunch of top down 2d RPGs on the cheap with a fully interactive and cohesive world? I don’t see why they couldn’t build an editor, reuse art assets, and have a fully interactive 2d world with engaging NPCs. Rimworld has proven it doesn’t have to look awesome to be a good game. And BTW, if they built a game with slightly better graphics than Rimworld, RG might have been able to do his PC/Mobile game he dreamed of.
In any event though, I’m at peace with the Ultima series. I’m happy I was able to experience it and while it might be nice, I’m not looking to scratch that itch anymore. After U4E and SotA, I just want them to leave the IP alone.
I don’t know, Fiona Fitzowen’s face is pretty terrifying. I don’t know what’s up with the model and/or lighting but she always looks a little demonic. And I have never cared about graphics. Game play and story are king. I’d rather lose myself in game with mediocre graphics but engaging game play and story than have pretty hi-poly models and particle effects in 4k. To be fair, i don’t have a 4k monitor so i can’t take advantage of it anyway.
And its not that it would impossible to make a new Ultima VII style openworld story rich RPG, just that we, as fans, should know the industry and creators better. How many times has Molyneux promised us Acorns to Trees and delivered us a ham sandwich. Ham sandwiches aren’t bad (unless you don’t eat pork) but they weren’t what was promised. And given Garriott’s post Origin history, we shouldn’t have been surprised that the product wasn’t what was expected. Tabula Rasa, anyone?
My hope would be that an indie dev would try and make a Ultima VII style game. And I, too, love the survival sandbox games, as does my wife. For some reason, people don’t seem to combine the two, maybe the amount of work needed is too much for the small teams, i’m not a dev, so I don’t know. That said, games like the Eschalon series and the Legend of Grimrock series, scratch my itch for classic style RPGS.
And hopefully someone will make us a game that will combine the genres in a great way.
Maybe I’ve been giving Portalarium too much credit in thinking that there was originally an intention of making a good game, that such plans simply went way off the rails at some point, and that this is all just some instance of the Investment Fallacy among the devs. Stepping back and looking at it objectively, there’s no way anyone can look at what was produced and say “Yeah! This will earn us success!” Everything, from game play to artwork was done on the cheap. They constantly ignored feedback they didn’t want to hear. The minute the words “asset store” came up, we should have all demanded refunds.
The reality is, we were manipulated, and expertly so. It’s a hard thing for any of us to admit. It certainly took me quite some time. We all like to think we are in full control of our own actions at all times, and that belief is exactly how manipulation works. Its how pyramid schemes work, its how certain political figures attain power, and it’s how Portalarium got this turkey made. And no, I don’t think that being foolish enough to expect people to make good on their promises leaves us as much to blame as them. The act of willingly manipulating someone is still a intentional act of deception, and entering into an agreement in good faith does not make you just as culpable. It’s easy to blame the yokel for buying the shyster’s tonics until you’re the yokel. To put it in simpler terms: If I order a meal at a restaurant expecting it to be well prepared, I’m not as much to blame as the chef if it isn’t.
I’m getting off topic though. What I’d like to know is, what’s happening internally with Portalarium? Who, if anyone, is in on the plans, and who got dragged along for the ride like the rest of us? It’s easy to point the finger at Garriott, but the public face isn’t always the one in charge, and Long and Spears have been in the spotlight just as much, if not more, recently. It just seems like until someone inside finally steps forward and says “this is what happened.” We’re always going to be in the dark.
None of this will ever make SotA a better game though. That ship has sailed…and is slowly sinking before our eyes.
Paraphrasing what I’ve been given as claimed comments from former staff, “Garriott is a nice guy, but he has the attention span of a goldfish; he throws out ideas which Spears/Long just ignore and push ahead with their own ideas”
The only really good content is purchased from the Unity store. Apparently the rest of the staff spend all month trying to sort out the mess that Chris Spears makes, whilst those who provide actual content get trapped in trying to get it approved, or sidelined for those features which can be turned into quick revenue generating parts (like dungeons recently, for an Episode 2 you’ll never see) to keep the lights on short term.
