The Seeming State of SotA and Portalarium
Greetings Friends! I was hoping to post this Friday, but I decided to wait till late evening a day later to post this to give ample time for return emails to give me statements on some final requests for info. Since I received none, I am proceeding as planned and may not address some of the points due to lack of inside information. As many of you know, I stepped away from Shroud of the Avatar as a player and backer a long time ago already. I still gladly post news about the game regularly using information I garner from the Shroud of the Avatar Website, the SotA Forums, Social Media, and other Gaming News Websites and Writers. Since we haven’t had a good “State of the Game” style post in awhile, I thought it would be apt to bring one to all of you from my perspective.
As an active gamer who loves to keep up on the news and many wonderful developers, studios, and even publishers I have gotten to meet and/or contact over the past decade. I also love talking about gaming news with peers and friends. Going into this, I want to remind all of you who read this of something important… as with any developer, there will be good things and bad things that occur with any game’s development as well as with any studio’s lifetime of work(s). Blind hatred of any Studio, Developer, or Publisher is immature, in my eyes.
I want to look at not just the state of the game from an outside viewpoint, but I want to also bring up the state of Portalarium from this outside viewpoint. I will be looking at a few specific areas in particular: the Marketing of SotA, the Game after Launch, Portalarium’s management of various issues, and lastly, the lifeline of SotA. I believe these first 3 issues play greatly into the final one.
Marketing
Shroud of the Avatar released the end of March 2018, almost 6 months ago already. While Shroud of the Avatar raised quite an impressive amount of money via Kickstarter back in 2013, a variety of issues have marred what most supporters hoped would be the revival of single player Ultima games, and a final hurrah for Richard Garriott. So when Shroud of the Avatar first launched its kickstarter, gamers all over the world heard that another legendary creative force behind a classic video game series was returning to the industry, and coming back to create a new work that would be for all gamers, not just fans of his past works.
The marketing machine was in full swing as gaming news websites, social media, Youtube, and even some on Twitch were all aflutter in excitement. The optics for Portalarium was on the receiving end of tons of free marketing, and they deserved every bit of it. Many of the interviews, whether audio, video, or print, included Richard talking about a number of various items of importance he wanted to focus on with this new game. The term “spiritual successor” was used by him as well as by fans, the media, and even the devs. Because of his history in the industry, questions from interviewers often led to Richard talking about the ebb and flow of trends in the gaming industry and game development, to World of Warcraft in regards to quests, to mobile gaming.
While Portalarium did fun little specials with such companies as Alienware, one advantage of it, is it continued to help reduce the severity of the inevitable reduction in optics when it comes to the news. Even the engine they chose to use, Unity, helped market them. They even did cooperative efforts with Underworld Ascendant and Star Citizen, because of the tie mutual ties to fellow employees at Origin, from back in the day. Portalarium also decided to partner with Travian Games and Black Sun Publishing to help spread overseas optics.
However, marketing dropped alot for a while and marketing seen publicly became continued attendance at conventions. While small time youtubers and streamers still periodically do Shroud of the Avatar videos, not much was really seen on the marketing front. While SotA is a niche game and overall numbers would never reach the levels of, say even, EvE Online. This often means that more niche as well as lesser well known gaming sites tend to be the only ones still doing articles on a regular or periodic basis. This keeps the optics at a level that may please some, but will always hold the game back from a larger audience.
The marketing at release, either from Portalarium or Travian but also from mainstream game sites, was more along the lines of a more press release style with pre-candid responses of “expect more content and features over time” and focus on features like housing that would garner big interest from others. Release related in-game events were really only stated on the website or on more niche websites. Portalarium did release an initial launch trailer on youtube. It currently reminds me of the marketing style Blizzard used with the Warbringer videos they did this year. And while this initial launch video had no gameplay footage in it, whether that was to the game’s benefit or not, thankfully they did do a few with later marketing videos. I have put one of them below. However these other videos never got nearly the amount of views as the initial launch one. Continued marketing, from what I can tell, has only been the announcements of the focusing on Episode 2.
Status of the Game
The simplest way of summarizing the game at the moment is that, Shroud of the Avatar is a game that doesn’t excel at anything. It has some wonderful points to it, as well as flaws that need a lot of work. The art and graphics has improved a lot since release. The overland map and use of instances is still something that I see as a wise move on their part to help set a very “Ultima” tone to the game and set them apart from some other games. The main story lines have some interesting development and provide some interesting content for those who want to do a playthrough.
