Everyone has a fighting chance
I took another trip up to Austin last week to spend some time with Richard Garriott and Starr Long, two developers I’ve come to enjoy speaking with a great deal. I think we may touch one of my reasons for finding these visits particularly interesting in this article, actually. It really starts with what Starr calls "tech-debt."
According to the counter on the Shroud of the Avatar site, the game’s fund raising efforts have netted over six million dollars. the KickStarter campaign run earlier brought in approximately $2M with another $4M brought in during the subsequent months.
Starr Long had mentioned during my last visit that they’d start rolling Shroud of the Avatar over to Unity 5 this month. When I bumped into Finn Staber, one of the Shroud developers, at a hub for Austin startups, I wasn’t surprised when he told me they’d been working on it. The shocking part was when I asked how much they’d managed to get rolled over for the updated engine over the last two weeks. "All of it," was his reply.
Wednesday night I went on a walkabout of New Britannia with Richard Garriott and Starr Long from the Portalarium team. During that time Richard and Starr showed off what was new in update 14; crafting recipes to include enchanting, a contested point, and two new areas. We also learned what Gordon Lightfoot and Jim Morrison have in common and what the SotA community had to do with that.
The folks at Portalarium are getting ready to roll out their 14th release for Shroud of the Avatar, and of course they timed it just as PAX South was kicking off. I’m sure it was a diabolical plot to force me into cramming this article in before I get sucked into the pending media storm that follows any PAX. That’s why I drove up to Austin this week.
This week’s SotA newsletter covers a range of things, including the game’s presence at CES in Vegas. More importantly though, it talks about the combat Elementals mages can summon, showing images that differentiate the summoned variety from their wild counterparts.
Shroud of the Avatar is arguably one of the most-anticipated MMOS of 2015, and with developer Portarlarium is hoping to keep it that way by promoting the game at the upcoming CES event in Las Vegas. Among other things, the company will be showing new screens of environments like Wyrmsands, Dragon Pass and Shardfall Biome.
I found it rather amusing that this is the 13th major release for Shroud of the Avatar, and that it comes after their hugely successful debut on Steam. Last month saw the game added to Steam’s list of available Early Access titles, and the results were a sweeping victory for the team at Portalarium. With a whopping 87% positive reviews, and really strong sales that put the game in the top 10 on Steam’s list of top sellers, it’s been a fantastic month for Shroud of the Avatar.
Early Access players can now log into Steam to give Shroud of the Avatar a look. The game will be available to players 24/7 and will give the opportunity to see SotA evolve over time.
There are actually a couple reasons for my selecting the above title this month, as Shroud of the Avatar stretches in new directions. The big news being that you’ll be able to purchase Shroud from your Steam account starting on 24th of November, but there’s a lot more to this release than just how you can get involved with it. New scenes and lots of additional content will provide even existing backers some new feel to the game.