But the NDAs in the industry are hellish, and people are loathe to burn any bridges because the industry sticks together like glue against anyone who upsets the applecart… my own for EA/Broadsword forbid me to even state I’d worked for them for 3 years after I left the company. So I’d be surprised if anyone ever dare come forward and tell the truth about what Portalarium were really like until it’s certain at least Garriott doesn’t have any clout in it still.
Any other interesting stuff you’ve heard from former devs and staff? I’d love to know wtf they were doing for 5+ years and spending millions of dollars of the fans’ hard earned money.
You hit the nail on the head Re: NDA. I’m not entirely sure where you are getting your information, but it is highly accurate.
Replying to myself again, same reason as above.
“Any other interesting stuff you’ve heard from former devs and staff? I’d love to know wtf they were doing for 5+ years and spending millions of dollars of the fans’ hard earned money.”
And
“You hit the nail on the head Re: NDA. I’m not entirely sure where you are getting your information, but it is highly accurate.”
I have to be careful what information I share.
The last few years have been eye-opening for me, in part because I must have been moving in ratified circles before then, as I’d never have imagined there were people so obviously sick at the core of gaming communities before, nor that it would be so difficult trying to tackle the consequences of that in practice, due to widespread apathy and incompetence.
In particular, you have to be very, very careful, if you want to stay a moral person at least, to not make yourself part of the deliberate sickness by slandering innocent people; and yet part of the dedicated, 4chan inspired hatred is to attempt to gaslight you and everyone else about who you can trust, and who can be trusted, and use the fact people naturally shy away from anyone who is victimised (because they assume at some animal level the victim is infected too, or they just don’t want to direct the same hate onto themselves by defending them) to try and alienate you if you talk about what is happening.
In my own case, it was especially eye-opening to realise that you can for instance put up direct proof someone has sleeper accounts going back 7+ years, attempted to befriend me on it, that they’d since been attempting to forge my hacking them by trying to get me to log into their account (to prove how honest they are? Yeah, not falling for that one), and then started sending videos of mock ups claiming to be me admitting that “jammaplaya controls me”… and yet people wouldn’t even check the links, but would get angry with YOU for “going too far” in talking about it, or assume you were making up how determined someone was to try and harm you… either out of emotional apathy, or cowardice in facing the evil.
But who is to say the same sickness wouldn’t also wouldn’t forge claims about Portalarium in turn, to try and discredit the wider police actions he at least knew I genuinely had? So with that in mind, I can only speak for what I can absolutely prove, or have first hand experience of;
At the time of the major sackings at Portalarium, I was sent PMs from someone claiming to be friends with some of the staff that were let go, telling me about the venting they had done on Facebook to them. It named one former staff member directly, and suggested a few more. It requested I only pass this on to the media, which I have done but qualified it with that I cannot source the claims; either it was proof of what was happening internally, or more evidence of just how insane the attempts to gaslight me were getting. I do not know if the media that said they were interested have followed this up.
But I have worked in the industry for myself, and it rings true in flavour for me too; in 2014 and 2015 I was EM Gotan on the Europa server, on an outsider contract for EA/Broadsword. I worked the event where Garriott came back for the first time to UO in fact, I’m in the honor guard behind him. As far as I know, he didn’t speak to any of the staff themselves; and EM Borbarad (Drachenfels) and I nearly missed the event because we were stuck in Green Acres waiting for the costume and talisman for half an hour before whilst Mesanna and himself were elsewhere doing who knows what. As far as I know, he turned up, ran the pre-approved script via UOWedding (yes, really. That’s still the only accepted tool for text. One Japanese Dev got unfairly reamed for using Razor once: I used to write it all in Enhanced Clients macros instead) and left again.
