Shroud of the Avatar – Update of the Avatar #333 and #334
Greetings Friends! Welcome to our bi-weekly update on Shroud of the Avatar. There are a few bits of news, including news on the new release that went live last week. Sadly there is still no yearly report up on the SEC.gov website. Once that does become available, I may do a separate post. However, if the information ends up being what I expect, I will include it in the next biweekly update post. .
- Release 66
- Release 66 Notes
- Dev Team Update
Release 66
Release 66 launched May 30. Some of the changes include the following:
- 9 New Warding Skills
- 5 New Taming Skills
- New Top Tier Tameable Creatures
- Tameable Baby Dragons
- Heraldry Polearm
- Leaderboards
- New User Experience Changes
- New Emotes
- and more!
Release 66 Notes
As with every release, Starr Long put together an instructions forum post. Below are the highlights from my perspective. As always you can go to the Shroud of the Avatar forums and read the entire post yourself.
- The devs are working yet again on a major overhaul of the “New User Experience”. The inconsistency in the quality of content in the game
- First areas associated with Episode 2 are delayed again.
- More features are delayed again: Raid Groups (groups of groups), chosing one crafting specialization to allow selecting effects when masterworking or enchanting, no abilty for lot owners to flag row lots to be able to plant crops on them.
- New Taming and Warding skills, items, etc.
- the addition of Leaderboards for the game (PVP and PVE)
- Vanity Items make up a rather large portion of the news.
- New User Experience removed Island of Storms and starts you at Battle of Solace Bridge. Devs cite the Island of Storms as something that drove players away.
- Into Video was removed from the game, devs cite it as something that lead to loss of new players
Dev Team Update
It was brought to my attention that Rick “Chaox” Holtrop had updated his Linkedin profile to have an end date for his time with Portalarium. I assume this means he is no longer with Portalarium. Best of luck on him and his future endeavors. He is still listed on the Shroud of the Avatar Dev team page, but then so is Serafina who left a while ago.
What a shock! They completely removed any new and/or interesting content that was supposed to be in this release like Episode 2! More pixel fluff and garbage from Scamalarium!
If they’re working to remove things that drive players away, that’s not going to leave much. …or anything I can think of. I guess chat works okay?
So if they remove the opening movie, character creation, combat, the over-complicated crafting, the pointless housing, character models, world geometry, UI, all graphics in fact, the meandering story (I never could follow what was supposed to be going on what with my tenancy to wander, and no proper log) then I guess it could be a mildly functional internet chat? …assuming this was 15 years ago, and Discord, Skype, AOL, ICQ, and IRC never happened that is.
Good grief this is sad.
100% agree with you Zeph. I actually liked the opening movie and character creation. Removing it was yet another stupid movie by these “industry veterans”. Yet what do I know, clearly these guys are on the pulse of what makes a great modern day game, right?
I swear, the fact that they eliminated ALL new content dealing with Episode 2 and a quest overhaul for this release is simply embarrassing. I simply cannot fathom how players will still throw money at this vaporware project when the whole thing is just utter tripe!
Oof. The introductory movie was horrible.
I don’t agree that it was what drove players away, but it was horrible.
@Bubonic Yeah, it was actually sorta cringe worthy. When I saw it for the first time I definitely had a twinge of “I’ve made a horrible mistake.” I pushed through, and tried to enjoy the game, but it just wasn’t going to happen.
Hey are the NPCs actually workable now? Insofar, can all of them talk to you and seem unique and give you unique information and don’t feel like just place holders?