The variety of scenes in the world provide much needed variety for what Richard envisioned was a world filled with a plethora of cultures. The combat system, while not loved by some, is enjoyable to those who do continue to play the game regularly. I still enjoy popping into Teamspeak to hear the guild, I joined back in the day, discuss how they optimize skills, rotation, surviving in battles, etc. They also added the ability to bypass what were basically choke points to make it easier to travel and explore the various regions of the continent.
The AI and UI both leave something to be desired. Pathing issues are something I still continue to hear & read about, from existing players. Tips and tricks to use the AI against itself to gain an advantage is something that all gamers tend to do. So I am certain some of this is simply due to the inability to predict what some players will do when coding systems in a game and so continued work to improve on it is simply needed. In fact, this is normal for any game’s lifecycle. The AI in regards to scheduling, like the day/night cycles, is quite nice too. The dialogue/speech UI especially is something even Lum wanted to upgrade to something improved and far better. Sadly with him no longer being at Portalarium, I have my doubts this will ever happen. Though, it has been mentioned by the dev team as being on the list of future goals.
The lack of content in some areas is another issue that has persisted since Release and hopefully in time will finally be resolved. Some zones were still clones of other areas even after release. When you play the game, there are some zones that are fantastic. It is quite obvious a lot of time and effort went into polishing not just the look, but the richness of it to have it feel fairly robust. NPCs that have personality in their dialogue are a big help with this. However some zones and NPCs still feel lacking in that area. This though tends to tie into the issue of scale, which was more of a management issue. More on that later…
If you look exactly at the primary goals of the game, laid out during the kickstarter: “our primary objectives are to tell a story even more compelling than Ultimas IV-VII, create a virtual world more interactive than Ultima VII, develop deep rich multi-player capabilities beyond combat akin to Ultima Online, and offer a bold new approach to integrate them with ‘Selective-Multiplayer’.” Do you think they have succeeded? Honestly, I don’t, but not from a lack of trying…
Management Decisions/Issues
It has been around five and a half years, and early Shroud of the Avatar backers are only now just finally getting their physical rewards. Now while thousands of boxes of physical rewards have gone out, there are still a significant enough number of people I know, who have yet to receive their version of the collector’s box still today. Now while I am certain some of this falls on some accounts simply failing to have correct shipping info in their account info. So first let’s look at some management decisions that people in the community are concerned with, in regards to physical goods.
The choice of not going with tracking info and especially no email notification when they shipped is still a sore topic for even many of those who received their collectors box. All backers eligible to get the print version of “Blade of the Avatar.” are still waiting for it. The collector’s box, most assumed, would contain ALL physical goods due to them. However Starr Long stated that this was not logistically possible with the box they chose to go with. Did they simply chose to go with one size box for both Collectors and Retail editions and choose to not worry about the logistics of if all items for collectors would fit? The only difference between the Collectors Box and the Retail box is a sticker. Is this Collector’s box really “a special box to hold your physical goods” if a sticker is all that differentiates the two?
We also learned on Sept 11th that there was an issue in dealing with the publisher to get copies of the book, for both fiscal reasons but also because they didn’t like how the illustrations were laid out. Now “Blade of the Avatar” was renamed for the version they had published as ebooks, an audiobook, and in hardcover. They called it “Sword of Midras”. However, “Sword of Midras” has additional story content that does not exist in the PDF version, that some backers currently have access to, of “Blade of the Avatar”. Which version of the book is Starr talking about in his post about these additional issues in getting the book to backers? I also find the two books being treated as the same in that recent post from Starr Long to be a bit dishonest. Saying “Blade of the Avatar” is “aka ‘Sword of Midras’” is not completely true. In fact, back in June of 2016, backers and fans were told that anyone with a SotA pledge of Citizen level on up would be getting the “Blade of the Avatar” version in the signed physical/print version, and NOT the “Sword of Midras” version. However, I now question if this is now the case with Starr’s recent post about this reward item. Is this just a communication mistake on Starr’s part? Which version will backers now get?