Oh the stories I can tell you about Developer rages, inter-staff spitefulness, broken tool sets and laughable documentation or human resources, but that can wait for another day…
The claims sent to me about Portalarium were that one Dev who left just before the wave of sackings had understood the writing was on the wall; that the talk in the office was at the time to abandon all major future content, focus on polishing the game and try and find someone who would buy the IP outright. Hopes were supposedly for Travian to do so, but we’ve since seen Travian have cut all ties… I’ve not seen the contract for Travian, but the one BlackSun published in 2015 shows they were promised future Add On Store income that was hopelessly optimistic. The published SeedInvest figures were in turn ridiculous too. I suspect the reason Travian no longer partner with Portalarium is, after a period with the IP themselves, they saw what the real figures were likely to be and cut their losses…
Travian also remember ran the emailed out Questionaire immediately after coming on board asking for feedback from backers, which Portalarium then claimed went out too early, and the “real” one was by invite from the official forums only; I suspect, but cannot prove that is another reason Travian let Portalarium go so quickly, they saw the real feelings in the uncensored community, and picked up how dishonest Portalarium were being.
Either way, the PM also made claims that the sackings were without notice, and done in the building’s lobby on the same morning. We’ve since seen they’ve downsized the office too. Again, can’t prove that claim about the firings myself, but it does sound like the sort of cold-as-ice way you get treated in the industry.
There was talk of blazing rows in the office, focused on Chris Spears unprofessional behaviour, and that he gloated about upsetting “trolls”: that I’ve seen for myself, cross check his posting on Reddit as “Catnipgames”, which was openly him until he abandoned that account for “SotA_Atos”. It was in turn his trying to claim myself and others had threatened his family on MassivelyOP, under an account MOP verified was him, turning what happened to InsaneMembrane and rune_74 around and trying to slander critics as if they’d done what they’d been victims of, which led to me making a video sharing the evidence he was being deliberately vile as he knew I’d also reported in the attacks on my accounts and rape and death threats towards my ex… and which set off the ranting of my stalker to Portalarium to act against me.
There were claims some of the staff were aware of the harassment surrounding the game, and were disgusted by it and puzzled why it was being ignored; my own corroborating evidence is that I had communicated since 2016 with Berek, and briefly with Cerus about it, both of whom at least listened but either didn’t act, or in Cerus’ case admitted he couldn’t get involved as the decisions were being made higher up. Berek I know has seen the “jammaplaya” imgur where he openly gloats about manipulating Berek and his moderation to harass his victims; the PM claimed this had specifically been sent around the rest of the office … but I had publicized the proof of my informing Portalarium previously, and I know of at least one person who was reading everything I posted very, very closely.
Berek interestingly was also let go in the round of layoffs. A fine reward for acting as the firewall for Portalarium all that time. As I say, the industry is absolutely fucking awful. Serafina in turn has also recently left to move to Star Citizen. Firelotus before has apparently stopped talking about anything Shroud… That’s probably NDA; I was a naive fan who signed a contract I really shouldn’t have done too. And it’s common practice to use up and then spit out the lower level staff to protect upper management from any consequences. I know when I was working on UO, we were specifically told to never explain any of the decisions, and if something went wrong, to always take the blame… even if it wasn’t out fault. It almost never was our fault. Oh the stories…
But as part of my lawyer drafted report to the Austin PD, I had of course to provide evidence of how Portalarium had to be aware of the harassment being done via their services; I had been scrupulously archiving all the times I’d submitted that information. Later on it, and the subsequent mass conversation I was deliberately copied into would have formed the basis of the AAA case, and which is WHY Portalarium didn’t dare turn up. So I absolutely could verify that. The PM suggested it was Spears making the call, because he loved upsetting critics. That may just be telling me what I want to hear, but SOMEONE there is negligent at the very least.
