Portalarium, Please Send Me My Shroud of the Avatar Box (Updated)
Because I grow tired of waiting — as the counter in the site header attests, I hope — for my Shroud of the Avatar box (the due reward for backing the game on Kickstarter some six years ago now), I’d like to take this opportunity to formally issue a challenge to whomever remains at Portalarium to handle such mundane tasks as shipping. Which may well be Chris Spears himself, though I’d at least like to think that the technical director of the game isn’t also working the mail room (such as it is).
In just over two weeks, I’ll be in the United States for a short work project. Thanks to the miracle of Amazon Prime, I can order a boxed copy of Shroud of the Avatar the day before I fly out, and have it waiting for me by the time I return to my hotel after my first day of work…which happens to be May 15th.
So, to whomever at Portalarium may be concerned with such things, please send me my physical backer rewards in time that they arrive by about May 13th. It’s now a race between you and Amazon.
The First Age of Update: Alas, my trip — which would have seen me depart today — has been cancelled for reasons beyond my control. Which is not to say I won’t be visiting the US in the near future; I have another trip coming up in June. That’s the new deadline, then; I fly out on June 22nd.
I’m afraid there is no one at the wheel.
Whether there is anyone at the wheel is irrelevant, a challenge like that on here will probably not be seen by them… Send them a PM on the forum, and you will get some attention… Out here? Not likely…
And yes, I am still waiting for 2 of my 3 boxes as well!
I’m not so sure it’s that invisible to them, being posted here. Posts here are echoed to Twitter, and I know for a fact that Richard Garriott (and others) follow the @ultimacodex Twitter account. Posts also get echoed to Facebook; the Codex has Portalarium-affiliated followers there as well.
And like as not, the site still gets a decent number of visits from Austin on a weekly basis.
So it may pass unnoticed. But it may not. And either way, I’d rather not supplicate Chris Spears on a livestream or forum post; I see no point to stroking his ego thusly.
Portalarium is in complete damage control now. Starr was caught deleting posts linked in that Massively Op article and I am pretty sure that when their Annual Report does get filed it isn’t going to cast them in a good light. Tie into that that WTF and a number of other players STILL haven’t received their boxes it’s a total joke. They are a complete embarrassment and it reflects horribly on Lord British.
Saying this reflects horribly on Richard Garriott is being awfully nice to him. The whole project is his baby. It was mismanaged horribly throughout its entire development, they have done nothing but cater to whales and high spenders, and Richard himself checked out of the project once it became clear that it would become the mess that it has become. It doesn’t REFLECT horribly on him, the whole thing is his bloody fault.
I disagree. This project was never his baby. That much was obvious from that YouTube video where he, Starr and Chris readily admit Portalarium was bankrupt and the idea for Shroud was complete vaporware. He deliberately leveraged our nostalgia and love for the Ultima series, to save a company that should have died long ago. The sad reality is that he really never was engaged or involved outside of raising more and more money. Still isn’t to this day. It’s pitiful and why I have very little respect for him anymore. He has become the antithesis of all that he once espoused.
I was on staff, and in his honor guard when he came back to Ultima Online for the first time in 2015; he not only never spoke to any of the wider assembled staff, we didn’t even SEE him, and EM Borbarad and I almost missed the entire event because we were left in Green Acres waiting to be told what was even happening. He didn’t speak to the players after the event either. As far as I can tell his engagement was only to be given a script, run it, then he left again.
The rumours sent to me (That Codex also has) is that he’s got the attention span of a fly, and I can truly believe it. The NeverDie link (which also never integrated into Shroud as claimed) also seems to have been one of his ridiculous ideas he quickly forgot. I know for a fact that when I tried to reach out to him personally when the harassment started getting really toxic he never responded to that either.
And it’s his name that’s on the game, so you should expect him to be prepared to fully stand by it and enforce it’s quality. On that you’re right to blame him.
But the wider mess with the packages is coming from Portalarium as a whole. Again, only rumours, but the claims sent to me were that they’d underpaid the French delivery partner, and what they’d spent wouldn’t cover the weight of the books. The “won’t fit the box” is an excuse. They didn’t have the money to go back and pay for that. They were instead hoping to sell the entire IP to Travian or someone else at the time, but that fell through as Travian had seen the honest figures for turn over through their own store by then, and didn’t believe the lies now (between $5 and $50m revenue over 2 years quoted in the SeedInvest, remember?).
