Update of the Avatar #139 – 2015.08.21: Dragons WIP, R21 Dev+ QA, Trolls Invade BMC Debate, Use Based Systems Part 2, Decorating Hometown, Snowy Mountain Template, Obsidian Fence, and More!

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

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

• Very Large Creatures: Dragons (Work-in-Progress)
• Early Dev+ Release 21 Testing
• Trolls Invade the BMC Speaker of the House Debate
• Let’s talk about… USE BASED SYSTEMS! Part 2
• End-of-Summer Telethon
• Hometown: Parade of Homes (and basements)
• Player Owned Towns: Snowy Mountains
• Obsidian Stone Fence
• 10 Day Countdown for 10% Summer Bonus & Reward Expirations
• Darkstarr Reward Delivery and Airship City Home Limited Availability
• In-game Community Weekend Events
• Upcoming Events
• Recommended Games to Back

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Very Large Creatures: Dragons (Work-in-Progress)

Geoff Mellon (character artist), Kevin Wells (character artist), and Bren Wilson (animator) are working on our next Very Large Creature: Dragons! Check out these work-in-progress images:

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Early Dev+ Release 21 Testing!

[A Dev+ Forum Post by BurningToad (aka Ken Pfile)]

Hello all! We have a new build up on QA for early R21 Dev+ testing [requires Developer or higher pledge level]! As usual, it is still incomplete, and likely very buggy, but it is a big help to us if y’all can test it out and help identify major issues!

The test set up is like previous tests, happening on a separate server, known as the “QA Server.” You will be able to play through Steam or through a new SotA Launcher install.

The QA version of SotA has been updated to version 255, which is available through the Launcher or through Steam.

[Read more…]

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Trolls Invade the BMC Speaker of the House Debates

The BMC held a debate last Saturday for candidates running for the BMC guild office of Speaker of the House. The event was streamed live by NBNN (http://www.twitch.tv/nbnnnews). It seems that a group of trolls wanted to listen to the debate, but met with some resistance by other attendees:

And here is the entire debate (including the long bit without the trolls, but with rabbits and turkeys) as broadcast by NBNN:

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Let’s talk about… USE BASED SYSTEMS! Part 2

[A Dev+ Forum Post by Chris Spears]

Ok, as promised, I present to you the second half of the use based wall of text! My First post was all about how it appeared to the player. This one is going to be for those who want to dig a bit deeper and understand what is happening under the covers. If you don’t care, or if you don’t like math, you should probably stop reading here.

So when I’ve referred to the system before I’ve called it a hybrid use based system. In a pure use based system, just using a skill would advance it and players could become masters at skills through repetitive, often macro-able methods. While we wanted a use based system we also wanted to limit that type of artificial behavior as much as possible.

Our system actually still has players earning experience through in game actions. Those experience points go into a pool of “to be spent” experience. Then using skills spends points out of that pool on the skill to level it up. How many points spent on each skill use depends on the current level of the skill, the size of the experience pool, whether the skill use was successful or not, and a few other secret items. The amount would be a certain % of the pool for the base value so having a large pool of experience built up will accelerate the process.

The amount applied per use will be capped so it requires a minimum number of uses to advance. The minimum number of uses starts around 5 for most skills and advances up to 100+ at the highest levels.

Each skill tracks its own experience and levels up similar to how players level up in the current system. Each skill requires far less (varies widely but around 1/100th) experience than the current leveling system. This means that players will see tons of incremental progress and if they choose to only work on a couple of skills, they will increase at a MUCH faster pace than leveling.

Skills will have a difficulty value associated with them that we likely won’t show. This is how many times more costly a skill is to level. Some things that have a very limited opportunity for use, like taming, might level more easily. Other things that are immensely powerful will level more slowly, like raising stats. Leveling str/dex/int will be in the order of 5-10X average skills.

Active skills get experience applied on use. Passive skills gain experience very slowly over time. Players will also be able to pay trainers for a lesson for a specific skill which will grant a buff that applies more exps to a skill per use.

Now for the part that players will hate BUT that is key for long term survival of the game and allows us to have really fast non-grindy progression, skill decay! So in addition to being more realistic, the purpose of decay is to allow us to not have hard skill caps and to make it so we can let people level up skills faster but still keep some control mechanism. I’ll get into the math of that in a bit but first also let me talk about why situation X isn’t a problem.

