Shroud Of The Avatar - Shit Went Persistent

It appears as if the new challenge is can a PC RPG be made without the aid of kickstarter.

This looks.. terrible. I'm okay with simple, stylized graphics but these aren't even styled well. It looks like they are trying to do realistic graphics from 2000.

The gameplay looks like MMO combat? It wasn't really clear, but it looks bad all around.

Feel like i'm being trolled here.

How the fuck has this raised over half a mil already.. I mean I played the hell out of the Ultima series and still hold UO as my favorite MMO of all time.. but that doesn't mean i'm going to throw money at this crackpot because he knows how to create a kickstarter. What have you done for me lately Garriot? Tabula Rasa? You don't fucking say bro.

Lord British indeed. This guy is so far disconnected and needs to just disappear from the industry entirely, the last thing he needs to be doing is trying to grub more money from Ultima.

this and the camelot thread should be merged

dechire_sl said:

Let me be very clear as someone who worked at NC soft from 2k3 to 2k11 RG, had next to nothing to do with anything concerning Lineage and beyond. That production credit is complimentary and meaningless. At best his name generated money but thats it. TR originally was some unicorns in disc-world with bards that killed by music. What you got in TR was Long, Sage and crew from Ultima 9 fumbling in the dark to understand a genre they pretty much universally hated. RG was going to space, there is no time for games! SPACE. I doubt the man has spent a single week obsessed over playing a game since the early 90s, its all been space ships and nonsense. This is a last ditch effort for him to continue funding Portalarium so he doesnt have to go get a real job. The game will be incredibly metrics driven and will be a bore.

Click to expand...

well yeah, thats often what a producer does. Producer is not director, or designer. Sometimes, they do mandate from on high. But often, its just giving money, and a name. And yeah, definitely remember that back then, it was very clear his association was largely just to drum up awareness of the game in the west.


I'm not so quick to judge his understanding of current games though. frankly we have no idea. its not like hes come out and said something stupid, or has actually made a game that has shown a lack of understanding. there is simply nothing. I can't say he out of touch, if there is nothing to base that on.


Its not like he said something crazy like, " I love skyrim, but sometimes feel like I was running on one direction for days, and not finding anything to do". You say THAT, then release an open world rpg, that is based on closed zones and thus not really open world at all. yeah, now that is something you can make judgments on.

ps, I am aware THIS game appears to be zone based.

If this takes me back to that feeling of playing the old Ultima's then it will be a fun game. A chance to play it multiplayer with your buddies as well could be fun.

I don't get the anger, you don't have to contribute to the Kickstarter.. just wait it out and see what release looks like. I am kind of reminded of the old NHL vet that is picked up by a team looking to make a deep playoff run.. you get all excited looking back at what he has done but when the time comes to perform all you see are flashes of former brilliance, but soon realize the player has long lost whatever 'it' was.

Prove me wrong Lord British.

Young_sl said:

If this takes me back to that feeling of playing the old Ultima's then it will be a fun game. A chance to play it multiplayer with your buddies as well could be fun.

Click to expand...

I feel the same way. Since he created some of my favourite games I will always check out his latest release, and that is despite the horrors of U9 and TR. Games like U4, U7, and Underworld were genius, and if he can recapture even a small part of that I will play it.

Caliane_sl said:

"In a nod to Garriott's early RPG works, Shroud of the Avatar is split up into a high-level overland map and adventure scenes. Scenes are generally re-playable and can be experienced solo or with others."

What does this even mean? and is that good or bad?

Click to expand...

Instances? I don't get the "In a nod to Gariott's early RPG works" or what that has anything to do with replayable/coop content... The whole kickstarter page is filled with meaningless phrases like that. "Meaningful PVP that also minimizes griefing". Another that made me grin...

Caliane_sl said:

well yeah, thats often what a producer does. Producer is not director, or designer. Sometimes, they do mandate from on high. But often, its just giving money, and a name. And yeah, definitely remember that back then, it was very clear his association was largely just to drum up awareness of the game in the west.

Click to expand...

Often? How many rich, well-known "producers" do you think are running around the game industry generating hype by name recognition in exchange for a check? The other producers in the credits for those games - those are real producers, doing actual video game production work, which entails all sorts of actual, you know, work. If he didn't do any real work, credit him as a celebrity endorser, not a producer, else you do a disservice to actual video game producers.

Dahlrek_sl said:

Often? How many rich, well-known "producers" do you think are running around the game industry generating hype by name recognition in exchange for a check? The other producers in the credits for those games - those are real producers, doing actual video game production work, which entails all sorts of actual, you know, work. If he didn't do any real work, credit him as a celebrity endorser, not a producer, else you do a disservice to actual video game producers.

Click to expand...

DING! DING! DING! I guess I wasn't clear enough in my previous post.

Garriott has not had a decent evolved idea in well over 20 years. You guys think he has some mythical importance due to UO and Ultima, both of which are games long gone and his work on UO is overstated by a large margin. The last game the man actually worked was probably Ultima 7. His production credits after that are shakey at best; they are his worlds so of course he gets random credits. However it's not being a producer in any realistic capacity.

Shroud of the Avatar is nothing more then a cash-in\money grab. It will be so much less than you hope that you will be surprised at how disappointed you really are.

Lord British is the "George Lucus" of RPG's. It's the same unoriginal, boring shit over and over and it just gets worse and worse.

Well said.

Haven't read this thread but I did read his what the game is going to be article and sounded like Tabula Rasa all over again.


















Pass

dechire_sl said:

Garriott has not had a decent evolved idea in well over 20 years.

Click to expand...

True enough. But if you enjoy computer fantasy RPG's and MMORPG's, then you have to give the man his due. He released his first game, Akalabeth, in 1980 (when he was still a teenager) and while it only sold 30K copies, there were only an estimated 1 million computers in useworldwideat the time. He laid down some fairly significant cornerstones to the genre with Ultima. No, his ideas don't seem to have evolved much beyond that series over the years and others have certainly taken what he did and built upon it and improved it. That doesn't take away from his role as one of the pioneers of the genre. As such, his influence goes beyond the specific titles with which he was directly involved.

Many here may not be familiar with the genesis of the original Everquest team. Brad McQuaid, Steve Clover, and Milo Cooper got their start making a game called WarWizard. Cooper would later get a job working for John Smedley at SISA (Sony Interactive Studios America) and when Smed was looking to put together a development team for a MMORPG, Cooper showed him WarWizard and got McQuaid and Clover an interview, after which they were hired and we all know the rest. What does all of this have to do with Garriott? If you've never seen or played WarWizard, saying it was inspired by Ultima would be putting it mildly.

Royal_sl said:

blah blah influence.

Click to expand...

No one is debating his influence or at least I'm not, Ultima 3 blew my 11 year old mind right out the door. My point is that anything from him now is shit and a contrived way for him to keep making some kind of income whilst circle jerking his ass back to space. TLDR: The fucker doesn't get a pass from me on nostalgia.

how is everything from him now shit?
he hasn't made a game in 15 years.

That is the disconnect for me, where I don't understand where the hell you guys are coming up with this.

the last time he actually MADE a game was ultima: online.
Maybe he his out of ideas, or has outdated ideas. but how would we know that, when we have nothing to base that on. There is no body of work, showing this.

I have seen what he "worked" on during the 2000s both versions of TR in fact, both were outright shit and the released product bore his fucking name like a talisman. I know his work ethic now; I've seen it. BESIDES that's all moot, he's not going to work on this one either. hes a wolf whistle to get people to back his company so he can continue.

/shrug