The claims about the office lease in turn is almost certainly a lie too; They sacked staff, then downsized, then abandoned the smaller office because they’re burning every single thing left just to avoid admitting it’s over… some of the staff truly are utterly convinced if they just lie and swindle a bit longer, suddenly everyone will realise what a fantastic game it is, and the “trolls and haters” will be proven wrong.
So now Portalarium are running permanent Begathons, reactivated the stretch goals (presumably the person whose terrible idea they were “who has left Portalarium” is back again now) and fundraising for Dungeons and “Episode 2” (even though 1 isn’t done yet) just to squeeze the last few whales for what ever is left until the miracle finally arrives.
It’s not going to arrive. There’s no money to keep flannelling the remaining Whales AND pay what is owed to those of you who have finally woken up. And why would they try? Heck, WTFDragon here is going to buy a copy of the game from Amazon, even though Portalarium have not even sent him the one they owe him yet! Even if he sets fire to it afterwards, like some former backers have done on YouTube, they’ve still got that extra money. And until that money drops below the amount Chris Spears, personally and alone is prepared to work for, they’ll keep on doing exactly what they’ve done since 2013 and lie and flannel and deceive and squeeze, squeeze, squuuuuuueeeze…
In the end, I backed the game, and I’m told that the box is the best part of it. I’m an old school fan, in my way, and so having the box and the feelies counts for something, even if the game itself is not something I’ll ever pick up again.
And to be fair, for the $20 I’d drop on an Amazon box, how much of that will Portalarium even see? Amazon will take a cut, after all. But let’s say $15 will end up at Portalarium; I’m willing to send them that little bit of cash in exchange for being able to post an article about having solved the “box issue” myself, and then putting up a second counter to measure the delta between when I received the box from Amazon and when the box from Portalarium finally arrives, if it ever does. And if Portalarium closes before they send me my box, well…at least I’ve got a box. Like as not, I do want the feelies.
I find it incredulous that players stuck around after the whole “nomadic office” move. I mean WTF!? How much more evidence do you need that the ship is sinking? I don’t care what they say, it has been proven that at best they distort the truth or at the worst, outright lie. All to make more money off the remaining player’s backs. If having no office space is so great why didn’t they do this from the beginning? I know why, because they are bull of BS.
“And if Portalarium closes before they send me my box, well…at least I’ve got a box. Like as not, I do want the feelies.”
And that’s not wrong… in isolation. I originally pushed up to Royal Founder Ancestor because I started my roleplaying character in Ultima IV in 1989 and I quite fancied the gravestone in Shroud to end it, in what would likely be the last ever connection to Ultima.
But then I realised Portalarium were abusing the backers faith to raise money for something that was never even planned to be what they sold to us. Your “feelies”, like mine and everyone else’s were being manipulated in the most abhorrent ways. And sooner or later, when someone is abusing you, you have to recognise that the goodness is inside you, not them, and to protect what is good you need to step away from that person.
If those physical goods have any value, it’s in your mind, not in the realm they claim to map. And Portalarium know that and will squeeze another $15 or however much from you using what you think. That’s why the boxes are on Amazon, and not being sent to people who have already purchased them from Kickstarter or Pledges. Such a sin is theirs alone, not yours for having “feelies”. But they’ve turned into the very Lord Blackthorn pretending to the Virtues that Ultima V warned against. And we don’t have to keep letting them do it.
The saddest thing is, whilst most of the truely aware wolves will have liquidated all their assets before the game implodes, the last few believers are going to be wiped out to the scale of tens of thousands of dollars; whilst Portalarium have tried to claim that their backers are all CEOs of small businesses and can afford to be whales, the reality is the industry has known since 2013 that this kind of fundraising targets specifically the vulnerable;
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/195806/chasing_the_whale_examining_the_.php
I can think of at least one well known name still on the forums that likely fits that pattern (And as “StrangerDiamond”, our insane pal has been forging that he sold his car and phone to support the game too, which worried me deeply, until I later worked out it was him yet again)
Hopefully no one here is vulnerable enough to be wiped out by another $15. But we shouldn’t even be thinking this about the legacy of Ultima. And I’d be amazed if Richard Garriott is even personally aware of what it’s all become.
