Shroud of the Avatar – Update of the Avatar #319 and #320

Greetings Friends!  Welcome to today’s edition of Update of the Avatar.  We have some interesting revisits of info from my past 2 articles as well as a little bit of new update information for you . As always, feel free to comment below and give me your thoughts!  I have been extremely happy to see regularly comments going on and some wonderful thoughts on the questions I posed last time.  Let’s keep this up.  In today’s Update of the Avatar we will look at the following:

  • Upcoming Release 63
  • Recent Patch Changes including Revisiting the Lot Upgrade Changes
  • Revisiting In Game Store Buff Controversy, SotA Dev comments against Massively OP, and Editorial

Upcoming Release 63

An earlier version of R63, that i would expect to undergo patches, is on the SOTA QA server. Starr Long posted on the forms a link to the early version of the R63 Instructions that are also available for review. A R63 is planned to go live Thursday February 28!

As you can see in the instructions we have some notable new info like:

  • Trident Weapons
  • First Round of Encounter rooms for Player Made Dungeons
  • Valentines Day Seasonal event (I assume this is late due to timing of release schedule)

As always things could change in the next few days, but I would assume these notable things are good to go later this week.  I am especially happy to see trident weapons myself. It is a style of weapon I had wanted since before the combat system was even created.


Recent Patch Changes & Lot Upgrade Changes

So we have had some notable patch changes in SotA during Release 62.  As always, I highlight what I feel are the most notable ones. Feel free to visit the Shroud of the Avatar patch notes sections to view the most recent patch notes.  We have the following updates:

  • Increased Player Owned Town Decoration Limits, which have already been patched in during Release 62’s Build 915 already.
  • Player Owned Towns (POT) have lower requirements for some lot types and you can upgrade your POT using Crowns, the premium currency used in SotA.
  • Changes to Lot Deed Upgrades from the original post I discussed during
    • Back in my Update 315 and 316 post, I talked about the upgrading lot sizes with crowns and how it was good lot type could not change from a taxed lot to an untaxed lot.
    • I brought up my concert that Portalarium was breaking their promise to Backers during the Kickstarter and post-Kickstarter era that Keep and Castle lot sizes would NOT be available in-game or Add-on store.
    • Recent updates by Portalarium have adjusted how this system works that is worth noting:
      • Portalarium has broken their past promise to backers and you ARE able to upgrade a taxable lot deed to Tax Free. However you cannot upgrade a deed to a Founder level deed.
      • Portalarium has decided that Tax Free Deeds that are NOT limited to POTs cannot be upgraded to Keep or Castle lot sized ones via this Crown Upgrade. This is something they promised backers, however in the next point…
      • Portalarium has made Keep and Castle deeds available to POT only Deeds and can be upgraded to, which still technically breaks their promise to backers.
      • Image below from their recent update post listings crown costs for upgrading lots deeds (spliced two screenshots together so get the whole section at full size)
      • While promises were broken, Portalarium is obviously in need of incoming to keep fiscally sound.  With the staff level having decreased more than once since release, as well as the small active player base, what company wouldn’t make changes to do what they can to stay afloat?

The increase to decorations is of course a fantastic change for any sandbox game, however hopefully it doesn’t come with increased latency issues.  Last time I checked in with some active players, latency from too much clutter was still an issue at times for some of them.  In regards to the lot upgrade feature, even other news outlets have made notice of changes by Portalarium focused on this one goal – revenue.

Thankfully, I was never one of those larger backers from the Kickstarter era that gave so much as to have a Keep or Castle lot.  As I am sure if I was still playing SotA, I would have been frustrated by their decision to make those lots available in a way outside what was promised.  And while I have been contacted by a few who are not happy about this, as well as well as have seen on social media.  Since they are Player Owned Town only deeds, they do not hold as much value as the Founder ones were.   This has helped quell some of the frustration from backers.  Obviously making “promises” was an incredible wrong way for Portalarium to do things during the Kickstarter era, and it continues to be a bad management decision that haunts them.