What is situation X? Well, hopefully that is your situation no matter how you play! The decay is only accumulated for around 2 days max loss. The accumulated decay is only applied on death or on skill gain. The decay is based on real time whether players are in the game or not. So players who want to go PVP and expect to die 20 times in afternoon are not going to suffer any more than someone who went adventuring and died two or three times. Players who are just logging in for some role playing and saying hi to friends won’t suffer any loss. Players who are in the military and get deployed for 2 months will only be coming back to around 2 days of decay.

Ok, next tidbit I’ll throw out is our first rough target for how much loss players will suffer. I won’t share exact numbers for how we’re doing the loss but I will give you an actual example of a real world situation. A player is awesome and levels up 20 of their skills to 80. Then they get a job and at the same time have a kid. They login every day for a year straight and die every day without earning any experience, you know, because they have a kid. This is pretty much the worst case, 365 days in a row of 1 day’s worth accumulated exp loss. So at the end of 1 year what do you think their skills will be at? 1? BUZZ! 20? BUZZ! 40? BUZZ! At the end of one year they will only have dropped to 72. If instead they only logged in once a week and died and earned no experience, they would be at 77 at the end of a year.

Ok, now I know after seeing that example, I imagine most of you are concerned that it isn’t enough decay to slow anyone down. Well, actually it is because of how it combines with the difficulty curve for raising skills at very high skill levels. With the decay used in the example, a player would hit a soft cap, due to reaching a steady state of losing experience at about the same rate they are earning experience once they hit around 400 times their daily earn rate.

So even casual players will be able to get a fair number of skills into the 80 range and keep a few dozen at 60+. The real challenge is going to be for those players that want to keep 1 or more skills in the 100+ range. Remember, that the difference between a 100 skill and 80 skill is around 10% but that last 10% costs 5 times as much as it took to get from 1 to 80! If players want to push beyond 100 they can but that curve gets steeper and steeper!

To give players a rough idea of the effort involved in leveling up a skill from from 1 to 80, which is what we consider to be master level, the effort required is about the same as it takes to get to level 28 right now. With the effort it currently takes to get to level 50, players could master 5 skills and have 30 additional skills to 40.

Things are MUCH more forgiving for those who are less concerned with becoming grandmasters. If a player just wants to get skills to 40 (which unlocks 3 out of 5 possible glyphs), then they should be be able to get 15 skills to 40 in the time it currently takes to go from level 5 to 20 under the current system. And just a reminder, 40 is approximately 70% of the effectiveness of a grandmaster.

So why spend the effort to be a grandmaster? Because to some players, that last few % is all the motivation they need to work for it. Additionally, becoming a grandmaster in a skill will let you unlock the grandmaster title that you can proudly display. What better way to attract new customers than to proudly display your “Grandmaster Weaponsmith” title. Also, if you’re trying to send a message to would be challengers, just fly your “Grandmaster Swordsman”. Those titles likely won’t make R21 but those, and probably some Steam achievements, will make a later release.

For R21 players, it will feel a bit like a player wipe release because all of your skills will be reset. So for a brief moment, all players will be on a pretty even playing field! Actually what we’re doing is moving all your current experience to that pool to be spent on skills. Also, recall that how much gets applied to skills on each use is based on a tiny percent of the size of that pool. So if PlayerX currently has a half million exps at the end of R20, they will start R21 with a half million exps in their pool to be applied to skills on use.

So the other thing that this means is that those players with lots of saved up experience will actually be able to advance quite a bit just from practicing. Over time though, they will burn through their pool and need to go adventure, PVP, or craft more challenging items to refill the pool. The other thing to expect is to see the hard core people behaving oddly as they try to be the first person to become a grandmaster a particular skill.

Ok, that is probably enough blathering to satisfy my wall of text for today. I look forward to the questions and answering concerns as I’m sure there will be many.

See you guys in game!