Starr Long even admitted in a post back in July, that their communication has been subpar. He even covers a few management mistakes that many of us have talked about for years: The fact that they were so ambitious, the fact that the scale of the game they wanted to make basically was attempted with a fraction of the budget they really would need to do it as well as many polished role playing games out there on the market, that the quality is lacking at times. It was nice to see this come from him, however at the same time, mixed in with apologizes, are statements that to some, could appear to shift blame and avoid Portalarium from taking accountability. However, as with any game, plans change, this is why pre-ordering and backing something via crowdfunding is not always something some people should do. There is a big difference between things changing because they need to for something to succeed versus false advertising. It is up to you to decide whether you see the apology as sincere and accept it.
Scale however has been however the biggest issue I see as a mismanagement issue with Portalarium from the start. Starr obviously acknowledges this was an issue and obviously a valid criticism. Without dedicated writing staff, without a bigger focus on UI, aspects of the game were doomed to fail from the start. And since they never became a priority like they should have, they are still an issue to this day. The increasing of the size of the world as a stretch goal during kickstarter was a bad idea.
A trend in gaming at the moment is to go larger in scale when it comes to open world games. While it is amazing how much we can do now with modern technology, this larger scale, isn’t always a good thing. The larger the world, the harder it is and longer it takes to fill the world with satisfying and robust content. Often side areas become a lower priority than main quest areas, and the content quality suffers for it. Add in production goals to meet a release deadline and the odds quality suffers increases again on top of it.
With the large number of NPC towns in the game, trying to have enough interesting NPCs with robust dialogue, along with interesting quests starts to be an issue. I am sure part of this was a financial issue due to the team being small throughout the whole process, even before the staff reduction this year. But when even major plot point towns suffer from this, it made it clear to many in the community, that a larger staff with dedicated writers for dialogue for instance would have been a big help. However, with big maps being all the rage, going smaller in scale may have caused some to be upset. Did the embracing of the trend of “bigger and better” prevent Portalarium from realizing the issue of scale until it was too late?
The management of the community is another issue that Portalarium has had over the years. Conflicts of stance between large groups of the community, toxic ppl in the forums (both backers and others), the handling of criticism of the game by some people on all sides, and so many other ones that continue to be brought up by people. With the staff at Portalarium often wearing “many hats” consistency and efficiency in dealing with the community has always been an issue. It is still a sore topic that I foresee will forever haunt the game. While there will always be at least one toxic person or element in any community, having the right person to deal with it is not always an easy task. I think some would say Portalarium hasn’t had that since Rustic Dragon worked for them.
I am not going to discuss RMT or Real Money Trading and whether Portalarium is right or not police it. However I do continue to see the constant need for new vanity items for the add-on store as something from Portalarium, to continue to drive income into Portalarium to simply keep afloat as a company. Microtransactions for many companies in the video game industry are the primary source of income for a company. Electronic Arts, for example, has a revenue stream in which the primary source of their income comes from microtransactions and services. So obviously selling vanity items and those few addon store gameplay or system affecting items (like the commission free vendor that have an effect on the game economy), is something that works, to have a revenue stream into the studio.
However, there will always be mixed feelings from gamers on microtransactions as well. Many feel like they are being nickeled and dimed for content. Others don’t mind it, especially if there are ways to get the items via a free way without spending real money. This is why having a good system to gain similar items either via loot or crafting is important to find that balance for players of both mindsets. Better reminders about what items were pledge/backer only and not available in a non pledge/backer version would have been nice as well, so players know if it is maybe worth investing more money into a game for an item or feature.
The Lifeline of SotA
In 2017, Richard tried to help calm the storm of fear about Portalarium’s financial state when they decided to do the SeedInvest campaign. It became such an issue mainstream gaming news sites, like Kotaku, were compelled to do an article. With the annual report for Portalarium, from April 30, 2018 (on the SEC’s website), the continued fear of the finances of the stupid continued. The fact the statement of “As of December 31, 2017, the Company has not yet commenced planned principal operations nor generated significant revenue.” caused a lot of fear for players.
With the staff reduction, that was stated as being in preparation for and to focus on Episode 2, these fears increased again. When Dallas Snell, the COO and a co-Founder of the company, left, there was no post or even press release that went out. For any larger company, a press release would have been the bare minimum done for someone of his position. With the recent move, yet again, to a new office space, even I have to admit that Portalarium is showing significant enough signs to question how long they will survive.
