Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Here’s what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:

• Release 6 Perspectives
• Blade of the Avatar: The Final Chapter
• Release 7 and Q3 Update
• Royal Founder Rewards
• Founder Teachable Emotes
• Through the Lunar Rift!
• Wood & Plaster 3-Story with Open Floor Plan Village Home
• Plantronics Partnership
• Alienware $20 Pledge Upgrade Coupons
• Upcoming Events

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Release 6 Perspectives

From Lord British:

Polish, polish, polish… and yet so much more polishing left to do! The team mainly focused on cleaning up what we had already done for this release, including shining up (and in some cases, darkening) the lighting and troubleshooting the issues that its implementation created for us. While we are VERY happy with the new lighting system, there were still some either glowing or pitch black textures remaining to fix. So there remains some work to be done, especially to the systems we switched out, and plan to switch out, like the map. Still, in the short time we delivered R6 to you, we did manage to add a few new things as well, and overall, we remain VERY happy with the new stuff we put in.

By far, my favorite part of R6 was to see how much YOU the players were able to do with it. Hedge mazes in Owls Head, parties in pubs, player towns popping up… they were all incredibly inspiring to the team and myself! We came away re-inspired to deliver even better player features for the next release. The areas I am pushing the team on now include gathering resources, and even more crafting recipes for decorations, weapons and armor. Also, I want to be sure that our adventure areas have real data behind them, so when you finish an adventure, you get reasonable rewards along the way and a payoff for finishing. It will be an important step in making sure the in-game economy keeps getting better and better!

THANK YOU again for inspiring us, sharing your feedback, and for journeying with us on this adventure. See you in R7!

[Join the conversation in the forums]

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From Starr Long:

Greetings Avatars,

Thank you all again for another amazing opportunity to provide you with early access to Shroud of the Avatar. Thank you for the incredible amount of quality feedback that will make Shroud better. And thank you especially for your continued monetary support, without which we could not be making this, nor could we continually try to improve it.

Release 6 was our first attempt at an Early Access Release focused mainly on polish. The specific polish focus for R6 was on graphics, and I think we made some real progress. However we still have a lot of work to do, both on graphic polish and polish overall. While we are happy with the direction our lighting is going with the move to a Linear lighting model, it still needs a lot of balancing so that daytime is not overly bright, night isn’t overly dark, and shadows are not inky pools where nothing is visible. We also need to keep improving the avatars. We had hoped to be able to replace all of the heads with more attractive versions, but the task was just too big to fit inside this milestone.

All this polish work has to be balanced with continued progress on core systems like crafting, combat, skills, etc. Rest assured that while we are doing some work on polish, there is also a ton of work going on behind the scenes on those core systems. Sometimes that work will take longer than a single release so it may temporarily appear that no progress is being made, but please trust us, progress is being made!

I continue to be stunned by the power of this community. One of the most compelling examples of this was the building of Pax Lair in the player town of Valemark. Lord British and I took a tour on Sunday and the sheer creativity on display with the simple tools we provided really showed what is possible with our housing system. Of course my personal highlight was Amberraine’s Church of Darkstarr in Valemark where I was able to ascend to the podium and pontificate about the benefits of Chaos!

Release 6 is dead! Long live Release 7!

Release 7 is now underway and we have some cool things in store for you. I will be posting an R7 and Q3 schedule post later this week so stay tuned!

Sincerely,
Darkstarr aka Starr Long

[Join the conversation in the forums]

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From Chris Spears:

I’m sure this will come as a shock to many of you but Release 6 was my favorite release so far.  While we didn’t add many new features, we finally had the time to take a breath and cleanup a ton of things and put some visual polish on a number of systems that had been lacking for far too long.  For the past 5 releases we had only been focusing on new, customer facing items and been neglecting process and polish…

Average play time is now over an hour per user in the game…Unfortunately for R5, we had the highest number of play sessions of any release…because it was the least stable release and people were crashing all over the place!  For release 6 we got a few of those crashes resolved…

So hopefully everyone reading this got to play enough of R6 to see some of the visual improvements that were made to lighting and screen effects.  If you didn’t, hopefully you can see some of the screenshots that show off the new look.  Even better, hopefully you can find videos of it because the most obvious improvements came from things looking better across the time scale and not just for a given split second…

[Read the rest of this post in the forums]

 

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Blade of the Avatar: The Final Chapter

Five months ago we released the first installment of the serialized SotA novel, Blade of the Avatar (BotA), written by Tracy Hickman & Richard Garriott! What a wonderful journey that Tracy and Richard have led us down, leaving us waiting breathlessly for each new weekly chapter! They have crafted one of the best stories many of us have ever read, and we will sorely miss our weekly BotA fix! We are planning a hangout with Tracy and Richard to celebrate the completion of their book, so stay tuned for further details.