Chris “Dippy Dragon” Spears

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End-of-Summer Telethon

August 31 marks the end of our Summer Bonus promotion and to commemorate the event, we are holding a 12-Hour End-of-Summer Telethon, from 10am CST to 10pm CST, August 31, 2015! We are giving away hourly prizes during the telethon, as well as three Big Prizes, including a Patron, Ancestor, and Lord Pledge!

There will be hourly events, several of which will be hosted by twitch broadcasters, including Meet the Devs, Devs vs Players In-game Gustball Match, Feature Deep Dives, Devs vs Players In-game PVP Match, and more!

The full schedule of events will be included in next week’s Update of the Avatar, so stay tuned!

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Hometown: Parade of Homes (and basements)

As reported in Update #137, we received many requests from community members to be able to view a home in-game before purchasing, so we created Hometown Island using the new island POT template introduced in Release 20. We asked the community to help decorate the model homes, and the response was amazing!  Over 35 volunteers, led by Winfield and Kazyn Phoenixfyre, undertook the gargantuan task of decorating 75 homes and over 30 basements. Our most heartfelt thanks go out to all the volunteers of Project Decorate Hometown (my apologies if I left anyone off this list, as several volunteers, some completely new to the community, showed up spontaneously in-game to offer their assistance):

Alexander John, Andreas Whitefire, Asher Silvarian, Athanil, Craye Blackwood, Doctor Shroud, Dr Wiz, Drake Aedus, Eclipse Maiden, Edward Newgate, Fionwyn Wyldemane, GaelisTrajan, Grimace, Gurney, Harry Underworld, Jack Knyfe, Jenny Phoenixfyre, Justyn, Kacey, Kara Brae, Kazyn Phoenixfyre, Korvash, Leviathan Alestorm, Malakas, Manerd, Maxine Trehawke, Minerva, RebelWeasel, River, Sara Dreygon, Sindariya Tyelma, Stryker Sparhawk, Themo Lock, Troll, Warmcat Nadir,  Wiley Dan, Wind Silvermoon, Winfield

This work involved more than just the actual decorating. There was a massive amount of resource gathering and crafting that was necessary to create many of the deco items used for decorating. If you haven’t had a chance to check it out, we recommend you pay a visit to Hometown to see the amazing decorating job the volunteers did (it’s on an island just off the southeast corner of Novia, near the starting town of Soltown).

To help navigate the 75 homes and 30+ basements, Winfield created a very handy webpage that displays the layout of all the homes and basements in Hometown.

For those that might be into some PVP, at least one of the basements is flagged for open-PVP (other’s might follow). The PVP basement is a City Stone Arena basement located on Lot #15, on the back porch of the Twin Spire Manor.

Here are a few sample screenshots of the beautiful decorating efforts of the community volunteers:

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Player Owned Towns: Snowy Mountains

Michael Hutchison has completed the Snowy Mountains Player Owned Town template, as shown below. This template can now be viewed in the POT Submission Form, and any new POTs added in R21 that selected the snowy mountains biome will be able to use the new template for their dynamic lot placement. Any POTs already in the game that originally designated the snowy mountains biome will have their current template replaced with the new one when we do our next data wipe.

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Obsidian Stone Fence

In our line of Obsidian Architecture is the tall Obsidian Stone Fence, to give your property that dark, mysterious ambiance. Available now in the Add-On Store:

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10 Day Countdown for 10% Summer Bonus & Reward Expirations

If you were thinking of pledging your support to the development of Shroud of the Avatar, upgrading your existing pledge, or purchasing/upgrading a Player Owned Town, now’s a great time to do it! To celebrate twenty months of successful monthly releases, we are offering a 10% Summer Pledge/Town Bonus! Starting at 10am CST, July 10 and running through Midnight CST, August 31, 2015, you will receive an additional 10% bonus added to your Store Credit for any pledge purchases/upgrades, or Player Owned Town purchases/upgrades (including monthly pledge or town payment plans).