Now who’s gaslighting? 😉
” All to make more money off the remaining player’s backs.”
If only it was just that; remember how Garriott claimed in interviews in early 2013, that Shroud would be like Skyrim, a stand alone that we’d have access too and be able to freely mod? If that had been true, you might forgive some of the cash gouging because all the effort would still be yours to pick up and run with. However as they’ve built it, when the servers go off, you lose EVERYTHING.
You can hope someone at Portalarium leaks the server code so it can be reverse engineered, like happened with City of Heroes apparently (and I’m now playing again because of that). But as we saw from last years SEC documents, even if they sold every single thing they have, including all their intellectual property, Portalarium were still $13m in debt. They’re not going to just GIVE you the server code. Oh no.
They’re in an even worse spot now if they’ve not even filed for the SEC this year. And they’ve already lost the office space too, so presumably all the hardware there that wasn’t personal has already been liquidated too. I originally predicted Jan 2019 as the end date of the game based on their financials, but I hadn’t counted on the sheer lack of even simple business sense to keep trying even when they’d lost their offices…
“Now who’s gaslighting? 😉”
Wut?!
But no, seriously; I don’t apply standards to anyone else that I don’t apply to myself, and I had to be just as hard on myself over the exact same “feelies”. More so perhaps, because my actual personal input is in Ultima history itself, certainly in UO where I wrote the fiction for Europa for over a year, and some of my artwork was included in the Shroud heraldry (some poetry I wrote for Shroud wasn’t included, later we’d discover because they didn’t want to reward people for their work, not when they could sell you more crap instead). So it hurt like hell to discover my literal childhood heroes were so, so corrupt.
But no excuses for ME either. Pull every penny possible. Warn as many as you can. Do the work, including most importantly on yourself. And for those who can’t or won’t fight, do it for them.
When it’s all over, I might indeed look back and feel sad about the good feelings that have been corrupted and lost; that there was something special that all of this killed. I’ve often wondered if I should burn all my own Ultima memorabilia in the past. I haven’t yet, so I understand it’s hard to let go. But as I say… no excuses, not even for my feelings.
That might sound harsh to those not ready to let those feelings go; but I wouldn’t be telling you the truth if I pretended I hadn’t seen what I actually have. And people don’t thank you later for not telling them what you knew at the time either. So it’s quite the opposite of gaslighting; I’m telling people what I actually believe, and they ignore it because they think I’m wrong.
For now.
But I’d sooner be on the side of truth in the long run. And your counter continues to tick. That’s the sad, simple truth.
Actually, I suspect they ignore it because they’re not obligated to share your beliefs in regard to this matter.
I appreciate that you believe what you’re saying here. It does not follow that anyone else does, or has to.
And for all your talk of letting feelings go, the impression you give to me (and to others I’ve spoken with) is that you in fact have deep emotional wounds over all of this, so much so that you can’t let go of much of what you probably should.
So I’ll thank you for not trying to play upon my emotions here, and just accept that I’ll have my box one way or another. It can be in a way that is to Portalarium’s embarrassment or credit; I don’t care which.
Ahh so as well as childishly throwing out claims I’m attempting to gaslight you, you’re claiming personal emotional damage now? And openly claiming you have “spoken to others” to justify such a sneer? Especially after the evidence dump I sent you, which I’ve been waiting for you to even acknowledge?
I ignored your previous hypocritical post, because I wanted to make absolutely sure you had a fair chance to at least live up to what you claim to be. But I did quickly knock out a reply which I pre-saved because I KNEW you wouldn’t do the right thing. So here it is;
—
“especially when said randos can’t bother to be particularly polite, which is not something you’ve ever really been whilst here.”
You forget we all remember what you were like to people suffering harassment when you were staff at Portalarium. GolemDragon was polite and understanding. YOU were not, and yet you were in a better position to be able to address it. Instead you openly admitted you took actions based upon whether or not people were a member of the Pro- or Anti-Shroud side, as you defined them.
http://shroudunlimited.boards.net/thread/821/replying-outlawed-outlaw-forums-reply
Note how you stated your dislike for rune_74 was based upon him posting at Shroud Unlimited. And yet now Portalarium have finally failed even you personally, just as they have done everyone before you, only NOW are you more cynical.
