Dallas Snell published a massive update to the Shroud of the Avatar Kickstarter page today, which discussed a number of different subjects which I’ll be breaking out into a series of posts today. The first concerns a new challenge that Portalarium have issued to existing backers of Shroud of the Avatar: the “Double Down on Community” Mission:

We believe the potential size of our community of backers is at least twice the current number, so we ask that you join us in our Double Down on Community Mission! This mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help us double down on our collective efforts to grow our community of SotA backers from our current size of about 24,500 to 50,000 by, or before, May 2014.

The larger our community the more input we will have on game design, the more alpha/beta players we will have helping us find bugs, putting loads on our servers, showing what works and what doesn’t. When we first proposed Ultima Online to Electronic Arts so many years ago, the EA execs projected only 30,000 lifetime subscribers. As soon as we announced the game we signed up 50,000 beta testers. EA was forced to revise their estimates. Those 50,000 beta players insured that we had enough daily players to adequately load-test our servers, and balance our game design. This is one of the reasons why our Double Down on Community target is to have 50,000 backers signed up by, or before, May 2014. It is only through the powerful word-of-mouth efforts of each and every one of us that we can hope to achieve this mission!

To kick the Mission off, they’ve announced a rewards program for those that are able to recruit their friends into pledging:

For every single new backer you recruit that pledges at the $45 Adventure Level (or higher), you will receive a $25 recruitment bonus added to your pledge amount (* these recruitment bonuses only apply toward increasing your pledge level and do not apply toward items in the Add-On Store)! In addition to the $25 recruitment bonus you receive for every single new backer you recruit, you will also receive:

• 1 recruit = You and every backer you recruit will receive a unique, unteachable emote! Only recruiters and recruitees will ever have this emote (we’re thinking a kind of “High Five” emote to acknowledge each other in game)
• 5 recruits = a special, unique, hunting dog pet (available only through recruiting)
• 10 recruits = A Darkstarr Moondial (yes, this is another chance at getting a Darkstarr Moondial)

As well, the top 5 recruiters will earn Citizen-level ($550) reward packages, and the top recruiter will earn a Duke-level ($5,300) reward package.

So, how does this all work?

When your new recruit pledges at the $45 Adventure level (or higher) they will be prompted to enter the email address of the backer that recruited them. Please provide your recruits with the email address you registered your account with on our SotA website (or the email address of your Kickstarter account you pledged with).

The friend recruitment promotion runs until October 31, 2013.