(NOTE: The 10% Bonus will be applied to your Store Credit within 24 hours of your purchase; 10% Bonus is for Pledges and Player Owned Town purchases/upgrades/payment plans only and does not apply to Add-On, Stretch Goal, or Make a Difference Store purchases; Existing Store Credit applied toward a purchase does not qualify for the 10% Bonus)

Additionally, as we enter the last half of 2015, and major milestones such as Alpha and Beta are looming closer on the horizon, we will be announcing a series of expiration events regarding pledges, rewards, and related services. The first expiration event coincides with the end of our 10% Summer Bonus promotion at Midnight CST, August 31, 2015. These expirations include:

• Select Pledges (including their specific rewards):
  • $220 Patron Pledge
  • $375 Navigator Pledge
  • $450 Developer Pledge
• Darkstarr rewards, including Darkstarr emote (all tiers), cloak (Founder tier), metronome (Virtual Collector tier), and moondial (Citizen tier)
• Signed physical goods (Patron pledge and above)
• Home and basement stacking (Ancestor pledge and above)
• Secondary lots (Lord pledge and above)
• Player Owned Towns with Overland Map Access

Please know that these expirations DO NOT affect any backers that already have these rewards. If you already got ’em, then you get to keep ’em! These expirations only affect new backers, or existing backers that have not upgraded to the specified pledge tiers before the expiration date.

[NOTE: Any payment plans started for the specified pledge tiers (Patron, Ancestor, & Lord) or above prior to Midnight CST, August 31, 2015 will not be affected by these expirations]

[Click here for more details…]

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10 Days Until Darkstarr Reward Delivery

The Darkstarr rewards, available to backers that have a pledge dated prior to July 31, 2013, are expiring after August 31, 2015. All backers that are eligible for any of the four Darkstarr rewards will have those rewards delivered to their account following August 31. They will be listed on your profile account page, similar to the manner in which any Add-On Store items you may have purchased are displayed. The Darkstarr rewards include:

• All Tiers ($25 and higher) – The Darkstarr Salute!  A special emote that only backers can master and teach to others.
• Founder Tier ($65 and higher) – The Darkstarr Cloak! A special cloak for your in-game avatar to wear, proudly displaying the unique Darkstarr symbol, identifying you as a backer of the game.
• Virtual Collector Tier ($110 and higher) – The Darkstarr Metronome! For those of you planning to play virtual instruments this mechanical metronome could be very useful! Set this in-game decoration next to your instrument and turn it on!
• Citizen Tier ($550 and higher) – The Darkstarr Moondial! A special in-game, yard decoration which will track the heavens day and night! Very useful when planning strategies in-game, as astronomical events which drive some story aspects will be easily determined with this device.

Once those Darkstarr rewards have been distributed to the eligible accounts, they will no longer be associated with specific pledges and cannot be transferred automatically if a pledge is sold or gifted to another account.

If you were thinking of upgrading your pledge to receive any of the rare Darkstarr rewards, you will need to do so by end of day August 31, 2015, after which they will no longer be available.

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Airship City Home Limited Availability

When we announced the Airship City Home in last week’s update, you may have noticed that it was priced at a premium well above the average cost of homes in the Add-On Store. As such, it was not intended to be included as one of the Add-On Store House Selections on the Player Owned Town Submission Form. It was brought to our attention that it was inadvertently included in the submission form menu, so we had it removed last weekend.

As a premium home, the Airship will only be available through the Add-On Store. Our apologies for any confusion this may have caused.

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In-game Weekend Community Events

Our amazing community has another great lineup of in-game events planned for this weekend. Special thanks to community member SpookyJenny (aka Jenny Phoenixfyre in-game) for her help in compiling the latest schedule of player events from the Avatar’s Circle Community Events calendar and the Events of the Avatars community calendar:

