Author Archives: Berek

Berek

About Berek

Senior Community Manager for Shroud of the Avatar.

Community Spotlight: Arx Draconis Player Town

This week’s Player Owned Town spotlight has us traveling to Arx Draconis to visit this beautiful island town, conveniently located in central Novia. Described as a large, walled, fortress city with a castle in the middle that’s perched upon a mountain. Arx Draconis is the home of The Syndicate (www.LLTS.org).

Hundreds of members from The Syndicate visited our studio in Austin earlier this month, giving us a unique chance to talk to them about their in-game adventures! We found out that for over 21 years of its existence, The Syndicate has been featured in two books, listed in the Guinness World Record as the longest lived guild, and mentioned in SotA’s story and lore.

Read on as The Syndicate takes you on a tour of their town in Novia…

Read more…


Community Livestream – Exploring Longfall Woods

Chris “Sea-Wolf” Wolf is coming back on the livestream this Friday to show you more of his latest design work! We will be kicking off the stream with Sea-Wolf driving the master build machine around the nearly complete polish work of Longfall Woods.

We are focusing the next few releases on building the lower tier scenes near the cities along the paths of Truth and Courage. Most of these scenes have been clones of other scenes and will now be replaced with completely original scenes. In Release 45 one of these scenes is Longfall Woods which is a heavily forested area near Aerie in the Longfall region.

For more about Longfall Woods, check out Sea-Wolf’s recent Dev+ blog update in the forums. Not a Dev+ member? You can either get access through Bundles in the store, or check out excerpts of his blog on any of the Weekly Updates.

The fun begins on Twitch this Friday at 4pm CT. Also join the community watching on Discord chat to ask questions about this scene:


Community Spotlight – Lake Cusabo Player Town

This week’s Player Owned Town spotlight has me, ‘Berek’ as I go by in the community, travelling to Lake Cusabo to visit this beautiful area in northern Novia.

After a hectic few weeks of work and outside activities, I realized that it’d been quite some time since I’d had a full day to relax and wind down from the travails of daily life. I made my way north from Central Brittany, past Brekken Bay, and onward toward the Serpent Spine foothills. As the road turned west, I arrived at the town of Lake Cusabo.

Upon entering the town, I was immediately greeted with the scent of fresh pine and the cool brush of a lovely breeze. Lake Cusabo sits high in the mountains, and the great majesty of the views from atop these mountains took my breath away.

Read more…


Free Trial Test #5 – August 9-30th

We are excited to announce the latest test of our Free Trial system! These tests are invaluable for us in order to improve the New User Experience and the Free Trial System itself.

If you know anyone who may want to try the game for free, please send them to the Download Page.

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: August 9-30th, 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 when you get started in the Free Trial, we would love your feedback! We have opened up of our Release 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 checking out Shroud of the Avatar in Early Access!


Release 44 Postmortem Mini-Telethon

** $67,500 **

Telethon Funds Raised



Telethon Stretch Goal Rewards:

  • ACHIEVED! $10,000: Oracle Eye Sparklers
  • ACHIEVED! $25,000: Oracle Eye Mirror: Home decoration with the Oracle Eye on top
  • ACHIEVED! $35,000: Oracle Eye Helmet: Fencing Mask with Oracle Eye painted on mesh like the Obsidian Cabalist masks
  • ACHIEVED! $50,000: Oracle Eye Throne
  • ACHIEVED! $65,000: Oracle Cable “Wings” + /juggleoracleeyes

Greetings Avatars,

Traditionally our Telethons have been held quarterly and lasted 12 hours (and in some extreme cases 24 hours!). While these lengthy telethons allowed us to cover a very wide range of subjects, they also led to a bit of meandering at the end due to fatigue (and maybe a bit of overindulgence). Recently we had a much shorter telethon (6 hours) for Lord British’s birthday, discovering that we spent more time answering questions and remained much more focused and alert. Your response was also quite positive in both pledges and feedback after the telethon!

So, starting with Release 44, we are going to experiment with extended Postmortems that are also Mini-Telethons. This will increase the frequency of our telethons to monthly but also keep them short (4 hours). We are confident that this will both allow us to focus more time on development while at the same time provide a higher frequency of direct interaction with you, our community.

Since this is a shorter telethon we want to make sure as many people can participate in the stretch goals. We are going to extend the amount of time that your purchases can be eligible for the stretch goals to be 12 hours from 12:00 PM CDT to Midnight. NOTE: We will still stop tracking towards stretch goals at the end of the telethon at 7:00 PM CDT, but everyone will have another 5 hours to spend $5 to get the stretch goals.