Well, you have the evidence of just how much harassment and abuse I’ve had to deal with over the past 3 years. I knew it at the time. I put the evidence out there, but people found it easier to just call me a “rando” and abuse me rather than challenge their own assumptions. But I’m fully aware I was telling the truth at the time, and even that as “EM Gotan” many of the posters at Shroud who ranted about me then, loved my content and character when I was staff in Ultima Online. That you were all basing your assumptions on nothing more than whether I supported a game you wanted to like or not.
So make no mistake, I am under no illusion about your character. Very, very few people connected with the moral disaster that was Shroud in fact came out of it with much deserved respect. But I said Aug 4th 2016 in the response above; “it’s possible for the worst people in the world to be on the right side of an issue occasionally.” I CAN put my personal views aside; and you can still do some good for the hundreds of other backers you can reach via UDIC and this webpage, so I’m putting the information for THEM, not for you.
Because it’s the right thing to do.
“Which is where such materials should be, if in fact you’re actively pursuing court cases.”
And how does that accord with the fact I keep telling you I’ve already GOT the judgement from the American Arbitration Association? You’ve since had a huge pile of documents proving what I say; are you still going to persist in claiming you know more about the legal advice I’ve been given, and stating things which are directly the opposite to what I say? And that I know that before you wrote the above, I’d already privately sent you the name and Bar Association page of the lawyer who co-signed the documents, didn’t I? But you still try and claim I don’t understand the law around how and when I can use these documents?
“Which, then, is a caution to you: don’t send anything you wouldn’t want made public. We’ll redact PII, of course, but will necessarily retain any pertinent information relevant to the content of whatever article ultimately gets published, if any such article gets published.”
Oh, I thought no one here had asked me to just throw everything into the public domain? Yet here you are declaring, in an impolite way, that’ll you’ll publish anything you damn well feel like.
Except your own email address, of course. Because protecting … your…
So let me be blunt here; do you think I’ve not noticed how much you weasel out of trying to admit I have a point, and even now can’t help but be toxic trying to deflect the awareness that for years as Portalarium’s staff you helped add to the harassment of innocent people because you judged them based upon the fact they spotted Portalarium’s real nature long before you woke up too it?
In the meantime, I’ve had to fight against the apathy of ignorant “randos”, the disinterest or outright corruption of much of the media, 3 years of obsessive stalking and attempts to damage my sanity… AND YET I STILL SENT YOU THE PERSONAL DOCUMENTS.
Because either you double down on the toxicity, or you publish and some good is done to protect other people. But either way, I win. I’m either good, or I’m better. I tried explaining this to “jammaplaya” for years in fact, that I was too clear sighted to know that if someone was given the obvious right thing to do, and tried not to do it, their opinion didn’t matter. It was the ultimate game of bingo, and he didn’t even know the rules.
Portalarium had the same choice too; I put it to them to either reject harassment, or double down on trying to avoid being held to account. They chose on avoiding the AAA in the hopes that the wider apathy and corruption would keep them safe from the consequences. Are you going to prove them right, and snark at me again even though you know now they did..?
But I’m not going to feel my own self-righteousness is damaged if you do.
—
And lo and behold, you did indeed continue to snark at me. “Trying to play upon your emotions”…? No, I’m just stating what any decent person would feel. You only think I’m trying to “play” you because at some level you recognise your actions are irrational. No, that doesn’t mean you’re obliged to understand let alone act upon that. But no one else is obliged to respect you being deliberately foolish either. Not even when you constantly try and act like control of this website somehow allows you to be abusive and hypocritical but you’ll have the final word so that’s ok. Those final words have to be worthy, and I can rely upon them not being so.
Because it didn’t work to keep Shroud’s audience when you, and Berek, and all the rest of those moderating Shroud’s board did it either. Did it? Or prevent Portalarium abandoning you and your box after you’ve served your purpose burning those before you. People can SEE the hypocrisy and even if they don’t want to get dragged into the mud, they quietly leave because they recognise the mud for what it is. They see you causing “deep emotional wounds” to other people, attempting to blame them for what you deliberately did to them, and know they don’t want to let you do it to them either and so walk away.