Richard stated in 2017, in that same Kotaku article, that “We earn about the same amount as we spend every month,” Garriott said, “and that has been true for the majority of the existence of this company.” The primary source of income from my point of view would have to be microtransactions and the subscription feature more so than game sales. The stretch goals they do for each release livestream would tend to support that. However, how long will this revenue stream of existing players be able to hold out? With Episode One not being complete still in the eyes of many, there will be a reduction in revenue for support for future episodes. Plus, as with any online game, a reduction over time is inevitable as players leave and spent more and more time on other games. Even two of the oldest MMOs, The Realm Online and Ultima Online, no longer have the player base they once did… These two games were niche games too, much like SotA is.
From the outside, I have serious doubts that Portalarium will ever complete all 5 Episodes. I have doubts about Episode 2 ever being completed, even just based on the financial info that is publically available. I would be so bold as to say, I don’t expect Shroud of the Avatar to last more than a few years, at best. I hope I am wrong though.
One little point about your commentary; It was to your own webpage that Richard Garriott swore the game would NEVER have microtransactions.
https://ultimacodex.com/interviews/interview-with-richard-garriott/
And Kickstarter was supposed to be about funding the complete project; we now know Portalarium pitched it just to avoid bankruptcy from the failure of Ultimate Collector, but had people known they would be expected to keep purchasing forever to keep the game usable at all (and when the servers go off, you’ll lose everything) the Kickstarter would have never succeeded.
You also mention the SeedInvest and the financials, but you didn’t include the fact that once the media started commenting on the Risks section, Portalarium went back to delete it, thus proving directly deceptive. You can check it for yourself via the archives at the Wayback Machine.
And finally, as someone who has been personally been falsely accused of, and been the direct victim of the appalling depths of toxicity surrounding the community (and I know you have, from your own posting history), I consider it justice that Portalarium will forever now be associated with this; they have actively supported and encouraged the most horrendous behaviour just to keep the game afloat one more dishonest day. But the record of history will be far more accurate…
I never knew they deleted the risks section with the SeedInvest stuff, I will take a look at the WayBack Machine versions and make a comparision. The SeedInvest for Portalarium was a total failure in my opinion, in fact I found it to be laughable when it was first announced. It was because it did only two things: Compound the obvious financial strife they are still in and Attempt to delay the inevitable while trying to obviously mask it.
In regards to Richard stating the game wouldnt have microtransactions, I legit simply do not remember that. I will assume you are correct, but I could see Portalarium’s response would probably be that this isn’t microtransactions or “plans changed” or something like that.
I am just glad I am officially done with the game, played the storylines, found at least some stuff to be not too bad or even good (like trolling ppl with music playing in online). I fullfilled my obligation I gave a long time ago by giving a sorta review/state of the current game. I have to agree, by the way, it does seem to be karma, that bad management and dealing of the toxicity will forever have those issues associated with them.
Here is the link you need;
https://web.archive.org/web/20180310154155/https://www.seedinvest.com/portalarium/series.b
Control + F for “risks”, and you can see they still have the hot link which went to the “risks and disclosure” section in the opening paragraph, but the word only appears once more in the document in March 2018, because they removed all the details in the middle of the fundraising.
And that was because the media finally started covering Shroud, because they could see the financials were terrible; the paragraph Portalarium deleted (and thus committed a form of financial fraud by deceiving investors) is still quoted here for instance;
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-06-02-portalarium-opens-the-books-for-equity-crowdfunding
You can confirm that the line including “will require additional funding” is gone too. Somewhere in the archives for 2017 you’ll be able to pin down the rough date they actually pulled that section.
They’re still being deceptive to this date too; I happen to know behind the scenes the EULA is now legally void, because they’re claiming things they deliberately sacrificed, and have since been legally informed they need to now remove, to try and avoid being held to account in my legal cases against their support for the individual stalking and harassing me. I’m waiting for various media outlets to decide on whether they can get the documents I’ve submitted past their own legal teams, but if you could guarantee confidentiality and wanted to do a report on that, I can provide the required proof of that too. Or wait and see if the EULA suddenly updates, deletes a particular paragraph, and then I’ll publish the WHY once it’s common knowledge…
I think I’m not the only one who backed the kickstarter thinking we were going to get a spiritual successor to Ultima Online. I was hoping for something a little closer to Legend of Aria ( I think that’s what they call it now ), at least on the surface, I haven’t played Shards/Aria since the public test so I can’t comment on the state of the game.