The final installment is now available for download! If you are a Founder, or you purchased BotA in the Add-On Store, then you will find a download link for the current installment of the novel on your personal SotA account page (log into SotA website and click on “Account” in the top-right corner).  If you are a Kickstarter backer you’ll need to have your Kickstarter account linked to the SotA website (click here for instructions to link your Kickstarter account).

Here is a brief excerpt of the latest installment (illustration by Denis Loubet):

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Chapter 24: Thundering Silence

Evard Dirae stood at the crossroads of the Broken Road and waited, just as he had waited for twelve days. In the evenings, he would prepare a meager meal and contemplate the gathering darkness. In the night, he would lay on the ground, a stick propping up his robe over his head to shelter him from the wind across the prairie that never seemed to stop. Then, in the morning, he would awaken, prepare his breakfast and again, wait with watchful eyes looking down the Broken Road to the south for some sign of his old friend’s approach.

He was, he knew, hardly alone. A detachment of warriors over two hundred strong, each handpicked by Evard, was encamped near the mountain pass that led through the Blackblade Mountains back to Hilt. The captain in charge of them was awaiting only the sign from Evard – a homunculus which Evard had reserved for the purpose – before ordering the marching of his command to capture the refugees as they approached. They were prepared on short notice to march northwest and southwest, so as to encircle the approaching column of weary Opalis citizens. In that moment, their flesh would be sealed to the monstrous fate which Evard had planned for them in service to the Obsidian Cause.

Yet nothing had come up the road from the south….

Download your copy of the latest installment of BotA to read the rest of this exciting chapter!

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Map Reveal

For your map puzzle collection:

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Release 7 and Q3 Update

[From a forum post by Starr Long]

We are incredibly excited to continue sharing our iterative monthly releases with you. Below are updates to Release 7 and details about the following three releases for the third quarter of 2014 (July – September). In addition to these official releases, we will also do fairly frequent incremental tests with our Developer and above backers. As always, all dates, durations, and deliverables are subject to change as we adjust our designs based on direct feedback from you, our backers.

RELEASE 7: June 26 – 29, 2014

• 3D Overworld Map System: We are switching our dual scale navigation system from the 2D version you have seen so far to a 3D version more like what we showed during Kickstarter. This initial release will mainly be about the visuals so players will still be represented as markers and there will be no random encounters (see below for which releases these features will come online).
• Player to Player secure trade: Did you discover something cool you wish to give your friend? Need to share some potions with a party member? Did you craft something amazing you want to sell? Secure trade is the answer and will allow you to make exchanges of goods between you and other players.
• Water Lots: We will be adding water lot functionality to the game.
• NPC Collision / Responsiveness: We will be spending time on polishing NPC collision and general movement responsiveness to combat things like NPC standing inside you, spreading out when attacking, avoiding players while moving, etc.
• Animals: Currently all our animals (bears, wolves, etc.) are purchased assets and the skinning, rigging, and animations for them is not meeting our quality standards, so we are going to reskin and rig them so that we can redo their animations.
• Player Housing Built-in Lighting: We have gotten consistent feedback that it is too hard to get player placed lights in the right configuration to really light the player houses. So starting with R7 we will begin placing built in lights (chandeliers, sconces, etc.) to provide a base lighting level for all the player houses. These lights will turn on and off just like regular lights and can be augmented with player placed lights as well.
• Scenes: A few new scenes will come online including Player Towns on Islands (to feature water lots) and perhaps the first scene on the mainland (The Graf Gem Mines).
• Crafting: We will be adding more ingredients (spider silk, gems, precious metals, etc.) as well as instructions on how to do crafting in the recipe book itself. New recipes will also come online
• Lighting Fine-Tuning: We still have some work to do in order to get the balance right between bright day and dark night.
• Character Faces and Skins: We want to update at least one of the player faces and also do more polish work on the skin.
• 64 Bit Build: For those of you running 64 bit OS on your system we will now release 64 bit builds (in addition to the 32 Bit Builds) so you can address more system memory
• Promotional Trailer: We are excited to be a featured game at the Plantronics booth at E3. In support of that and our continued fundraising we are working on an updated trailer (our last one was at the 6 month mark) that will show off gameplay and provide a few sneak peeks of the intro cinematic. As mentioned in update 73, Bill Johnson, aka The Guardian, will be doing the voiceover.
• New Pledge Rewards, New Pledge Tiers: On Friday June 6th we will be announcing some new pledge rewards, some new pledge tiers and a new type of store

Click here for Release 8, Release 9, and Release 10 details

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Royal Founder Rewards

We’ve completed in-game versions of five more of our uniquely identifiable Royal Founder items (see Starr’s forum post for complete list). “Royal Founders” are backers that have a pledge made prior to May 20, 2013 (see FAQ): Royal Founder items have a white background, differentiating them from the blue background of “Founder” items. The five Royal Founder items for this week are:

Two Royal Founder Starter Melee Weapons and Royal Founder Tunic (included in the Founder pledge rewards):

 

 

Two Royal Founder Ranged Weapons (included in the Royal Artisan pledge rewards):

 

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Founder Teachable Emotes

Get ready to show off (and teach) your unique emote, included in the Founder rewards of every pledge tier! Here are five of those emotes:

Lord: Take Oath

Baron 1: Knighting

Baron 2 & 3: Royal Salutation

Duke: Royal Wave

Lord of the Manor 1 & 2: Alms For The Poor

 

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Through the Lunar Rift!

