Updates

Lord British’s Birthday Bash Telethon – July 6th

** $100,000 **

Telethon Funds Raised


Telethon Stretch Goal Rewards:

  • ACHIEVED! $10,000: Silver Fireworks
  • ACHIEVED! $25,000: /flowerwandtrick: make a magic wand turn into flower bouquet
  • ACHIEVED! $35,000: Lord British Helmet with Silver Serpent: includes light source
  • ACHIEVED! $50,000: Lord British Throne (chair with Lord British symbol on it)
  • ACHIEVED! $65,000: Tuxedo with tails + 2 Magic Emotes (/birdtrick & /endlessclothtrick)
  • ACHIEVED! $80,000: Lord British Version of Moondial
  • ACHIEVED! $100,000: Magical Pet Broom


Avatars, get ready for a birthday bash like no other! Today, we are announcing a special mini-telethon around Lord British’s birthday! Event begins on July 6th and runs from 3-9pm CT. Lord British’s birthday is on July 4th, a couple of days before the telethon.

Telethons are livestreamed on Twitch and include a complete schedule of developer Deep Dives, answers to your gameplay questions, community activities, prize giveaways, sales on items, and more!

Celebrate with the community as the telethon approaches in one of the many soon-to-be-announced party contest celebrations!

Expiring Items

In honor of Lord British’s birthday, at 9pm CT, July 6, 2017, we are expiring the following content from the Add On Store (and the in-game Crown Merchants). This means that these items will no longer be available in our store after this date.

Before the following items expire for good, we have put them on sale at approx. 20% off! Check out what’s currently on sale:

Read more…


Free Trial Test #4 – July 3-26

We are excited to announce the latest test of our Free Trial system, running from July 3-26th! 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. 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: July 3-26, 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 43 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!


Update of the Avatar #234 – 2017.06.30: Play R43 Now, Q3 2017 Schedule, Free Trial Starts Monday, RTX Event Attendance, Lord British Telethon & Sales, Raffle Winners, Community Events, and More!

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

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

Play Release 43 Now!

Release 43 successfully launched yesterday, June 29, with thousands of backers downloading, patching, and logging in to check out the changes! There’s lots of new content to explore, including:

Read more…


Shroud at RTX 2017 on July 7-9, Booth #323!

We are incredibly excited to announce that we are returning to Rooster Teeth Expo July 7 – 9! Come find us in Booth 323 at the Austin Convention Center where you can play the game, get a challenge coin, and meet various members of the development team including Richard “Lord British” Garriott, Starr “Darkstarr” Long, and others.

We go back a long way with Rooster Teeth. Richard actually made the very first mention of Shroud of the Avatar on their show before the Kickstarter! We then attended RTX that same year (2013), right after Starr joined the team, where we gave a presentation and a live demo of a very early version of Release 1. 

The next year (2014) we returned to the show and this time we had a corner booth on the show floor with crowds of people moving through our space every day.

Hope to see you at this year’s event!


Q3 2017 Schedule Update

Starr_avatar

[From a forum post by Starr “Darkstarr” Long]

Greetings Avatars,

As we have stated previously, we intend to publish quarterly schedule updates for our monthly releases. Even though the goals outlined in these schedules are likely to change somewhat as we react to feedback, we feel it is important to periodically provide you with an updated roadmap.

Our priority continues to be to deliver new content to our backers each and every month so that you can give us feedback that will help us iteratively improve Shroud of the Avatar. This collaborative process continues to benefit the game, and often results in sweeping changes such as the upcoming addition of the Outskirts scenes. As you have seen in previous releases, the flexibility inherent to this process means that we sometimes push things out, but we also often pull new things in.

Performance: One of our biggest priorities for the third quarter will be to improve performance. A significant portion of each release will be spent on improving client stability, framerate, memory usage, and load times.

New User Experience (NUE): Another large priority for the third quarter will continue to be about improving the new user experience. These efforts will include adding the final two Outskirts maps and polishing the User Interface. Read more…


Release 43 Instructions

Avatars,

Please read this entire message, as well as the linked Instructions and Known Issues. Join the discussion of this update in the forums.

Thank you for being a loyal backer and follower of Shroud of the Avatar. Release 43 access for all Early Access backers begins this Thursday, June 29, at 10:30 AM US Central Daylight Time (15:30 UTC).

Release 43 contains both a huge amount of new content and a major improvement in performance that will generally improve everything about playing the game (and I do not exaggerate). Framerates have been improved in every scene, doubled in some! This really will make playing the game feel so much better in every way. Additionally, one of our biggest and most complicated scenes ever, Blood River Outskirts, goes live this release. Three scenes got completely rebuilt and four more scenes got major polish passes. Finally, we are expanding the mail system to allow player-to-player mail as well as expanding and balancing the Offline Economy!