As I have not been invested in SotA anymore, I personally just do not care anymore. I consider my pledge to have been a bad investment and have happily moved on to better investments.  I don’t even care that my “create an NPC” will never be fulfilled.  I am however curious what the rest of you think about this lot deed upgrade situation.  Make a comment below with your thoughts!


Revisiting In Game Store Buff Controversy, SotA Dev comments against Massively OP, and Editorial from GolemDragon

As I will cover alot of topics in this section, let’s set some context first….

Last Update of the Avatar, we talked about the change Portalarium is making from a web-based store to an in-game store, for things like add-ons, crowns, etc.  While they are still working on updating text and making other changes to improve the look & feel, as well as usability, Portalarium decided to give people who purchased anyone via the in-game store a 1 day buff for each purchase, with up to 3 buffs out of 22 possible being the limit at any time.   I am including the exact quote from the patch notes here.

Upon first glance, I personally found it a bit interesting that they felt like they had to encourage players to use something that would be obviously an improvement.  The giving of buffs only if you purchased through the in-game store, were considered by some to be Pay to Win. MassivelyOP pointed this out in a recent post they did, highlighting the change to the new in-game store and I wanted to reference them as they broke that news before I did. I also referenced what I have said “ad nauseam” in today’s post, about why I believe Portalarium made this decision in regards to giving buffs.

Well what has happened since my last post…. 

Well, I came to the decision that I find the change to crowns that is part of the store revamp, in which crowns are to be similar to the Atoms of Fallout 76, as in regards to their relation that a round number (in this case 100 crowns) is equal to 1 dollar, is a smart decision. It allows for easy conversion on the fly when looking at costs of items, allowing customers to decide if the item is worth it. Obviously, a great in-game store for PC and Mobile games, like in Elder Scrolls Online, Danmachi Memoria Freese, etc, can be a boon for a game with an online mode.  As obviously revenue, as has been the theme of today’s posts in general, is important for any studio.

However, I noticed that in the comments section of the post by Massively OP, Chris Spears of Portalarium made a comment requesting “corrections” to their story. His comments became a popular topic on social media, voice chat, and even led some to direct message me requesting I take a look at it ASAP.   

Now I do want to break some of this down before I show you the response from Bree Royce, the author of the article at Massively OP.  Chris argues here that the in-game store is NOT a cash shop and lists his reason reasons why.  Let’s talk about the concepts of in-game stores, “cash shops”, microtransactions, and other such systems or terms. Going forward, as I clarify definitions of terms, keep in mind these are in regards to their use in video games. Obviously a cash shop outside of video games would be a shop that deals solely in cash and not credit cards or even written checks. As such it wouldn’t apply here.

What is a Cash Shop?

I would define a “Cash Shop” as not just an online store to purchase merchandise, copies of a game, subscriptions, etc; I would also include with it any in-game store where players can purchase virtual products such as: premium currency, equipment, characters, skins, buffs, features, and/or other like items using Legal Tender (typically credit card or other such means) to directly buy the item or to buy the aforementioned premium currency which is then used to buy the items. The product()s can be targeted specifically as to what item(s) the consumer wants or products can be bundled into a “lootbox” which grants the consumer a product or products based on chance.  These products in the “in-game store” are typically considered microtransactions due to the typical lower cost of the transaction.  A cash stop simply requires legal tender to be an option to purchase a product from the in-game store. Obviously some games have a separate out of game store, like Elder Scrolls Online. However, the “out of the game” store traditionally has less products available. These other products tend to be copies of the game, larger cost game items like full expansions, merchandise, etc.

Now obviously we get to the topic of premium currency, Chris makes the argument that because you can get premium currency through gameplay, the in-game store should not be called a cash shop. He also makes the argument that “most crowns spent in-game were purchased with gold from other players first and almost 10% of crowns drop in-game as loot.”  I wish I had the exact data of how many crowns were dropped items, ones from pledges/bundles, and those purchased via legal tender whether it be through the web store, in game store, or the subscription that SotA has.  However assuming Chris is accurate with these numbers, if say 99% of active accounts never purchase crowns in SotA using legal tender, that 1% that did, still makes it a cash shop.