We are delighted to introduce a new collection of short stories called “Through the Lunar Rift”. These tales, told as a weekly series of journal entries written by Gina “FireLotus” Dionne, will feature the people and places of New Britannia and give you a bit of insight, and hopefully some inspiration, when creating your own stories while exploring the lands of Shroud of the Avatar.

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The Darkness in Owl’s Nest

Sometimes, I don’t know whether I keep this journal to remind myself of my time here, or to get it straight in my head that this is really happening. It has been at least a year since I arrived here, and sometimes I still think it’s all a dream and I am going to wake up. Who knows, maybe I will. But for now, I am going to continue to learn as much as I can about where “here” is.

One of my suppliers, a resourceful fence named Laurent, had seemed a bit out of sorts lately, and it was definitely not like him to be late with a shipment. So I decided to use the tardiness of my latest import as an excuse to finally trek out to Owl’s Nest. Six months ago, I would not have even dreamed of wandering that far out of town, but my own skills have grown, and I no longer fear the dark. Especially when I have the power of fire in my grasp.

Upon arrival, I witnessed a darkness that dwarfed even the brightest spark of bravery I could muster. The Wolf, the former leader of Laurent’s merry men, had been killed. But that in and of itself wasn’t what stole my nerve. He had been reanimated into an abomination who was under the complete control of a necromancer. I knew that I was not the only person who could tap into the magical forces of this land, but I had never imagined anyone would dare dabble in such dark magic. One thing is for certain, everyone there is terrified of Nestor. I barely got a name out of Laurent before he shoved my supplies into my arms and set me on my way…

Read the rest of the story in the forums

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Wood & Plaster 3-Story with Open Floor Plan Home

Next up in our line of Wood & Plaster homes is this 3-story, 4-room village home with an open floor plan, now available in the Add-On Store:

 

Get Your Wood & Plaster 3-Story with Open Floor Plan Home Now for 50% off!

For a limited time we’re offering 50% off this home!  Reserve yours (or send as a gift) at the Add-On Store!

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Plantronics Partnership

We are excited that Shroud of the Avatar will be a featured game at the Plantronics booth at E3. We want the audio landscape of SotA to be as immersive as the visual landscape and Plantronics is a great partner for us to work with on achieving that goal. During our one year anniversary promotions you may have noticed that some of the prizes we were giving out were Plantronics headsets and at that time we hinted about more to come, like this, from that partnership. Richard Garriott, Starr Long, and Finn Staber will be representing the game at the Plantronics booth in the South Hall at booth 515 so if you are at the show come see us!

If you’re a fan of Plantronics Gaming Headsets (like we are), then check out their Plantronics Gaming Facebook page, and if you like what you see then give them a “Like”!

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Alienware Sponsors $20 Pledge Upgrade Coupon

Alienware’s powerful gaming rigs are a perfect match for Shroud of the Avatar! To show their support, Alienware is sponsoring $20 SotA Pledge Upgrade Coupons to members of their Alienware Arena community!

These coupons can be used to start a SotA pledge account (for new backers), or to add $20 to an existing pledge account. If, for example, you have a $90 Royal Artisan Pledge, you can use the Alienware coupon to bump you up to a $110 Virtual Collector Pledge.

Pretty sweet deal, right? So, hurry over to the Alienware Arena website and get your $20 Pledge Upgrade Coupon now!

[NOTE: Only one Alienware Pledge Upgrade Coupon can be used per account. Coupon does not apply to Add-On Store items]

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Upcoming Events

2014.06.10 – SotA at E3
2014.06.26 – Release 7 Access
2014.07.04 – SotA at RTX
2014.07.24 – Release 8 Access
2014.08.09 – SotA at synDCon
2014.08.21 – Release 9 Access
2014.08.29 – SotA at Dragoncon
2014.09.25 – Release 10 Access
2014.10.23 – Release 11 Access
2014.11.14 – Duke and Lord of the Manor VIP Design Roundtable with Lord British and Portalarium Studio Tour
2014.11.15 – HoBLotH II: Legends of the Hearth
2014.11.20 – Release 12 Access
2014.12.18 – Release 13 Access>