Last night, Portalarium held a six-hour livestream to celebrate $3 million dollars in crowdfunding support for the game, and to ring in the launch of pre-alpha Release 2:

The livestream, hosted for the most part by Joseph “Rustic Dragon” Toschlog (with help from Gina “FireLotus” Dionne), kicked off with contributions from the development team, including a question session concerning Release 2 and a short artwork session with Stephen Daniele. Thereafter, a number of guests were invited in to chat with Richard Garriott (and the rest of the livestream audience), answer a few questions, and receive some praise for their contributions to the Shroud of the Avatar — and Ultima — fandom.

Guests included Holt Ironfell, Dame Lori of Forsaken Virtues, Joe Garrity of the Origin Museum, Frank “Sir Frank” Baxley, Joseph Drasin, Ben Pritchard, Aduin Tesserande, and Dominick John of the Space Bards. Oh, and somewhere in the middle of all that, a trio of folks from the Ultima Codex and the Codex of Ultima Wisdom — Fenyx, Browncoat Jayson and myself — also turned in an appearance.

Watch the whole thing if you can. (The Codex team come on near the four-hour mark.)

Congratulations, again, to Portalarium on this excellent funding milestone, and for the on-time delivery of the second early release build!