All of it could of course also be part of an insane plan to try and harm both myself AND Portalarium; but it doesn’t change the fact someone at Portalarium rolled the dice that (so far unfortunately true) I wouldn’t be able to get the consequences of even burning their own EULA to avoid being held to account for at the very least covering for harassment to stick anywhere in the media.
There were a lot of other claims, but I have no special insight into those. All I can do is appeal to those who do actually know to take the risk and get in touch with the media themselves.
@Truth Dragon Well, Garriott bought a remote control robot that probably cost more than my last 3 cars combined, so there’s that. Plus all the magic markers and poster board to make their goofy beg-a-thon signs and convince us that they’re just a small studio struggling to get by. Those are pretty expensive. Ummmm… constantly training new staff to make up for their high turnover? Paying HR for a weekly orientation and office tour and all that “on boarding” probably uses up a good chunk.
See? There’s lots of places that money went!
I would happily discuss the Arbitration stuff in regards to SotA in one of my regular posts here on the Codex. However in all my communications with the American Arbitration Association (“AAA”), they will not give me a statement confirming or not any of events involving them mentioned by anyone to me. The only info I have been able to confirm, is that Portalarium IS NOT in the Clause Registry, which means they either A) Never went through the process to be added to the Registry in the first place or B) they were in there and were removed for violating the AAA’s rules.
I can understand the AAA not wanting to make any statement on any case due to privacy reasons, so I have simply not made any public comments about this as I prefer to have a 3rd party confirmation of any action. The AAA, someone who isn’t a player/backer, as well as someone who isn’t directly associated with Portalarium, is where I have started to try and get such information. I wish the AAA would confirm or not, the letters I have seen posted as ones they supposedly sent, however since they have not it puts me in a position where I have to fall back on the standards I have set for myself. Now I have gotten confirmation in the past from 3rd parties in regards to confirmed reports of abuse of players outside of the game, Portalarium’s Forums, and the SotA discord. However none of those victims were willing to give me permission to discuss their situations in a post or outside of just between them and me. Due to their request for privacy, as well as their wish to just move on to other games and put SotA behind them, I acquiesced to their wishes.
I, myself, moved on after my situation as I was able to resolve it without Portalarium. Since it occurred outside their website and game, and since I knew they didn’t care about the situation, the fact that no involvement was needed by them was to my benefit. The fact there was plenty of evidence already available thanks to the hard work of law enforcement was also a boon in my favor. The case was referred to the correct people and they completed it without any need on my part to say, hear, or do anything except get have the pleasure of an update after judgement and sentencing was complete. After taking some time away from the community, I was able to find myself able to praise anything I see of value in SotA, but I also continue to point out anything I find disappointing or frustrating.
I honestly hope everyone who has had such terrible experiences online find resolutions and move on to bigger, better, and happier things. Living in the past is a miserable place, as many of us know from personal experience. Don’t let the bad behavior of others keep such a firm grip on you. It isn’t easy to do, but it frees you to lead a much happier and fulfilling life.
Lately more and more businesses like Twitch as well as even game studios of some online games have been pushing to use people’s online behavior off of their own site as reasons to suspend or even perma ban some individuals from their platform/game/etc. Portalarium has obviously decided to do that with their actions towards certain individuals. Their selective decision making as to whom they will ban and won’t ban, in all honesty reminds me of Twitch staff behavior over the years. It is why the lack of punishment against certain twitch streamers has become such a joke online. I understand wanting to continue to fight the good fight. I hope to someday reach out years down the road and do a “Looking Back” set of articles where hopefully I can contact former dev team members and get all the details. Until then, I am loving all the wonderful endeavors I am doing with my art, other games, and friends.
Hey there;
Have you seen the link to the unedited documents I sent in via the Contact link above? If so, you can at least cross check the case number on it and see the registry of the actual case in the AAA’s files. I don’t publicly use them because it involves my real name and address, as well as my lawyer in Austin’s, you can however also cross check the lawyer via the Austin Bar Association webpage and contact him there, if you want third party confirmation the above happened as I said it did, as well as confirmation he’s an accredited lawyer.
