I recorded some initial thoughts on this in a podcast episode; listen to Episode 113 (Rant of the Avatar) of Spam Spam Spam Humbug if you want all the details. Here’s what I put in the show notes for the episode:

A brief timeline of events:

• I backed Shroud of the Avatar on Kickstarter, and later topped up his pledge to the Explorer level. This was a physical reward tier; it didn’t come with the full game box, but it came with the cloth map.
• Other Kickstarter backers, upon migrating their pledge information to the Shroud of the Avatar website, found that they had a $15 USD line item on their account labeled as “International Shipping”; shipping was baked in to the Kickstarter pledge price.
• I was later bonused a certain amount by Portalarium for various reasons, and subsequently topped his pledge up out of his own pocket as well; his final pledge tier was Knight (about $800 USD).
• Not thinking anything was amiss, I was surprised when, after September 21st of this year, his game box had still not arrived. He dutifully contacted Portalarium support, and was subsequently informed that he didn’t have any international shipping on his account, and would thus have to pay for it in the form of a $30 USD add-on.
• The need to pay shipping was subsequently confirmed to me by Richard Garriott.
• I did eventually pay the specified amount, and hopes to receive his game box soon.

Now, it’s impossible to say exactly what happened here. Other Kickstarter backers have shared screenshots of their Shroud of the Avatar account pages, showing the $15 USD shipping line item thereupon. Why it disappeared from my account (assuming it was ever added thereto) is a mystery. About all I can say for sure is that this sequence of events, and its resolution, has left me feeling profoundly unenthusiastic about Shroud, or about the game box and the feelies therein. Maybe this will all change once the box arrives — assuming that the recent Canada Post strike does not delay it still yet further — but what if it doesn’t?

That was back in October of 2018. Now, four months later (almost to the day), where do things stand?

Well, actually, nothing has changed since October. Ostensibly, according to the last Update of the Avatar from 2018, some people on the list of Phase 2 recipients have begun to receive their boxes. Mid-January was specified as when the major portion of Phase 2 shipments would be sent out. Mid-January was specified those of us who are still awaiting our physical backer rewards are bidden to watch our email accounts for a message from Stamps.com confirming that something is being shipped to us.

To date, I’ve not received any such shipping notification, and obviously I haven’t received a boxed copy of Shroud of the Avatar. Part of me wonders whether I should just order one via Amazon; would it arrive before the copy I should have already received for backing Shroud of the Avatar on Kickstarter back in 2013?

What’s perhaps the most unfortunate development, in all of this, is that I had actually forgotten about all of this some time in the last month or so. It was only a comment this morning from Demorde, on the UDIC Discord server, regarding how he was emailing Portalarium to inquire about his still-missing game box, that jogged my memory and prompted me to write this post. If he hadn’t said anything, I probably would have forgotten about the physical rewards entirely, and wouldn’t have noticed if — in six months’ time — they still hadn’t shown up.