Author Archives: Berek

Berek

About Berek

Senior Community Manager for Shroud of the Avatar.

Free Trial Test #3 Live Now!

We are excited to announce the third test of our Free Trial system, running live now through May 31! This will be the longest test so far of the system so that we can gather even more data on uptake, drop-off, conversions, etc.

If you know anyone who would like to try the game for free, then send them to the download page. These tests are invaluable for us in order to improve the New User Experience and the Free Trial System itself.

Free Trial access during the game’s current Early Access period allows you to play the entire game in any of the Online modes with a few key differences in game play:

  • Free Trial Current Time Period: May 10-31, 2017
  • The term (Visitor) is appended to your Character Name
  • Cannot give items to other players via Trade
  • Cannot purchase nor sell items via Player Vendors nor Public Vendors
  • No ownership of property nor use of lot signs
  • Cannot interact with public chests
  • Cannot move/interact with items on a plot even if they are given permissions
  • Cannot flag as Open PVP
  • Cannot gain nor do they create any ransom items when they kill or are killed in PVP (in Open PVP zones)
  • Character data may be deleted after Free Trial period is over if character is not upgraded to a paid account
  • Items purchased in the Add On Store cannot be accessed after the Free Trial Period is over unless you purchase Game Access
  • Cannot play in Offline Mode
  • Can only start on the Path of Love

You can still explore hundreds of scenes, talk with thousands of players, adventure through the opening quests, and gain experience and skills as you get used to the world of New Britannia! If you wish to continue playing after the free trial concludes, you can obtain an Early Access account here.

For those in the Free Trial, we would love your feedback! We have opened up of our Release 41 Feedback Forums. If you have a constructive comment about this release that will help the game to improve, please post it there. You can also say hello in the New Player Forum!

Have fun, and thanks for trying out Shroud of the Avatar in Early Access!


Partnership with Black Sun Game Publishing

Press Release AUSTIN, Texas, May 10, 2017:

Portalarium®, an Austin-based game developer, today announced the completion of a deal with Black Sun Game Publishing in Moscow, to publish and operate Shroud of the Avatar™: Forsaken Virtues in Russia, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the Baltic States. Shroud of the Avatar is the spiritual successor to the hugely successful Ultima series of fantasy role-playing games created by legendary game designer Richard Garriott. The game is one of the largest crowd funded games ever, with more than $11.3 million raised since early 2013.

Shroud combines a single-player narrative story with a sandbox massively multiplayer online (MMO) experience. The production team includes Executive Producer Starr Long, who along with Garriott helped produce the groundbreaking Ultima Online MMO and New York Times bestselling author Tracy Hickman, who wrote the popular Dragonlance fantasy novels.

“We are extremely pleased to announce this deal with Black Sun Game Publishing,” said Portalarium CEO Richard Garriott. “We have a large and growing fan base in Russia and the surrounding countries. The Black Sun team is experienced and enthusiastic. They know their regional gaming community well and are ideally suited to bring Shroud of the Avatar to a very eager fan base.”

“It is a great honor for us to work with Richard Garriott, a legend of the games industry, and his team,” exclaimed Black Sun CEO Alex Yarovit. “There are many fans of his games, especially the Ultima series in Russia, the CIS, and the Baltic States. Shroud of the Avatar takes a lot of Richard’s hallmark RPG design principals and brings them up to date in a modern MMO and single player experience. We are looking forward to working further with Lord British and providing his newest creation to all Russian-speaking players. New Britannia beckons!”
Read more…


Community Spotlight: Novia Market – Player Town

This week’s Player Owned Town spotlight has me, ‘Berek’ as I go by in the community, travelling to the center of New Britannia to visit the bustling trade town of Novia Market.

Many of the fair towns in New Britannia have built a strong, steady popularity and long history. By contrast, I had heard rumblings of a young upstart of a community of 50+ merchant residents which seemingly had popped out of nowhere, in the southern hinterlands of Brittany called Novia Market.

I had seen flyers for Novia Market proclaiming each and every Sunday as a “promo day”, and it piqued my interest enough to start a short pilgrimage to the town. Upon reaching the entrance to the town, I was struck by two things: the hustle and bustle of the community, and an odd couple of gentlemen laying wait to greet me beside the town crier and banker at the entrance.

Read more…


Moondial Madness

From last week’s Update of the Avatar #225, we just put live in Release 41 an update to the Darkstarr Moondial! Have a look at all that we changed around the game’s moondials:

Recently we did some re-ordering of the celestial bodies in the heavens. Additionally there are now more game systems directly tied to the positions of these celestial bodies. For instance Town Sieges are directly tied to these. Due to these changes Richard “Lord British” Garriott has decreed that we update our orreries to not only accurately reflect these new sequences but also add the constellations in an outer ring. The first pass is to update the Darkstarr Moondial that players already own. We also created a new Silver Darkstarr Moondial that will only be available through our Referral program when that comes back online. Other variants that look very different from the Darkstarr versions will then be created including a craftable version (more mechanical in nature) and an Ornate version for the Add On Store that will come in a variety of sizes ranging from table top to a giant version that you can walk under!