I will use the one of the two mobile games I enjoy playing as an example. This particular game is free to play, and has both a normal currency and a premium currency.  As you play the game and complete missions, events, achievements, etc you gain not just normal currency and items, but also premium currency.   I have played since release day and you can play through the whole game and get easily a few thousand dollars worth of free currency, just by playing the game. The best part is RNG or randomness never affects how much premium currency you get. The majority of users have not spent money on the game.  Does that make the microtransactions in this mobile game for the premium currency any less of a cash store? Of course not.   Now free to play games where you can get lots of free premium currency is fantastic. It is just as wonderful when Buy to Play games with in-game stores, like Fallout 76, give you free premium currency while playing the game. Now while there is diminishing returns in regards to “atoms” (Fallout 76’s premium currency) as you progress in Fallout 76, it still has a cash store.

What corrections did he want? What about the Pay to Win claims?

As you can see he continues to talk about the reasoning behind the buffs as a marketing method and how ‘scary” it supposedly is for them to be making this change from the website based store to the in-game store.  He also claims the snippets included in the article did not include how temporary the receiving of the buffs would be (the buffs being given for at least 2 months or more) or that the buff’s strength would be the same regardless of how much many crowns were spent. However, if you look at her article, the reference always was there (see image below). She even had it with a light grey background to show it as a quote.  And as you can see in his comment above, he even admits to the buffs being a bit of Pay to Win.

Screenshot of Bree Royce's Article in reference to in-games store.“Pay to Win” is something I would define as anything a player can purchase via legal tender or premium currency via an in-game store, that gives them a statistical advantage over other players. An example would be if two players have characters in which all elements are the same (gear, attributes, skills, level, etc) and even their level of skill at playing the game, and if one of those players purchased an item or buff from an in-game store that gave them some sort of advantage to them whether it be a change to their stats like either more health, attribute, boosted a skill, reduced cooldown, etc. Another example would be the ability to only get certain characters or items that statistically are always better due to higher stats, etc than those available via normal gameplay; because, they are purchased via premium currency or legal tender and are not able to be gained via gameplay only.

I would encourage devs to do simple things like some games do now where buffs or items are given to players just for logging into the game. A “daily reward” system is very popular not just for free to play games, but for even some buy to play online games like Elder Scrolls Online. What Portalarium could have done in this situation, would have been to simply give a buff to the player for visiting the in-game store. No purchase necessary. This would have instantly stopped any claims of it being pay to win.

So what is the response to this dev comment?

The claims of MassivelyOP being inaccurate or leaving out certain details were not only false, they were blatant lies. Now while any company and its employees are welcome and free to defend the company they work for, and the decisions made in regards to the products made by the company, I would expect such a defense to be honest and typically handled via the PR department.  However, Portalarium doesn’t have a PR department or team.

I would go so far as to say that the only way the article by MassivelyOP could be taken as negative is if you: 1) focused solely on the claims of Pay to Win, which Chris even admits in the comments is true to an extent, or 2) you have a significant bias already against microtransactions in any video game.  Bree Royce commented in a classy fashion as well, as I will show here below.  Feel free to read, as I agree with what she said. Especially the comment “you’re just trying to redefine cash shop in a way we’d never let any other game get away with.”  That phrase alone defined what went through my head, before even reading her response. This is why I chose to do this larger section in today’s post that included my editorializing.  Now while I do not show every comment from Chris (I left one out), feel free to read some of the other comments and even rebuttals on MassivelyOP. The ones reminding me about the rollback during Release 56 was something that I forgot ever occurred.

Final Thoughts

Now microtransactions and cash shops/in-game stores have grown in use in video game development. Free to Play games on mobile, pc, and console have always been the typical games you would expect a cash shop and microtransactions to be in. However even full retail buy to play multiplayer online PC/console games are making use of them now. Even buy to play retail single player games on PC/console that use online, like the Lord Of the Rings’s Shadows of War game, make use of such stores. You never interact with other players in Shadows of War, and it even originally included lootboxes and premium currency in its in-game store.  Due to laws in some countries, the lootbox or “via chance” style of product acquisition for consumers via microtransactions or in-game stores is no longer available.  In the case of Shadows of War, the in-game store was patched to use only the basic currency you gain from playing the game.