It was clear that we were getting something different from our optimistic visions for a UO successor but RG said the right things, such as the game having an important emphasis on single player as well as other features that were inspired from UO. e.g. Branded crafting system and housing. to name a few. I don’t think I have logged in for a few months and the last time I did I only played for a few minutes. It wasn’t a horrible experience but to me the gameplay felt like something from over a decade ago, it’s an average game across the board, it looks average, runs average and plays average. Being older I can’t spend as much time playing a mmo and I don’t know if the single player experience is worth playing.
I still hold RG in high regards, I grew up playing the Ultima games, specifically Ultima 7, which is still on my shortlist of best video games ever made, I took to Ultima Online right away, probably because it was the most faithful recreation of what Ultima 7 brought to the gaming world.. realistically I shouldn’t back anything Richard puts his name to… Ultima 8 and 9 were pretty big disappointments.
It’s hard to let go of something from your childhood, Tim Schaeffer almost managed that with the Doublefine adventure, I’m still buying Psychonauts 2 day-one so easy come easy go seems to be fitting.
I’d like to add that I haven’t kickstarted a project since SOTA, I can soften the blow by reminding myself that I only pledged $60 and it could have been much worse.. to their credit they have shipped physical copies of the game and have fulfilled other backer perks ( correct me if I’m wrong ) in this new era of crowdscamming I think that’s a successful campaign by any standard.
You weren’t alone, and I think the reason so many fled Shroud so early is because it was blatantly obvious we were never going to get something like Ultima.
Someone recently sent me what they claim was commentary from the developers recently let go, and the common thread was that Richard Garriott is largely just a figurehead, disconnected from the actual development of the game except for throwing out ideas the team just ignore, but useful as a way of advertising and keeping the remaining backers hopeful. I can’t verify those claims, but from the outside, it wouldn’t be surprising… There’s absolutely none of the spirit of the original games in Shroud, and never can be when the game is built around Real Money Trading and the resulting greed and dirty practices that come with the pursuit of profit. “Outlanders will do anything for gold” is even official fiction.
I wanted to believe in the original spirit for far too long myself; It wasn’t just my childhood, but I was working on Ultima Online in the Shroud age, writing fiction for the Europa shard based upon Blackthorn as he was in Ultima V, and using the income from that as funding for Shroud. And yet here we are today, I’m now officially the devil behind every believer’s fears… and presumably responsible in turn for the other 70,000+ account purchases that no longer play, because according to Richard Garriott on his own personal twitter, critics have “indoctrinated” the people who don’t want to play. Whilst Chris Spears forged claims they’d threatened his children…
In that sense, Shroud is absolutely one of the worst crowd-funded games ever; whilst many of you have some, but not all of your rewards, for many people like me, Portalarium have gone out of their way to actively harm us. Or, as “jammaplaya” publicly put it after being privately informed Portalarium were going to act against me, “we both know it’s thanks to me you’ve lost everything”. And all because I tried to implement in my life the lessons that Ultima once taught; to speak with Honesty, to Sacrifice (not profiteer) from others, to seek Justice… Having seen what resulted from when I tried to apply those principles to those who inspired the original beliefs, I can no longer believe in Richard Garriott or any of his staff; at least Ultima IX could be somewhat fixed with a fan patch. But this experience? It goes to the core of who Portalarium really are today.
I can corroborate what you have heard. Richard was/is very much a figurehead and wasn’t included in many of the latter decisions being made in regards to the game’s development. He would sometimes offer ideas, but it was clear from those suggestions that he was completely disconnected with how things worked.
I bought the game on steam for 45 bucks and got 17 hours out of it. It had some charm, I had a few laughs role playing, but there just wasn’t enough game there. Most of it was just boring tedium. WTF hit the nail on the head with this review, a big empty world with terrible NPC dialogues.
I’m interested and out of the loop a bit, how did Portalarium personally harm you? In what way?
When’s the last time you spent some time with the game though Titler? I was quite worried about it over the 4 years I watched it and logged in once a month for the rare hat… when the performance was bad, graphics still in Alpha state and I thought they were ignoring/rushing single-player, the dance parties only made me mad. It seemed they only made store items etc…
Honestly, I’ve spent some time in game recently and it’s improved drastically, dramatically even. That Ultima feel is there now, hundreds of little details have changed to make the whole feel a lot better. It feels like the embers could become a flame, IF the game survives. That’s my issue now, I quite like it but I don’t want it to die before it’s properly finished. It seems like it’s at a critical point where it *could* become a worthy Ultima successor. Not the Alpha Sh*tshow that had us all a little concerned.
