Shroud of the Avatar - Now Story Complete

[Silver]

Portalarium has partnered with Travian Games for Shroud of the Avatar.

Travian Games and Portalarium Partner for Shroud of the Avatar as it Reaches Story Complete Milestone

AUSTIN, Texas, July 31, 2017 - Portalarium®, an Austin, Texas based game developer, and Travian Games, a Munich, Germany based publisher and developer, are pleased to announce today a formal partnership to bring Shroud of the AvatarTM, the much-anticipated fantasy role-playing game from legendary game designer Richard "Lord British" Garriott to Europe, South America, Central America, the Middle East and North Africa. Travian Games will be coming on board as a partner immediately as Shroud is moving closer to the game's commercial launch later this year.

"We were looking for the best upcoming MMORPGs in our industry as well as a strong cultural fit, so we are truly excited about the opportunity to work with Richard and the Shroud of the Avatar team on bringing another great game to our community," notes Lars Janssen, CEO of Travian Games. "Portalarium's vision is very similar to ours and we believe this is the start of a long-term relationship between our two teams."

"Europe has always been a strong market for the Ultima games so we wanted to be sure we found the very best partner who could who truly understands what we wanted to accomplish with Shroud," explains Richard Garriott.

"Travian Games is that partner because they really understand community and development which has allowed them to build a huge base of millions of players."

To date, backers of Shroud have logged more than three-million hours of game testing, and the latest update, Release 44, now permits backers to complete the entire Episode 1 story, from beginning to end.

Shroud of the Avatar, the spiritual successor to Garriott's Ultima series of fantasy role-playing games, is a "selectively multiplayer" game, and includes a deep story crafted by Garriott and New York Times bestselling author, Tracy Hickman ( Dragonlance series). The game combines a detailed sandbox style Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) with a single player narrative mode. With Release 44, players can now complete the paths of Truth, Love and Courage and ultimately discover the secrets of the Shroud of the Avatar.

"The story craft is not at an end," said Garriott. "More side quests and revisions to improve quality, will continue to be added to the game month after month, yet this is the first time the full plot has been playable, and is among the last major milestones needed for a commercial launch later in the year."

The remainder of the game is already in what would traditionally be considered a beta state. There are some skill trees and recipes still needing to be completed, and plenty of balance and debugging remains, but Portalarium is now shifting its team and company into the stance of a publisher as the commercial release approaches.

"This marks the 44th monthly release for Shroud of the Avatar," exclaimed Garriott. "And these updates have occurred on the last Thursday of the month on time, and the servers have had nearly four years of continuous software stability. In Release 45, players actively testing the game will receive the ability to ‘reset' their story status, and thus be able to get a fresh run through the now completed main quests, without having to start a new character."

Shroud of the Avatar's original crowdfunded campaign began in 2013. Currently with more than $11.8 million in crowd funding, Shroud is the second highest fully crowd funded game ever. More information about the crowdfunding campaign and the game can be accessed at www.ShroudoftheAvatar.com .

Recently Portalarium extended their crowdfunding efforts to include equity crowdfunding using the SeedInvest platform. This allows people to invest in Portalarium while backing the project. To learn more go to www.seedinvest.com/portalarium/series.b .

At this year's Gamescom in Cologne, journalists have the opportunity to interview Richard "Lord British" Garriott and Lars Janssen about the game and the new partnership.

More information.

 

[luj1]

What the actual fuck.

 

[NewDArt]

I wonder when it will be fun-gameplay complete.

 

[CelticFrost]

I wonder when it will be fun-gameplay complete.

After Richard soaks everyone for enough money for his trip to Mars.

 

[duerer]

Hmm, I still have some reservations.
This "MMO-with-a-story" trick has been tried many times and failed every time (recent example: The Secret World, SW: ToR).

So, I'm just curious if the story mode is an actual, offline, fully single player experience (as promised for Star Citizen's campaign), or a special quest line tailored for solo MMO play (but requires excessive grinds, preferably with a party)

Lastly: this is a press release, that is: marketing dialed to 11. So take it with a pinch of salt

 

[Wisdom]

Travian is known here for browser based MMO's with microtransactions as their revenue stream. All of their games have pay-to-win elements.
They haven't really done anything noteworthy for the last 5 years.
Their main target is people looking for a new shiny pixel crack they can drop $2 on every time they want to level/expand.

They are the partner Richard wanted for his UO Collectors browser based slot machine game. Looks like he pulled it off this time.

 

[Carnifex]

The single player version of this will come out forty years after Grimoire does.....maybe.

 

[Lucky Day]

I saw this a few months ago.

I am believing this as story complete as Ultima 9 was finished and working on release day.

 

[rjshae]

Episode 1, in which you struggle against the dark lord Visa Card to find enough coin to purchase a timber framed cottage for 100k Shellacks.

 

[Saxon1974]

Wow this will be entertaining to watch I guess

 

[TomRon]

"Shroud of the Avatar, the spiritual successor to Garriott's Ultima series of fantasy role-playing games."

Well...if nothing else I can laugh at the marketing.

 

[CelticFrost]

"Shroud of the Avatar, the spiritual successor to Garriott's Ultima series of fantasy role-playing games."

Well…if nothing else I can laugh at the marketing.

And cry at any showing of a real game.

 

[Lucky Day]

"Shroud of the Avatar, the spiritual successor to Garriott's Ultima series of fantasy role-playing games."

Well…if nothing else I can laugh at the marketing.

Its the long awaited sequel of U8 and U9, the two greatest games in the series. It has their level of success all over it.

 

[CelticFrost]

Its the long awaited sequel of U8 and U9, the two greatest games in the series. It has their level of success all over it.

I did like 9 ...though 3 , 4 and 7 part 2 are my favs

 

[Lucky Day]

I did like 9 …though 3 , 4 and 7 part 2 are my favs

You weren't that guy at the beginning dressed like him were you?

 

[Stingray]

9 got a bad rap because it was horribly broken for the majority of buyers at the time of its release, but if you were one of the few who could play it, or waited until it was fixed, it wasn't that bad. I mean sure, another top-down game ala U7 would have been far, far better, but U9 was still worth playing.

 

[Lucky Day]

TBH I had fun with it and I bought the Dragon Edition. Its the first FPS I ever played all the way through.

It was the first game I ever bought hardware to get working. Even then I had to wait for third patch and it still had that major memory leak. It was designed for Voodoo cards and they were just went out of business IIRC.

I thought Moonglow was the highlight of the game.

 

[Corwin]

Does this mean they might begin working on the promised single player component of the game!!??!!

 

[Stingray]

It was the first game I ever bought hardware to get working. Even then I had to wait for third patch and it still had that major memory leak. It was designed for Voodoo cards and they were just went out of business IIRC.

IIRC, people who had Voodoo cards were the only people who could even play the game on its release. Anything else was (pretty much literally) unplayable.

The amusing part of that all is that by the time Ultima IX came out, in Nov 1999, 3dfx (Voodoo maker) was in steep decline as their Banshee and Voodoo3 (released roughly a year earlier) were both big failures, and people were going to NVIDIA (ie TNT2) in large numbers. Just a month and a half prior to U9's release, NVIDIA released the GeForce 256 which became the card to own, and sealed 3dfx's soon-to-be-bankrupt fate.

Essentially, the game was released in a state where it required hardware that had just gone hugely out of style.

 

[Wisdom]

Does this mean they might begin working on the promised single player component of the game!!??!!

I admire your optimism.