Some games have done microtransactions and even lootboxes in a far more consumer friendly manner than others. Now while I feel the use of cash stores in full buy to play retail games has reached ridiculous proportions with them being used in Single Player only games, I want to know your thoughts? What are your thoughts on lootboxes or in the case of some mobile games “gacha” style drawing mechanics using basic and premium currencies?  Give us your comments below.

22 Responses

  1. Zeph Grey says:

    The whole deed upgrade thing being a controversy just shows how toxic communities can be as far as I’m concerned. I mean, seriously, what’s the complaint here? “Someone else is going to get something that was supposed to be exclusive to me!”? Is that really the issue? Does that really devalue what you have (sorta, kinda …it is digital property. you don’t own it, and when the games goes down, you lose it all anyway) It just seems selfish for people to be throwing a temper tantrum over this. I have a tax-free village deed. If someone else can buy one, well, I just don’t care. Even if I was still playing! If I was still involved, I guess I would hope that it might, MIGHT bring in a few more people. It might actually be a good thing, but to be upset that other people have something that effects you in no way at all, just because you want to feel special? That’s frankly disgusting.

    Chris’s response to the article was disgusting too. Professionalism seems to have completely broken down at Portalarium, which seems like the final bell tolling. If anyone reading this ever owns, or does own a business of any kind, or just has a controlling role in one as is the case here, here’s some advice, DON’T EVER ACT THIS WAY. Seriously, this is not how a professional adult behaves. This is what I’d expect from a high school kid. If you feel slighted by an article, you write a letter to the editor, or release a press release countering the claims. You do not post your complaints in the comment section! And you definitely do not double down by arguing! And for gods sake, you DO NOT try to rewrite history and make obviously false, and easily falsifiable claims! When I read the comments on that story, my jaw dropped. In a real company, Spears would be be forced to “resign” after such a display. I doubt that will happen here, but it should. He’s not much of an asset to begin with from what I’ve seen, and I’m willing to bet there are far more talented people who have already been let go to save money. I could go on a tangent about how the art design of SotA is one of it’s biggest issues (hard to get players in the first place when your store page screen shots look like a Piranha Bytes game from 2001) and that can be laid squarely on Spears’ doorstep, but that’s off topic.

    The fact is, Portalarium’s downward spiral looks like it has passed through tailspin and is a complete plummet at this point. I don’t know that Garriott has officially washed his hands of the mess yet, but it really feels like he has basically told Spears and Long to do what they want and pulled his support at this point. Not that I can blame him.

    • GolemDragon says:

      oh yeah, if Portalarium had succeeded in making it big with SotA or if Portalarium had been a larger and better known studio, the comments made towards the MassivelyOP writer would have been all over the main stream gaming news websites with calls for his head on a platter. Just like how the incompleteness of SotA never made the news but when other games from larger developers and studios have the same problem, it is called out. Part of it is obviously the fact that reporting on Portalarium for them simply won’t bring in much for clickthroughs, visitors, etc. But at the same time, there is that double standard where they will happily call out certain studios as well as gamers in general, but they won’t go after certain devs and studios as a sort of courtesy.

      • Zeph Grey says:

        I hadn’t considered this, but you’re right. They did seem to get a little press early on with the beg-a-thons and other BS, but it’s gotten to a point that it’s not even news anymore, and yeah, you’re just not going to draw much traffic with stories about it. That may be the most damning thing for Portalarium. When you can’t even generate bad press anymore, your company is officially dead in the water. In a few years, SotA may not even make footnotes.

        Slightly off topic, but has anyone here been paying attention to Legends of Aria? I’ve been playing here and there, and while they don’t seem to want the connection, it feels like the most direct successor to UO I’ve seen, and it’s ability to run private servers with custom rules and maps opens up certain possibilities.

      • WtF Dragon says:

        …while they don’t seem to want the connection, it feels like the most direct successor to UO I’ve seen…

        Not sure this is a wholly fair assessment. I mean, they do obviously want their game to stand on its own merits, and it certainly does that from what I’ve heard.