If they redid the dialogue UI and the main story quest bugs are taken care of (which they’re working very hard on according to their standup corner), I think the game might very well see 5 episodes.
The problem for me has always been priorities. And it **feels** to me like you have a pair of MMO fanboys calling the shots, rather than the man who’s supposed to be in charge. That’s the only explanation I have as to why they dropped the ball on single-player and presentation (20% of a 5 year development schedule is not 3 months as an aside), then they admitted their mistakes, then promptly went back to making them after promising us they wouldn’t.
It’s like watching a struggling alcoholic, “I’m sorry, I’m done with that behavior. Really… really.” then straight back onto the booze. The booze in this case being prioritizing MMO things because they literally, physically, cannot help themselves.
As long as the game is built around Real Money Trading and encouraging greed, exploitation and harassment, it will NEVER be in the spirit of the original Ultima games; it is a betrayal of the very Virtues it once tried to inspire.
I’d test your comments about the game performing better etc… except Chris Spears out of immature and thin skinned hatred for critics forged claims I’d threatened his children on MassivelyOP.com; When I made a YouTube video pointing out that not only has he a long history of getting enraged and then trying to turn around the reports of harassment as if you were the ones doing it, but that he’d long had proof that I’d had to go to the police about the individual behind the “jammaplaya” account, including giving him the contact details of the officer in Austin dealing with the case there… Said account then contacted all the major staff of Portalarium and demanded they act against me; and he copied me into it so I could see him doing it.
After which, despite knowing I had full copies of the correspondence, Portalarium banned my access not just to the game, but also even the account management page. Which is why I took them to the American Arbitration Authority under the relevant section of the Shroud EULA. Which still isn’t updated, I see. It has to be though; Keep an eye out for when it is, because I’m sitting on the paper work as to the WHY.
It goes much deeper than them needing another MMO fix; although if you’ve been following the Reddit threads, we now know they were selling the contract to BlackSun as early as March 2015 and openly admitting the plan was always to create an Add On Store driven MMO. They won’t change. They’re just stringing backers like you along with claims they are making a quest driven game.
They also CANT make those future episodes, having sacked all of the core staff. Without notice, if my leaks are correct; they were pulled as a group into the lobby and just told to leave. Including Lum the Mad who was the major quest writer. They’ve also downsized the office just to survive a bit longer; sure you’ll get hype for coming features that may, or may not arrive depending on whether the code for it is in the Unity store… but make sure to buy the expensive Dungeon Entrances now! And also buy a subscription. Oh and fund the Stretch Goals which we’ve ran once before, failed at but kept the money, then said the person who liked Stretch Goals had left the company, but are now asking for again… even though you were supposed to have funded FIVE episodes already at the Kickstarter, and…
The game could be the equivalent of genuine Angel Cake, and all the shady, immoral, genuinely nasty things that surround it will always make it now one of the worst experiences of my life; doubly so because it comes from a man I once deeply admired.
Yeah the failure of management at Portalarium as well as the failure of project management of the game is what has killed SotA from ever reaching what it should or could have been. It is hilarious and sad all at the same time. II already have teased EA about how they should release a new Ultima or really good modern RPG game that has some similarities to Ultima. Sadly it isn’t even on their radar at the moment. As some have said, EA would have done SotA better. If anything a publisher keeping Portalarium on track would have been a good thing. I wish you the best of luck with Artibtration, Titler, I have had bad luck going through that process myself because of people dragging their feet and delaying constantly. Took me over 2 years to get something done that should have been done in months.
When I first heard RG offer up the claim that SotA would be the spiritual successor to Ultima Online I was immediately hooked and super enthusiastic. I was aboard at Knight level and am naturally patient by nature. I really didn’t care how long it took, as long as that promise and vision of RG was kept.
There is no doubt that the Ultima series, (up until SotA), is one of the finest RPG series, in both it’s single player and multi-player forms, of all PC games. I played UO endlessly, and I was looking forward to revisiting it’s elegant approach to UI, it’s intuitive and largely invisible skill system and frightening combat, and it’s immersive, “anything can happen” system of traveling npcs who could follow you into town and wreck chaos at the bank in a truly unpredictable way that brought a sense of realism, immersion and threat to players in ways that more modern games like World of Warcraft never could.
