Exciting newscomes to us today from the Shroud of the Avatar Kickstarter page:

Starr Long Joins Shroud of the Avatar Development Team at Portalarium

Starr to team with Richard Garriott on crowd sourced game; Duo collaborating for the first time on fantasy RPG genre since Ultima Online

AUSTIN, Texas, July 5, 2013 — The last time Starr Long and Richard Garriott teamed up to create a fantasy role playing game (RPG) was 1997. That game, Ultima Online, quickly became the first commercially successful massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) and many credit the duo with reinventing the RPG with that ground breaking product. Now Richard Garriott and Starr Long are preparing for yet another collaboration to reinvent the genre, this time on Portalarium’s™ Shroud of the Avatar™ PC based game. Starr was announced today as the project’s executive producer.

The announcement was made during RTX 2013, currently taking place at the Austin Convention Center. Garriott is a guest speaker at this year’s event. He is showing a demo of Shroud of the Avatar during a special presentation at 4:30 pm CDT, Saturday, July 6, in room 19 of the convention center. The entire presentation will be live streamed on RTX Live. Additionally, Garriott will be formally introducing Starr during his talk.

Starr is a 20-year veteran of the gaming industry. He started his career at Austin’s legendary Origin Systems studio where he worked directly with Garriott to produce and create Ultima Online, which continues its position today as the longest running massively multiplayer online game ever. In 2010, Ultima Online was inducted into the Online Game Developers Conference Hall of Fame, becoming the first MMO to be so honored. Starr later helped co-found Destination Games with Richard and Robert Garriott (the company was soon acquired by NCsoft) and as producer he again collaborated with Richard Garriott on the futuristic MMO game, Tabula Rasa. In 2008 Beckett’s Massive Online Gamer magazine named Starr Long as one of the Top 20 Most Influential People in the massively multiplayer online industry.

Starr’s move to Portalarium comes after spending the last four years as executive producer at The Walt Disney Company where he oversaw the Disney Interactive studio responsible for Pirates of the Caribbean Online, Pixie Hollow and Toontown. While there he was the executive producer of the Disney Parent App on Facebook, eight learning mini games in Club Penguin (including Pufflescape, the second most popular mini-game in that virtual world), Club Penguin mobile, five Disney Connected Learning games on iOS (ranked in the top 5 educational games) and the Disney Connected Learning platform.

“I am thrilled to be moving back to Austin to partner with Richard on his next fantasy role playing game,” said Starr. “Richard’s ideas for remaking the genre are well aligned with where the industry is today in terms of technology and design. It is really exciting to know that we are creating Shroud of the Avatar with the idea of bringing back the concepts and principles that Richard used successfully in making his Ultima series. With all of that said, what I most look forward to is working directly with the community to make the product they want, which is the real power of crowd funding.”

“If people enjoyed the leadership that was in place when we were creating Ultima Online, they’ll be very happy with the team we’ve put in place for Shroud of the Avatar,” said Garriott. “Starr Long is a longtime colleague of mine, and he is absolutely one of the visionaries in this space and his track record shows it. I know he’s ready to roll up his sleeves and jump right in to help us make the next epic RPG. This news sends a clear signal to our fans that the game they’ve been waiting 15 years to play is that much closer to reality.”

Exciting news? Well…potentially. Richard Garriott hails Starr as the man who “pretty much invented MMOs“, after all; Long’s addition to the team will likely do wonders for helping Shroud of the Avatar offer some truly revolutionary online gameplay. Those of you who aren’t intending to partake of the game’s online elements, however, may not find the team addition terribly exciting.

For those of you who are curious, Starr will not be reprising his Lord Blackthorn persona in Shroud of the Avatar; he has adopted the handle “DarkStarr” at Portalarium, and his role in the game (if any) is at present unknown. A few new rewards have been added to various pledge tiers, featuring items and other content that play off the name.