        But the team also made a fairly big deal about their past work on UO (several members of the core team at Citadel worked on it) during and after the crowdfunding campaign.

      • Sergorn says:

        I’m pretty much convinced the reason there was coverage or PR push for SotA during its release… it because Portalarium prevented it.

        Travian was all but ready to start its PR push for SotA, Richard was even all “plenty of interview coming” (indeed I was supposed to do one as well), and Travian had a made a pretty fantastic new website for the game which was probably the most professional thing ever put together… and then nothing.

        Portalarium has claimed that Travian just hasn’t been doing their job and they don’t know why there wasn’t more coverage : but I call bullshit on this. They didn’t want to have coverage because they know they would have been DESTROYED by the press (have you seen Underworld Ascendant ? Yup, and UWA is better than SotA), and well who knows with more coverage this might have lead someone to dig deeper and they don’t want that.

        Still Richard and Portalarium are getting a free pass from the press that is flaberghasting – like we get new articles about Lord British here and there even on mainstream site and no mention is even made of Shroud of the Avatar. It’s as if the subject if purposefully avoided.

      • Titler says:

        “Travian was all but ready to start its PR push for SotA, Richard was even all “plenty of interview coming” (indeed I was supposed to do one as well), and Travian had a made a pretty fantastic new website for the game which was probably the most professional thing ever put together… and then nothing.”

        The claims that were passed on to me, supposedly from former staff, were that approaching the lay-offs last year, Portalarium had shifted to “polishing” the game in an attempt to sell the entire IP to someone else, with Travian being the most likely target.

        However by then Travian had a good few months operating the game for themselves, and had seen not only the results of the feedback requests they’d sent out to everyone (where as Portalarium tried to take the questionaire back onto the forums and make it invite only) but also the actual revenue streams after they’d taken over the European store: and neither were realistically anywhere near the deluded beliefs of Portalarium. My own guess is that they’d also seen how incompetent Portalarium were professionally, both from memory of how badly the account transfer processes were messed up at the time, as well as the fact many of the former Travian Ambassadors were quickly let go and immediately turned up on Raw as intense critics too.

        Not long after, Travian apparently quietly wrote off their investment and dropped supporting Shroud: Again, Raw noticed they weren’t using Portalarium’s name before it was made official that they’d disengaged. I have not been given any information since on that topic so I don’t know what the actual reasoning for this final decision for Travian was, nor the exact date the decision was taken.

        But note too that almost every other previous partnership has also gone silent; the NeverDie tokens have been forgotten, after using Portalarium to help push the sales of the Initial Coin Offering (ICO). The wellness app was a one-and-done, I think? Has Starr made any references to his other day job for Brightlocker again? As far as I can tell, the only still engaged partner is BlackSun.

        We’ll know more when the SEC filings come out again in April and we can see if anyone else has invested. But best I can tell, they’ve doubled down on what I was told would be the plan if they couldn’t sell up; focusing purely on high revenue generating additions… such as the player dungeons with so, so many Add On Store purchases to help decorate them we now see, natch. And why solving the self-admittedly awful questing has been “delayed” until late in Episode 2.

        People are speculating that Garriott himself has checked out; the quote in the claimed comments from sacked staff to me was “Richard’s a lovely guy, but he has the attention span of a goldfish”, along with a lot of comments that his contributions have been for a very long time merely unworkable or disconnected ideas that then get strangled in the toxic atmosphere in the office and then mangled by the programming incompetence or desperate need to focus on the latest short term revenue band aid…

      • GolemDragon says:

        hehe, yeah the April SEC documents that are are only weeks away from being available will be completely fascinating… Sometimes government fun organizations can be more useful than frustrating. 😀 I am planning on doing a whole post on it even, so that should make for some interesting content. I may enlist a friend of mine who is an analyst again as well, cause I always enjoy having a 2nd pair of eyes when looking at any organizations financial documentation, whether it is a non profit group or a for profit business.

