Shroud of the Avatar – Update of the Avatar #323 and #324
Greetings Friends! This morning we have a tiny bit of new for you on Shroud of the Avatar as there has not been much in the way of news the past 2 weeks. We have the following new for this biweekly Update of the Avatar:
- Spring Equinox Items from Scott Jones
- Upcoming R64 Instructions
- Black Sun no longer Publisher for SotA
Spring Equinox Items
Scott “Scottie” Jones has been busily creating all sorts of Spring goodies for our Avatars! The Confection Eggs and Confection Bunnies will be new loot during the Arch Lapin Spring Event! Scott worked on making placeable decorations for food items so some of these new items will tie to existing items like cupcakes for the Lord British Birthday Cakes or a placeable and dyeable Cake Slice to go with the existing Cake Slice Recipe. The whole dyeable cake will be available in the crown shop as a decoration for those looking to save on decoration limits (versus placing individual slices). Some of the new confections and dyeable cupcake will be part of the Spring Equinox Replenishing Platter which will be available on the Crown Shop. The new dyeable eggs will also go on the Crown Shop but there will be an in-game recipe for a plain dyeable egg as well. The Confection Platter will be available on the in-game decorations merchant for gold while the Confection Stand will be available in the Crown Shop. For more details on Scottie’s process read his forum post.
Upcoming R64 Instructions
Darkstarr aka Starr Long did his regular pre-release instructions for review forum post. Please feel free to take a peek. Things to note is the fact that the Episode 2 lands are delayed, #bandwidth. We also have a new Universal Trade Channel in game (something ppl have wanted since even the Kickstarter days).
Black Sun no longer Publisher for SotA
Portalarium made an Announcment post in the forums last Thursday announcing basically that Black Sun will no longer be servicing customers. Black Sun longer has Shroud of the Avatar on their website either. The exact statement is as follows:
Effective immediately Portalarium is resuming worldwide support and publishing for all territories. This means that all customers formerly serviced by Black Sun will now be supported directly by Portalarium. We feel this transition will allow us to better serve our worldwide customer base directly. This follows on the previous transition last year away from Travian Games.
We want to thank Black Sun and Travian for their support and partnership over these last few years.
Black Sun customers will just need to login to the shroudoftheavatar.com website and change their email for the transition to be complete.
As always I have reached out to Black Sun for more details on if the ending of this partner ship was from them or from Portalarium. However like with Travian, I do not expect a response from them.
Nothing to see here people! All is well!
Does no one else find it alarming that even Black Sun dropped the game? Plus, the only new content being added to the game is pixel fluff, it’s just embarrassing! They really need to fix all the problems still inherent within Episode 1, but we know that ain’t happening!
I was about to say the same thing. The UI is garbage, the combat is horrible, the crafting chain is an over complicated waste of time, but hey! We have cake! Also, these models look so, so bad! I mean, the fact that they took screenshots of these blocky eggs and atrocious grass textures and thought “looks great!” says so much about their standards at this point.
And if I hear the word “bandwidth” one more time, I’m going to scream. It’s bad enough that it’s been used as and excuse so often know, it’s become Portalarium’s mantra for the virtue of failure, but it’s a great example of how corporate-minded they are. Unless you sit in boardrooms or cubicles all day, terms like “bandwidth” are more or less meaningless, but they feel comfortable tossing it out regularly as if consumers care.
Look at what they are offering as “release rewards” now, too. They are simply “re-skinned” old items that have already been created for past releases. The whole thing is a joke, and instead of fixing the real issues they continue to churn out crap. It really disgusts me, given how much money the company had and the absolutely piss poor management of how it was spent.
yeah we basically are rehashing the same complaints about things every post. The lack of fixing existing problems, the fact partners have all ditched them, the “bandwidth” meme and jokes, the excuses and deflecting when it comes to decision making, etc. I am curious what people think about the Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice game developed by FromSoftware that some ppl have been playing. I wonder if people want to see me, someone who hasnt even play the Dark Souls games they did, fail hard at it on stream. 😛
True, there’s just nothing new here. Not that the updates aren’t appreciated, but covering SotA has gotta be like giving weekly updates on a dead horse. I’d definitely be up for something new, even if watching you play a game would likely make me want to buy things I have no money for. XD
Seriously though, we need to find a new, more active project. I keep hoping that Legends of Aria will liven up. It’s just been slow and silent for so long, it’s hard to stay interested in.
I am happy to do regular updates on stuff as I can here on the Codex. Gives me a chance to keep up on news from fan projects to SotA. I need to do more archival posts on single player Ultima game stuff to continue to grow our collection of posted material, but i haven’t had the time to continue where i left off in my archive comparing. I still have plenty of Ultima related and inspired art I have yet to complete and post.
currently i have been using twitch as an excuse to catch up on my gaming backlog. I have been doing Dishonored 2 now, I plan on doing some other action adventure or shooter games for the most part. if the new Borderlands game is not a battle royale, I will very much be doing that one. The newest game by FromSoftware – “Sekiro™: Shadows Die Twice” is also on my radar to stream. I also do ESO on occasion when I just want a casual relaxing stream and for more RPG ones when i dont have a Single Player RPG i am doing. I autohost my primary twitch on my golem_dragon twitch channel as I chose years ago to have some branding that was larger than just my ultima, udic, & ultima related stuff.
I’ve only ever played Dark Souls 3, got it via the humble bundle; but what I gather is Sekiro is much more like a game called Tenchu than Dark Souls, and from what I’ve seen, it’s far more based upon stealth and reflex skills. You can in DS3 level up and use tactics to get past most things, and where that fails, summon other people, but Sekiro is pure single player, and from what I’m told, brutally harder than even DS.
Of course, I’d much rather you pick up my AAA story first! 😛 But if you plan on streaming Sekiro, I’d probably watch to see how someone not GittingGud copes, because it’s that push into even more ridiculous difficulty that’s prevented me buying it…
I’m not alarmed, because I pointed this out on Raw more than a year ago, when Portalarium did the SeedInvest: They’d listed returns for the game BlackSun didn’t have a hope in hell of seeing, especially not in the markets they’re part of (Russia and China). Tracking their own forums, the vast majority of comments there were critical too.
And when discussing it, and we found the contract BlackSun had published back in March 2015, Portalarium threw them under the bus and denied that was the deal; later when they started moving accounts to Travian and Blacksun to allow them to start taking money via their own store pages, they screwed up a huge number of the transfers and broke the inter-operability with the in game map because it didn’t communicate with the moved accounts.
I actually expected BlackSun to flee first, as they couldn’t afford to carry such financial losses for as long, being a small group of fans from what I gather; It’s possible they did, but we spotted Travian on Raw had gone first, so Portalarium confirmed them before. When either actually left, and why is still hidden for now though.
Jeez. Those easter egg baskets o.O