Forbes has included Shroud of the Avatar on their list of “The Best Video Game RPGs of 2014 and Beyond”:

Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues – From the creator of the old Ultima games, Richard Garriott, Avatar is a crowdfunded RPG that promises to bring back some of what made those games great. The game promises to bring real choice and consequence to each player’s adventure, and is being co-written by Dragonlance author Tracy Hickman.

MMORPG.com, meanwhile, ranks the game quite high indeed on their list of “The Most Wanted MMOs of 2014”:

2. Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues

The spiritual successor to Ultima Online, driven by much of that game’s staff, and featuring both MMO play and completely offline adventuring. Need we really say more? We’re betting and hoping and wishing this will be Lord British’s triumphant return to the RPG and MMO landscape.

Portalarium, for their part, seem pretty stoked about both recommendations.

PC Gamer are also looking forward to the game, although they express a bit of uncertainty about it:

Richard ‘Lord British’ Garriott is back doing what he did best: making Ultima games. Sorry, ‘Ultima’ games, with Shroud of the Avatar borrowing pretty much everything from the classic RPG series except the name. This is not in itself a bad thing, though Shroud’s combination of single- and multiplayer elements is a little tough to get a handle on. We’ll have to wait and see whether it can recapture the magic of Ultima Online.