The updated Darkstarr Moondial is live in Release 41. Stay tuned for updates on when the other versions will become available.

Read more…


R41 Postmortem Livestream – May 8th @ 3pm CT

We have been extremely happy with the community’s reaction to Release 41 so far, and want to hear more of your valuable feedback. Join us Monday, May 8th at 3:00 PM Central (20:00 UTC) on Twitch for this month’s R41 Postmortem Livestream!

Once you get a chance to check out Release 41, post your questions in the comments section below. Only one post submission per player allowed, and keep questions to 3 or less. This will allow us to get to as many questions as possible.

As always, we will be giving out rare artifacts of immense power and glory. For a chance to win an artifact, or to speak your voice on the latest game changes, please be in Discord chat during the livestream. There will be multiple chances to win throughout the broadcast.

Follow @ShroudofAvatar to keep updated as the postmortem approaches!


Community Livestream – The Outskirts: Part 1

Community of the Avatar

What we’re about to show you is going to take two livestreams! For Part 1, tomorrow we will bring back Travis “Vas Corp Por” Koleski to show off the now live Solace Bridge Outskirts. Then Chris “Seawolf” Wolf and Damien “Puuk” Foletto will show you the upcoming Highvale Outskirts scene.

As we announced during the Spring Telethon, we are adding three new maps to the game that we are calling “Outskirts”. These scenes will be very close to the three starting scenes and players will go directly there after finishing those starting scenes. Outskirts will be very large scenes, similar in scope to some of our recent big scenes like Blood Bay. This will allow them to be large enough that players can base themselves in a single scene for adventuring, resupply for their first couple of hours without having to go through multiple scene loads, or having to use the Overworld.

One month from now (don’t worry, we will have livestreams in the interim), we will be talking about all three Outskirts scenes, including Bloodriver Outskirts!

The fun begins on Twitch this Friday at 4pm CT. Also join the community watching on Discord chat to ask your questions about these Outskirts scenes.


Upcoming Outskirts Scenes: Highvale and Bloodriver

As we announced during the Spring Telethon, we are adding three new maps to the game that we are calling “Outskirts”. These scenes will be very close to the three starting scenes and players will go directly there after finishing those starting scenes. Outskirts will be very large scenes, similar in scope to some of our recent big scenes like Blood Bay. This will allow them to be large enough that players can base themselves in a single scene for adventuring, resupply for their first couple of hours without having to go through multiple scene loads, or having to use the Overworld.

Each scene will have a small outpost that will include some shopkeepers, trainers, crafting stations, and a few quest givers (and no player housing!). The scenes will also include plenty of adventuring areas (forests, ruins, bandit camps, etc.).

From last week’s Update of the Avatar #224, we’ve introduced the second and third outskirts scenes! See the amazing screenshots below:

Read more…


New and Improved Store Purchasing Interface

This morning we updated the store purchasing interface with a new and friendlier design! For all items purchased though the ‘STORE’ menu on the main website, you now have an easier view of which transaction options are available with which to purchase items:

You will notice that we do not have Bitcoins listed as we did before this change. It was necessary to remove the option while we explore an improve compatibility with Bitcoin transaction processes and the new store interface.

Bitcoins will make a return! We do not have an exact date on this return just yet, but will let you know as soon as we have one to announce.


The Making of The Fall (with a First Look video!)

From last week’s Update of the Avatar #224:

No one is quite sure who built this mysterious dungeon beneath Blood Bay, but it is filled with an incredible array of dangers, and rewards. The Fall gets its name from the giant vertical open space that defines the middle of the dungeon with crisscrossing bridges and elevators. This dungeon is an Open PVP area, so enter at your own risk! We plan to have this live in Release 41.

An update to The Fall:

This area is the duel arena where players can come and participate in or watch duels. The doors to waiting rooms can be opened by a MC above for fair timing. There’s a couple moving platforms to make it interesting (if you fall in the holes they’re full of nasty spikes but you can jump back up via vents on either side). Read more…


The Magnificent Trophy Room Contest Begins!

Get your houses ready for the most intense contest yet this year! Over the next several weeks, you will have the fun opportunity to show off your hunting heroism, crafting coordination, and trophy triumphs in this new three part contest kicking off today.

PART 1: Hunt down a creature, kill another player (to get their skull), or catch a fish!

PART 2: Craft the trophy from that creature (human skulls come as-is, no preparation needed…)

PART 3: Display your trophy triumphs in a single room of a house you have access too!​

WINNERS & PRIZES

Prizes will be awarded on a tier basis:

  • 1st Place: 100 in-game COTOs and three developer skulls of your choice.
  • 2nd Place: 50 COTOs and two developer skulls of your choice.
  • Two Runner-ups: 25 COTOs and one developer skull of your choice.
  • All valid entries will receive a custom title in-game (exact title yet to be decided… community suggestions are welcome! Should refer to the contest in some way, and not be a title that we would use for other hunting/trophy purposes.)

As we receive contest submissions, they will be announced in the forums and on social with eventually a gallery of all submissions put together. Winners will be announced at the start of the Summer Telethon on May 31 around 12:30pm CT.

Read more about the contest and submit your entry in the forums!