On top of all this new content, we also launched our SeedInvest Crowd Equity campaign to raise funds for our commercial launch later this year. Speaking of later this year… stay tuned tomorrow for our Q3 Schedule Update to find out what we will be working on for the next three releases!

Read more…


Richard Garriott at Barcelona Gamelab (June 28-30) and San Diego Comic-Con (July 20-23)

Richard “Lord British” Garriott will be at multiple events over the next few weeks, starting with tomorrow’s Gamelab event in Barcelona! Richard will then be joined by Starr “Darkstarr” Long in San Diego next month for Comic-Con.

If you are at either of these events, here’s your chance to meet them!

Richard Garriott at Barcelona Gamelab

Meet Richard “Lord British” Garriott at the Gamelab Barcelona conference this coming June 28-30th in Barcelona, Spain! Richard is not only set to speak at the conference, but also will be receiving the Spanish Academy of Ineractive Arts and Sciences prestigious Honory Award!

The Spanish Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, a cultural institution devoted to the improvement of a growing creative sector of over 400 companies and 4.000 professionals, announced today that the legendary designer, entrepreneur and adventurer Richard Garriott will receive its top recognition, the Honorary Award, during its annual convention in Barcelona.

Ivan Fernandez-Lobo, founder and chairman of Gamelab Barcelona and former president of the Spanish Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, commented on the Academy’s decision to nominate Garriott for the Award that “the British-American designer and entrepreneur is a truly game-changer for the medium and a source of inspiration for anyone with a creative soul, even beyond the Industry limits”. Fernandez-Lobo also highlighted “the influence of Garriott’s adventurer spirit in the games he designed and the companies he founded”.

[Read More…]

Comic-Con Panels with Richard Garriott and Starr Long

Attending Comic-Con this coming July 20-23? Richard Garriott and Starr Long will be there to meet you! Richard has two panels with one talking about his adventures in space. The other panel is with Starr Long about Shroud of the Avatar!

Explore/Create: Richard Garriott’s Adventures from Gaming Pioneer to Space Adventurer – Richard “Lord British” Garriott authored the famed “Ultima” series and coined the term “avatar”. In 2008, he became the first American second-generation astronaut when he flew to the ISS. Learn more from his new memoir “Explore/Create”.

Shroud of the Avatar – Richard “Lord British” Garriott (creative director) and Starr Long (exec. producer) will discuss their latest venture, Shroud of the Avatar, currently the second highest crowdfunded video game of all time. Learn how they have developed the game while honing cutting-edge crowdfunding techniques.

Panel times and location have not yet been announced. Keep watch for updates on the official Comic-Con website.

Check out the Upcoming Events Calendar for a complete list of events kicking off in the coming months!


Update of the Avatar #233 – 2017.06.23: New Scene Updates, Lord British Birthday Telethon & Sale, New Free Trial, Comic-Con Panels, Reddit AMA, Party Contest, New Videos, SeedInvest Update, and More!

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

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

Isle of Storms Polish

Since this is the very first scene players encounter we felt that it could use some additional visual polish so we spent time this release making various improvements to lighting, terrain, visual effects, and flora.

[From a Dev+ Forum Post by Travis “Vas Corp Por” Koleski]

Hello Avatars!

We’ve been busy with lots of improvements and updates this release. We keep improving visual tools and assets to build scenes with, and so it’s fun to re-visit some of the older existing maps and touch them up with our new toys.

Hutch, Damon, and I have been touching up Isle of Storms recently (as well as an update to Arabella from the character team!). Here’s some of our progress:

Before…

After!

Read more…


Community Livestream – Questing in Bloodriver Outskirts

Community of the Avatar

We will be kicking off this week’s Community Livestream by giving players a first look at all the new quest content in Bloodriver Outskirts! Damien “Puuk” Foletto will be driving the master build machine as we quest around the scene and discover its hidden secrets.

SPOILERS: Players following the Path of Truth encounter the Elven village of Bloodriver massacred by vigilantes from Aerie. The elves have fled for their lives into the forests upriver and invaded the home of an Elven hermit who dwells in a ruin deep in the forest. They have set traps to protect themselves from the vigilantes who have pursued them here and are harassing them still. Elven soldiers from Vertas are arriving from the north to protect them while Aerie soldiers are streaming in from the south east to try and stop all out war between the humans and elves. We hope to have this scene live in Release 43.

After the scene changes go live, we have even more content, including quests, you can look forward to in future releases!

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


Rock Me Avatarus! – Party Showcase Contest

Get your party spot ready for a contest that’s sure to wow all the guests! Over the next two weeks, you will have the opportunity to show off your party hosting skills in today’s contest – Rock Me Avatarus – Party Showcase Contest. Contest begins now and runs until 12pm (Noon) CT on July 5th, a day after Lord British’s birthday on the 4th!

Read more…