Once more, all I have to do is put the facts out there and wait for people to show their true face. It doesn’t matter whether you delete this post after, you’ve already been doing it for weeks, so purpose served. I also have the self-reaffirming evidence that I’ve “jumped through all the hoops” you wouldn’t even consider doing with regards to even a simple email address; and even if there was “deep emotional damage”, the best way to “heal” it would be to absolutely prove to myself my critics are completely full of shit and only interested in trying to add too, not fix it. Wouldn’t it?
And your reaction to being shown the actual facts was to try and insult the victim again. Because you want to feel good about paying again for a box you’ve already paid for, because your former employers don’t respect you enough to actually send it, and you don’t want to feel bad about being unable to let go of your nostalgia or recognise you have no sympathy for anyone but yourself.
And no amount of trying to gaslight me is going to persuade me I can’t see you doing that; “jamma” tried for 3 years; I’m still standing though. Shroud is on it’s knees. The staff have mostly been let go, the way I was told it happened or not. And there’s no box on your desk yet unless you pay double for it.
Which you will, because you can’t walk away. Whilst projecting onto me that I need too, even though you know my stalker continues to try and force himself into my and other people’s lives.
But at least I’m not paying him to try and humiliate me.
There’s a lot I could focus on in crafting a reply to all of the above (including what seems to be a deep-seated and long-standing animus toward myself, which far predates your arrival here at the Codex), but I want to focus on one line in particular:
No, it wouldn’t. Oh, you’d feel some self-satisfied vindication for a while, probably. But that would fade in time, and there’d be nothing to fill that void. And what then? Repeat the process again, against someone or something else that you feel slighted by? And keep doing so, pursuing ever-smaller slights — perceived or actual; it won’t matter to you — with greater and greater ferocity, until nobody will even accidentally let themselves be in prolonged company of or contact with you, for fear of provoking your incessant need for vengeance?
Because you do crave vengeance. What you will receive, at best, is emptiness.
It is unfortunate that I have to remind you of this, but you are a guest here. And in that capacity, you have conducted yourself exceedingly poorly. Now, I have — to date, and despite numerous complaints — allowed you to remain in this space, and even to use is as a platform of sorts. But I was never obligated to agree with your version of events, to see matters your way, to abide by your personal — and, based on the above, somewhat misguided — sense of right and wrong, or to publish any of the things you have continued to cajole me to publish (and then with ever more loaded, emotionally manipulative language, I might add).
So, no, I’m not claiming personal emotional damage (exasperation, maybe)…but I am letting you know that your time as a guest here is at an end. I will continue to review the evidence you have sent as time permits; if I find any merit to it — and if I can corroborate the facts I choose to report, if any, independently — then I may yet put up an article. And should that happen, you will be welcome to comment thereupon.
But the Codex is my platform, not yours, and your time here is — for now — at an end.
I’m not going to ban you, though. From what I have been told, there is a reasonable chance you’d take measures to circumvent any ban I might put in place. Instead, I will do nothing to inhibit your ability to post…but anything you do post will be summarily edited into the most ridiculous, self-promoting, Gary Sue-ish auto-generated Shroud of the Avatar fan fiction that online algorithms can craft.
This policy is effective as of now. I wouldn’t suggest testing it.
Also, in the interests of full disclosure: while I was indeed a moderator for the Shroud of the Avatar forums, and while I continue to be a moderator — occasionally — for their Discord channel, it would be incorrect to call Portalarium my “employer”; the term “employment” implies the existence of some formal contract existing between the company and myself, whereby my hours performing tasks on their behalf are logged and duly remunerated.
No such relationship exists. It would be more correct to label me a “volunteer”, for it was in such a capacity that I served — and continue to serve, in an ever-diminishing way — the company, the game, and its community.
You are only one of many of us who are not only waiting for our box, but also our signed book. Having spent over a thousand dollars backing and investing to get this game launched I feel swindled. I have yet to get my box and we get lied to and forums posts deleted by Starr because they have wasted the money that was supposed to go toward backer rewards. It’s a shame that Richard has let this game company become a laughing of the internet.
Any update? Did you finally get the box? None here yet despite an email saying it will be coming soon almost 8 months ago.
No box in the mail as yet. And with the trip I was supposed to take this week having been cancelled, I also didn’t bother ordering one from Amazon.
Ahh, shame. Well keep us updated. Here’s to hoping we all get our boxes one day.