As I see it, SotA problems lay not in what happened later. They occurred right from the start- in the game’s design document stage. RG could have “kept it simple” and pursued those elements that made UO great. He had the community and it’s enthusiasm to back him, and the money would have been there, if he had picked a team who would have kept a clear vision to the original success, or, had given the game the leadership it needed.
Instead, apparently, he did the worst thing any creator can do. He acted as a figurehead for others who were trusted with his legacy and basic honor.
The original design decisions for the UI and combat system feel more like some un-immersive tablet game, rather than for a deep PC RPG. They were frightfully poorly thought out. Instead of focusing on immersion and letting the player create his story for his character, the design team seemed to be dwelling on other modern, non RPG flavored game design elements.
Instancing is a modern and terribly undesirable thing for a game like SotA. It turns monsters and villains into non-living sprites who can’t act like a living player who can move around the world. It’s a product of game design like WOW…not Ultima. It’s true it is widely overused in today’s games….but that doesn’t make it a desirable feature, from the outlook of roleplay. It was the sort of deathstroke that indicated quite early on how out of tough the design team was with the original online game.
All of these early mistakes happened to the foundation bones of SotA. Stating that they dodn’t have the “money” to do otherwise, as the designers often did, is more about the stupidity of the original plans, more than what could actually be accomplished in the early days of planning.
Legends of Aria is proof of the viability of focusing on RPG elements in a modern game on the cheap. It’s pointless to make your visual world prettier at the cost of deep content and immersive design elements. LoA is simple- but it retains the elegance of UO with just enough improvements to make it visually nicer than the original. It’s systems are simple and largely invisible, it’s combat isn’t some abstracted game of UNO that pulls you away from your character and the deadites you are supposed to be fighting. You don’t have to pop out to a map, because there isn’t an actual world to explore.
Yes, it’s plain and less special effects heavy- but, what is important is that it feels more real where it counts.
RG and the head elements at CI are simply paying the toll of karma for their exercise in basic greed today. They possessed the successful formula, and the tossed it away. They use the good name of RG to make some money quick, shuffling together some parts together by a team that apparently didn’t understand , or care to understand, how a great game was made.
They parts fit the type of vehicle they were trying to make very poorly. Now, they have to drive the thing.
No manner of fancy paint or shiny windshield wipers that spray purple wiper fluid can change the simple facts that their vehicle has crappy, mismatched parts, square tyres, and no muffler. It eats gas and pollutes the atmosphere around it choking it’s occupants.
It’s just basic karma, coming back to bite ’em.
I played as long as I could stand it, which, wasn’t that long. I wrote, repeatedly, long notes on the boards pointing out the game’s failings quite early on, as did hundreds of other backers.
It was always, “Wait until the next version, we plan on fixing this.” Over and over and over again.
Each version/fix came and went, and the game got prettier, but inherently no better.
Eventually the mantra changed to, “It’s too late in the game cycle to make large changes.”
It’s not like we backers didn’t see the looming issues, and try our darndest to point out the game’s big issues. We fought the good fight, tooth and nail, to get the designers to pay heed to the slippery slope they had built for themselves, and for us.
The saddest game disasters are those who “could have been”. Shroud of the Avatar falls resoundingly into this category. Apologists will claim that it “Isn’t that bad.”
After all, it has a fine RPG friendly community, and there are pretty cities to visit and some good story arcs to follow- where the game is not incomplete. It’s true that people can buy and decorate their houses nicely, much like old, hoary UO.
But, this game could have been so much more. The Ultima games were not just okay, in parts. They were fabulously immersive and drug you screaming into a world of adventure. UO to this day, still gives me shivers when I think about our guild venturing out into the truly untamed, unpredictable, dangerous wilds of Brittania.
What RG and company did to the true blue believers of Ultima is a Shakespearean tragedy.
today.
So, don’t feel to bad for those guys. The villains get what is coming to them, in any good tale.
While I could comment at length, I’ll limit myself to just one thing:
There’s a reason it feels like it was designed for a tablet game…and that is because it kind of was. Not a tablet game, specifically, but a social media game; the Ultimate RPG (which SotA was teased to us as way back prior to 2013) was touted as a Facebook game, a new kind of socially-driven RPG experience. SotA only very suddenly became a PC-centric title in the last couple months leading up to the Kickstarter campaign.