One reason the AAA may not be communicating, quite apart from privacy concerns, is because they presumably are still trying to get Portalarium to remove any reference to the AAA from their EULA, thus it’s still a live situation; as you have seen however, they are not listed as part of the scheme, and you can see in the EULA they claim to be so. In my correspondence you can see it was both; they never had the right in the first place, and won’t now in the future, because they didn’t dare turn up to try and justify how they’d behaved towards me.
If you know of a secure way to easily contact you and start sharing evidence, let me know. You can contact me via the email address I use here, which is also the one my stalker hacked into and is tied to the AAA case, as I am keeping the links solid between them for when I can eventually locate him and serve the arrest warrant. You will notice in turn the email matches the name I’m registered under at the AAA.
“However none of those victims were willing to give me permission to discuss their situations in a post or outside of just between them and me. Due to their request for privacy, as well as their wish to just move on to other games and put SotA behind them, I acquiesced to their wishes. ”
Yes, this is the wider issue; when I went to the Austin police about getting a search warrant based on his harassment, only ONE person would co-sign the report, and gave a real name and address… Two others, who had their children threatened, would not, so even the people who have suffered just want to keep their head down and hope the sick stop bothering them; unfortunately even months after I moved to not obviously posting on Reddit, my stalker is too mentally ill to let it go of his obsession with me… I notice he’s still ranting about me on the older Shroud subreddit across multiple sockpuppets even now.
But by standing up and actually fighting this myself, largely by myself, I in turn have just been abused and insulted by the usual online idiots who resent anyone who appears to be a “do-gooder”, or doesn’t cheer them personally for not bothering to do any work, read any links and are proud of their lack of attention and empathy. What makes this kind of gaslighting so evil is that by victimizing someone, if the victim speaks up, online bullies just pile in further and blame you for the abuse you’re getting.
But I refuse to accept the choice of being silenced, or being tortured.
“The fact there was plenty of evidence already available thanks to the hard work of law enforcement was also a boon in my favor.”
I have the evidence, I just don’t have a real name and location so I can transfer the paperwork to the correct authorities and begin prosecution. The problem is, Portalarium knows who owns the accounts behind the harassment, indeed it was sent through their own forums towards the end: but until recently when he started leaking private conversations he had with Chris Spears on his “Starman2112” account (there will be countless more), where he was encouraging him to obsess about me too, they’ve actively been protecting him.
Reddit and Imgur don’t know who he is, because he’s using IP masking services. So it has to be Portalarium. And they are quite prepared to risk getting caught in not even having AAA coverage to try and avoid admitting how vicious they’ve been; if you read the EULA you are asked to give them 30 days of Informal Negotiating before opening an AAA case, and I’d done that too. So they knew it was coming, but again chose to try and stall and dissemble.
So it’s working all the media for now, in the hopes I can get the story running and use naked self interest in the face of public scorn to affect some change, at least until the UK police get back to me with information as to whether Portalarium hiding from the AAA allows me to tackle them directly here. Another alternative is perhaps crowd funding a US Federal Case… and they are of course welcome to try and sue ME in the UK still, if they think what I say is libel; and they of course do have my real details already.
“I honestly hope everyone who has had such terrible experiences online find resolutions and move on to bigger, better, and happier things.”