        The thing I enjoy the most about this whole SotA situation is that If SotA had succeeded, I may not have met and befriended one particular group of people of whom many of them are like family to me now. A few of the ladies there are some of my closest friends whom I can trust with anything. So the failures of the game benefited me in a way far greater, than the benefits if the game had succeeded. It also makes me happy to be streaming again, gaming with certain a few circles of friends, and forgetting the game exists the bulk of most days… I will continue to enjoy keeping us all up to date on the news and soforth, because overall the Ultima community (in general) is pretty badass…

    • WtF Dragon says:

      Given the choice, I’d probably prefer to play a Piranha Bytes game from 2001…they made some good stuff in the early part of the century, much of it also quite heavily inspired by a certain series we all rather enjoy.

      • Zeph Grey says:

        True. While I’ve been lukewarm at best to their recent outings, I did enjoy the early Gothics, though pretty, they were not.

      • WtF Dragon says:

        Well, for 2001, they were pretty decent. A lot of early 3D titles haven’t aged particularly well, but at the time they came out we most likely all thought they looked nothing short of incredible.

      • Sergorn says:

        For a 2001 seamless open world game, with no separate interiors, NPC schedules and much more, Gothic looked way, way better than “decent”. I’ll grant their characters models weren’t top notch (this has always been their mean issue) but their environment were pretty fantatic and even more so in Gothic 2. And pretty fantastic art style.

        So yeah I’ll have to disagree about PB’s Gothic games not looking pretty.

        (And Elex was a masterpiece and one of the best RPGs of the last decade or so)

      • Zeph Grey says:

        I think PB just hits all the wrong notes with me. I personally find their art design muddy, but that’s just me. And their drive to be “gritty” or however you want to put it just turns me off. I’ve repeatedly tried their games over the years, and usually put them down after 20 or so hours to never return.

        But yeah, my comment was referring to bland fantasy art direction, and generally poor models. I suppose that I could have dug a little deeper to find another example. I’m sure there are plenty of cut rate fantasy RPGs out there.

        My point is that SotA just looks generic. It has no personality. And it looks dated.

      • Zeph Grey says:

        @Sergorn So I went back and gave Elex another shot since you brought it up. Masterpiece seems a bit strong, but I’m enjoying it more than my first run. Maybe approaching it with fresh eyes helped, though I still find the tough and gruff hero trope annoying, and most of the NPCs to be jerks. As a big bald whit guy, I tend to make my main characters big bald white guys, but for some reason it bugs me not to have the option to do something different.

      • Sergorn says:

        OK perhaps saying Masterpiece is too strong a word but II would say (semantics) PB’s masterpiece in the sense that it’s the game that pretty manage to bring the best aspects of all the previouses games into a cohesives whole .

  2. Gatsu says:

    A lot or bad choices…from ultima online… To a nothing to do with ultima online… This is the Story of sota.

  3. Forsaken Dragon says:

    Another great article Golem Dragon. I really enjoyed your breakdown of a lot of new information.

    I find it absolutely reprehensible that Chris Spears, 1) thinks it’s ok to treat your customers like this and 2) is allowed to continue doing it…over and over again. He literally redefines the term unprofessional. Moreover, the fact that he tries to get away with saying the “Crown Store” isn’t a “Cash Shop” is just more Scamalarium lies. Sorry Chris, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, well guess what…it’s a duck. Buying crowns is just another form of a cash shop you dolt!

    I wholeheartedly agree that Richard Garriott has moved on from Shroud of Disappointment. Ever since he stepped down as CEO, his involvement has diminished like a fart in the wind. I would also add from reading the general forums and the stand-up notes that Starr Long isn’t going to be sticking around much either. He used to be 100% more engaged in the forums and decisions previously made by him are now being done by Chris Spear. Now that’s a scary thought. In fact, Starr has had a number of “days off” intermittently which I can only interpret as someone who is potentially interviewing for a new job. This is all speculation of course, but it makes sense given the current environment over there and how little Starr is involved nowadays.

    Regardless, if Starr leaves and Chris starts running the show I think you will begin to see a mass exodus of the few remaining players. Like you pointed out Golem, it’s in a complete freefall now so it’s only a matter of time!