We hope you find this change an improvement! Now, onward to this telethon’s details!

TELETHON SCHEDULE (Central Time Zone)

Telethons are livestreamed on Twitch and include answers to your gameplay questions, world building tours, prize giveaways, sales on items, and more! See what we have planned below beginning at 3pm CT on August 7: Read more…


Community Livestream – Etceter Revisited

Scott “Scottie” Jones, Senior Environmental Artist, is coming back on the livestream this Friday to show you more of his latest design work! We will be kicking off the stream with Scottie driving the master build machine around the nearly complete polish work of Etceter scene.

SPOILERS: Though little has changed near the common entrance into the scene, passing through the town will eventually lead to the primary crossroads, where the port-side commerce and housing district (seen on the right) gives way to the richer estates that once belonged to the wealthiest privateers (seen up the rise of the hill to the left) who made their fortunes when the Etceter Crag Mines were at the height of production! From here we can get a better view of some of the newest points of interest I’ve added. – Scottie

For more about Etceter, check out Scottie’s recent Dev+ blog update in the forums. Not a Dev+ member? You can either get access through Bundles in the store, or check out excerpts of his blog on any of the Weekly Updates.

The fun begins on Twitch this Friday at 4pm CT. Also join the community watching on Discord chat to ask questions about this scene:

P.S. – We are experimenting with the Facebook Event feature. Join the invite and see others that will be playing the game tomorrow!


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 Avatar™, 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.

Read more…


Community Livestream – Celebrating Release 44

We will be kicking off this week’s Community Livestream by celebrating Release 44 at the traditional Dance Party, hosted by Port Phoenix player town in-game!

After the dance party, we’ll be bringing back Dan “PlagueOfLocust” Brennan and Travis “Vas Corp Por” Koleski on camera as we explore the final changes brought to Grannus Colossus, and perhaps summoning some dangerous dragons as well…

For more about Grannus Colossus, check out Travis’s recent Dev+ blog update in the forums.

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

P.S. – We are experimenting with the Facebook Event feature. Join the invite and see others that will be playing the game tomorrow!


Time is Running Short to Join Portalarium!

Time is running short to join Portalarium on a journey from being just a developer to also becoming a full fledged publisher! We are currently using the SeedInvest platform to take investments in the company that will make it possible to expand our marketing resources for Shroud of the Avatar and future products.

Those of you who’ve made a reservation, please convert it to an investment!

To convert, head to the official SeedInvest website, log in to your account, and from there you will be able to complete your investment.

You can also go to the above link to become an investor! A reminder that there are now several new in-game gold perk additions, including detailed images of the perks, and entire new perk tiers for more investing options.

Thank you Avatars!

Lord British and the Portalarium Team

*Disclaimer: Portalarium is offering securities under Regulation CF and Rule 506(c) of Regulation D through SI Securities, LLC (“SI Securities”). The Company has filed a Form C with the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with its offering, a copy of which may be obtained here: https://www.seedinvest.com/portalarium/series.b


Partnership with Neverdie Studios – Initial Coin Offering (ICO)

Today we announced a partnership with Neverdie Studios to support the company’s Initial Coin Offering (ICO). Neverdie Studios produces games, live action movies, records and virtual products. Their ICO is a blockchain-based project aiming to create an Ethereum-based gaming platform. Shroud of the Avatar is the first game outside the Neverdie product lineup exploring how to utilize Neverdie Coins (NDC). The two companies also announced today that Garriott would become an advisor to Neverdie Studios.

Jon “Neverdie” Jacobs, Neverdie Studios founder said, “This is a historic accord between two iconic avatars aligning to champion avatar rights. With the wise council of Richard “Lord British” Garriott, a legendary avatar, adventurer and world builder, providing priceless insight into the development of the gamified virtual reality infrastructure to unite MMORPGS and virtual worlds, I’m confident that our noble ambitions will remain virtuous and have the greatest chance to succeed. Richard’s council on the structure and balance of universal gaming tokens will be invaluable.”

“We are devout believers that people living in and contributing to our virtual worlds can and should earn real world value for the time and value they bring to our world,” said Garriott, Portalarium’s CEO and Shroud’s creative director. “Having direct access to a publicly tradeable currency is a great way to provide this. I’m also extremely pleased to be invited to advise Neverdie on this exciting and ambitious project. Additionally, Shroud of the Avatar already has a deeply committed player base while in early access. We are exploring how our players can earn market based value with NEVERDIE NDC and TPT tokens that are both useable directly in the game as well as traded on the open market.

To learn more about the offering and how you can get Neverdie coins, visit the official ICO page. The copy above came from today’s press release.