Recurring Events

• Daily War Time PVP Event (Daily, 6pm CST – 11pm CST)
  • Invitation to all guilds, PK hunters, PVP’rs or players interested in PVP training to come to Chaos Crossroads (Located at the crossroads outside of Kingsport on the road to Owl’s Head). PVP Event rules: None! Use whatever spells you want, kill in mobs or solo, group with new allies and defend your territory, lure newbies into the town and wack them! (details)
• Release 20 Deco Contest – Shops & Markets
  • This event has been extended! Get your entries in by September 21st, and judging will begin on September 25th. Your entry should be some kind of shop/bazaar/market/black market/trading post/harbor. Having a Vendor isn’t requirement. There will be prizes! Click here to enter the contest.
• Gladiator Wars (Mondays, 7pm CST)
  • A call to all fighters PVE and PVP! Would you like to participate in the “Gladiator Wars” PvP Tournaments? (details)
• Novian Academy – New Citizen Help Hours (Tuesdays, 6pm CST)
  • /zone Kazyn Phoenixfyre of Novian Academy in Soltown as they provide guidance to those new to the world of New Britannia.
• Novian Academy – The Philosophy of Order (Fridays, 5pm CST)
  • Weekly discussion on the philosophy of Order and their interconnection to the virtues. Learn how to overcome the misconceptions of order and chaos and instead learn about the realities behind the creation of both the Order philosophy and the virtues. (/zone Kazyn Phoenixfyre)
• Phoenix Republic Weekly Correspondents Dinner (Wednesdayas, 7pm CST)
  • Join the Phoenix Republic and all of our friends and allies in a weekly dinner and working hour (Port Phoenix Capital Building)
• The R20 Unreliable Travel Guide
  • The Unreliable Travel Guide, created at the SotA Writing Round Table, is not an event, but a a collection of hilarious short stories published by two drunken layabouts who have nothing better to do than try to derive a dishonest income from newly arrived avatars. (details)
• “The Tavern Respite” RP Event (Mondays, 8pm CST)
  • The tavern door opens before you, and the scent of pipe and stew waft outwards with a wall of warmth from the hearth. Join in with the patrons of the Bear Tavern as they share tales of their adventures amid endless mugs of ale, legs of mutton, and merriment unbounded (details)!
• Happy Hour Wednesdays (Wednesdays, 8pm CST)
  • Otherwise known as “Spend Stryker’s Gold” – Stryker will open a bar tab at one of the local Novia taverns for an hour or so for drinks, stories, news, critique of the arts, dancing, and otherwise unplanned mayhem. Zone /Stryker Sparhawk or watch this thread for locations each week!
• Vengeance Madness (Fridays, 7pm CST)
  • This is an Open PvP event where everyone fights it out in a royal rumble to see who the ultimate death dealer is! (City of Vengeance; /zone Bambino LudoVate)
• Daily Breakfast Club – 12am CST (London UK); 6am CST (Central US); 3pm CST (Sydney Australia)
  • Breakfast Clubs offer a time when people from around different time zones can gather. (Wody’s Pub, Paxlair)
• Phoenix Republic – Military Drills – Control Points (Thursdays & Fridays, 7pm CST)
  • Join the Phoenix Republic as we send our weekly foray into the control points, dungeons and other of the most dangerous locales. Each week we will depart to a different PVE locale to help train our combatants. Contact Kazyn Phoenixfyre for more info!
• Challenge Dungeon Run (Fridays, 7pm CST)
  • This is a self-host event, meet at the Braemar Cemetery and organize into groups to take on the infamous Chillblain’s Compendium of Pain & Suffering!

Saturday, August 22

• 9:00am CST PaxLair Working Hours
  • PaxLair town and community “working hours” are for anyone interested in PaxLair. (/zone Winfield)
• 11:00am CST Church of the Dark Star – Saturday Service
  • Join Lady Amber Raine, High Priestess of the Church of the Dark Star along with Kazyn Phoenixfyre of the Church of the Sun, as they bring another thought provoking service. (PaxLair; details)
• 12:00pm CST 4B Maze Riddle: The Hidden Truth
  • Collect the hidden clues and uncover the truth! More details coming. (Radio City, /zone Net; details)
• 12:00pm CST BMC Crafting Faire
  • The Britannian Mining Company cordially invites you to our monthly crafting faire in central Owl’s Head. Come learn the intricacies of crafting from the BMC master craftsman and receive a kit to craft a weapon. There will be several well stocked player run stores onsite providing a large variety of bespoke products. (/zone to Kendric Darrow or Xavier Starfall; details)
• 2:00pm CST Archaeology Event
  • Dara Brae is hosting the next of a series of archeology events where you play as “Indiana Jones” and adventure on a quest to find “something”. “Something” will be determined right before the event. (Dara Brae or /zone Greagoir)
• 6:00pm CST BMC General Assembly
  • The Britannian Mining Company cordially invites you to their first Shroud of the Avatar General Assembly. To be held at Blackrock Point on Novia near Etceter Crag Mines (details)
• 6:00pm CST Scholars of Novia Book Faire
  • The Knights of New Britannia will be hosting R20s Scholar’s of Novia Book Faire at Caer Dracwych. The event includes a book exchange as well as lessons on book crafting and publishing. Our reading room will be available to everyone if you just want to come by and see our library and have a quite place to read. (Click here for details and map to Caer Dracwych)
• 8:00pm CST Vengeance 1v1 Tournament
  • The longest running Player vs Player tournament in Shroud of the Avatar. (City of Vengeance)
• 9:00pm CST Astronomy Event
  • Ever wonder what those planets are in the night sky? Think you see a new constellation or just have a passing interest in astronomy? Join us at Caer Dracwych for observing the heavenly bodies and general discussions on New Britannia astronomy. (/zone Bowen Bloodgood; map to Caer Dracwych)