Here’s the thing, I only talk vaguely about it because I need to be able to prove he has been using information he got specifically from getting into my email, the shared password for which he almost certainly got from Portalarium’s servers (either maliciously, or was passed onto him, I cannot prove which yet); but I’ve fought on for so long, and in the face of the online idiocy, because it’s an ex-girlfriend he’s been directing a lot of his threats towards. You can see him admitting knowledge of that harassment, but attempting to forge claims I have been sending it and blaming him for it, here;
https://snew.notabug.io/r/shroudoftheavatar_raw/comments/9ur3oq/titlers_newest_video/e9b44yr/
And then going berserk here;
https://snew.notabug.io/r/shroudoftheavatar/comments/9vpob8/knotaig_raw_mod_openly_allows_harassment_of_sota/
But it’s possible to leave a relationship with someone, and yet also not want them to have that kind of hateful content sent to them (sent because someone else criticized a computer game!); it’s been a source of much disgust that this needs explaining to a lot of the toxic people who’ve so easily swallowed the encouragement towards hatred of me on Reddit, and elsewhere, that they can’t even understand that: However, as long as the threats continue going to someone else, I will continue to try my best to ensure he’s in no position to ever act on them, by getting him arrested for making them.
Again, you may think it’s hyperbole what I said above about Portalarium; but they’ve known since December 2016 someone was going this far against me, and instead chose to protect them; so I really do believe they have proven absolutely evil. I really do think they’ve crossed a moral line beyond which saying something like “but the graphics are good” is absolutely wrong.
“Lately more and more businesses like Twitch as well as even game studios of some online games have been pushing to use people’s online behavior off of their own site as reasons to suspend or even perma ban some individuals from their platform/game/etc.”
Yes; and that’s a double edged sword if ever there was one, because the people making those calls are themselves likely to be corrupt or apathetic. As you say, Twitch bans are largely a joke, and that’s because the decisions are motivated by how much business is won or lost by having toxic but attention getting streamers on their system. You’re fine right up until one nasty joke hits their bottom line… But again; right is right, even if the media hates you for pointing it out.
“Until then, I am loving all the wonderful endeavors I am doing with my art, other games, and friends.”
And I’m glad to hear that. But you shouldn’t have to justify it, that should be the basic state for all people; isn’t it sad that a decent life is considered fortunate?
And do you know the saddest thing? Immediately after he thought he’d silenced me, my lunatic stalker started threatening two other users, in particular he’s since started to begin focusing on Lord_Darkmoon. Just as he forgot rune_74 when he became obsessed with me. So the best thing I could do for others then is draw him back towards me so THEY can have peace and quiet again.
What a world, eh? So I fight on.
@Titler
“But from the point of view of other people actually affecting change, unfortunately they have to push, push PUSH before anything is ever done. You have to be the squeaky wheel, unfortunately, and try and insist someone, anyone covers your story. Because quiet people tend not to be heard.”
That’s true.
Nonetheless a thing I went through let me realize that it also makes you a bitter person.
You want to fight injustice, especially when your kids, wife/girlfriend are involved.
But fighting a fight that could not be won sucked up my energy and led to depression.
From my experience to let go isn’t easy, but healthy for your emotional well beeing (and those around you).
So my advice is to think about what there realy is to gain and loose for you.
You have my sympathies, but that’s also something I differ in personally; I am not depressed by hard or even impossible fights, because I grew up in an environment where you either fought, or you were broken. I have nothing but compassion for those that don’t make it, but the reason I did was because I don’t care what the blind or the evil think. I stopped letting the unworthy into my sensitive parts years ago. So I fight for my own self respect, and to make the path easier for those that follow me, and that alone is victory enough.
And more often than not, as long as I keep fighting, I eventually get a victory in wider terms too. If UC here decide to publisher wider my proof, look for the fact I got a legal judgement proving Portalarium are dodgy as all hell.
It drives my stalker insane he can’t harm my mental health like he’s been trying for the past two years; and he’s too ill himself to realise even when I told him all he was doing was endlessly proving my point about the toxicity in the Shroud community; saying that might make me sound hard and manipulative… but as I say, unfortunately you need a bit of bastardry to really get anywhere. That’s why our leaders and heroes so often turn out to be colossal rotters. And that’s where maintaining a healthy sense of guilt keeps you balanced…
But all the same, as I say; the important thing is not to win, it’s to say “when it mattered, I fought for what was right / for you / for me.”