    • Zeph Grey says:

      It looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, but oddly enough, no one wants to buy this particular duck.

      • WtF Dragon says:

        It looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, but oddly enough, no one wants to buy this particular duck.

        I will not make a Dupre joke…
        I will not make a Dupre joke…
        I will not make a Dupre joke…
        I will not make a Dupre joke…

    • Sergorn says:

      Richard was working on episode 2 content just last month so I don’t think he’s washed his hand off the game.

      But it’s not like Richard was THAT involved in the game on the whole, he very much let Starr and Chris run the show, and whenever he wanted to do stuff and add stuff, he was basically overturned at every turn by the rest of the studio.

      • Forsaken Dragon says:

        True, but “working” on episode 2 content is completely subjective and also relies on us taking Richard and Scamalarium at their word; which I do not anymore. I don’t believe Richard is doing anything on episode 2 outside of maybe “thinking” about the story and claiming that as work. They still haven’t shown anything other than the episode 2 map they revealed months ago. It’s doubtful, at least in my mind, that they will actually complete episode 2. They simply don’t have the finances or staff currently to do so.

        You are definitely right that he never really was all that involved anyway. As the years went by it became more and more evident that he let Starr and Chris do what they wanted and then jumped in when he felt like it. Sadly, we have all seen those telethons where Richard would talk about some new feature he wanted and Chris and Starr would just cringe. As you mentioned he was overturned constantly by the rest of the studio.

      • TruthDragon says:

        Yes he has washed his hands of the game. Maybe at this point they have lost so many staff that he does need to come in and help out a bit but look at the daily stand up posts for the game. He isn’t doing anything productive.

        https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/standup-corner.2315/page-71

  4. Titler says:

    Coming to this late, had a lot of real life issues to deal with I’m afraid… in large part because of the wider implications of this story.

    The comment that Bree Royce, the Editor makes about people supposedly “trolling” Chris Spears is directed towards a comment I made, but she deleted. You can see it in the Wayback archives of that thread, because I made sure to archive it the instant I posted it.

    In it, I reminded Chris Spears that he had plenty of opportunity to try and deal respectfully with the critics, but despite notifying Portalarium multiple times I’d had to go to the police, and that I’d eventually started the arbitration process, he has simply continued to be toxic to myself and others, and at best turned a blind eye to the harassment being done. At worst he’s tried to bully and harass us himself, just like he’s now openly doing to MassivelyOP.

    And also that MassivelyOP.com not only had treated Shroud with kid gloves earlier (Eliot Levre is the only member on staff who has been critical of the project at all until now, I logged most of the coverage in the Raw Reddit Wiki) but had let Spears openly forge claims I had threatened his children, and deleted any attempt of mine or anyone else to point out it was physically impossible to have done it the way he said.

    And had also in the same thread deleted anyone pointing out that he was openly lying about a companion app, with him at first claiming anyone could use it to prove population figures (and thus disprove the Steamcharts values), then saying it was password protected to stop the “trolls” abusing it somehow, then being caught out by the fact some who did have access stated it didn’t track population anyway.

    Apparently he’s now behaved so unprofessionally that even Bree was getting sick of it; BUT HE’S BEEN BEHAVING LIKE THIS FOR YEARS. He previously abused MMORPG.com too, so much so that Red_Thomas on their staff had to go to their Facebook to try and calm him down.

    Now I’m not going to detail the wider issues, because they involve a third party who doesn’t want any more worries. But Massively have had the AAA documents from me for months: So has much of the wider media. I’ve been working myself sick trying to get any of them to cover the appalling moral morass Portalarium has become, and none of them have dared touch the story. Worse, because I dare to be openly disgusted BEFORE they had their eyes start to open, they still to this day bear grudges against critics and “trolls” because they were, again at BEST, lacking in empathy or honesty about their decades old heroes.

    I doubt now I’ll ever get admission of what I sadly went through, much less an apology. But I know the truth all the same. And Shroud failed in large part because of nasty personal flaws like this, and the complete inability to maturely and sensibly handle criticism of their deceptive, incompetent business practices.