Sunday, August 23

• 6:30am CST Explore Novia with royalsexy (PaxLair Moon Tower, /zone royalsexy)
• 8:30am CST PaxLair Meeting
  • Come see what PaxLair is up to in Novia and other town areas! Many people also attend from towns and guilds for a bit of a weekly wrap-up and what’s happening. Good discussions! (PaxLair, /zone Winfield)
• 11:00am CST Phoenix Republic Town Hall/Working Hours
  • A Gathering of members of the Phoenix Republic to cover important topic areas of the month. (Republic Town Hall, Port Phoenix, /zone Kazyn Phoenixfyre or Jack Knyfe)
• 3:00pm CST Gustball
  • Two teams are pitted against each other in a sporting event not dissimilar from soccer, football, and basketball. The object of the game is to Gust a Gustball around the field and into your opponent’s goal (/zone Bambino Ludovate, details)
• 5:00pm CST BMC Grid Iron Feast and Registration
  • Register to compete in the BMC Gridiron and mingle with other participants and spectators before the big fight! (Blackrock Point on Novia near Etceter Crag Mines, details)
• 5:30pm CST BMC Gladiator’s Grid-Iron
  • The BMC is proud to present the nastiest, the foulest, the most feared arena in all of New Britannia! The Grid-Iron is equipped with a pit-style arena, locker rooms, a VIP round-table, betting & vendor booths, and all the blood-sport you can handle. (Blackrock Point on Novia near Etceter Crag Mines, details)
• 7:00pm CST PaxLair Meeting
  • Come see what PaxLair is up to in Novia and other town areas! Many people also attend from towns and guilds for a bit of a weekly wrap-up and what’s happening. Good discussions!  (PaxLair, /zone Winfield)
• 8:00pm CST Fishing with Winfield
  • Come sit with Winfield on a log or rock to hear some fish tales or tell your own. Chat about anything from the moons to the earth worms. Spend a relaxing day in nature near a stream or lake — bring insect repellent or a sword.  (some lake or pond, /zone Winfield)

Be sure and check out the Release 20 Events thread in the SotA forums for additional events that may not be included here.

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Upcoming Events

2015.08.27 – Release 21
2015.08.28 – SotA at Syndcon
2015.09.04 – SotA at Dragon Con
2015.09.24 – Release 22
2015.10.29 – Release 23

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Recommended Games to Back

Project: Gorgon

“While most recent MMO’s have chased the EQ/WOW models, it’s great to see games like Project Gorgon, pursuing the more open world and sandbox style that I think is underserved to gamers.” – Richard “Lord British” Garriott.

Project Gorgon is a new Massively Multiplayer Online Game brought to you by Eric Heimburg and his wife Sandra Powers. They have over a decade of experience in engineering, design, and production on games such as Asheron’s Call 1 and 2, Star Trek Online, EverQuest II, and others successful MMOs. Project Gorgon  features an immersive experience that allows the player to forge their own path through exploration and discovery. The game also features an ambitious skill based leveling system that bucks the current trend of pre-determined classes, thus allowing the player to combine skills in order to create a truly unique playing experience.

This is the final weekend for Project Gorgon’s Kickstarter campaign. They’ve almost tripled their funding goal, but could use your help reaching their stretch goals. Check out their campaign and if you like what you see then pledge your support!