Shroud of the Avatar - Catch All

I'm keeping an eye on this game for sure, but the old-school "use your brain to remember quests" may get old very quickly. I'm all about the crafting and RP aspects though.

I saw a demo of the conversation system and it looked simply incredible. Ultima V was one of the first games I ever played on a PC, so I'm cautiously optimistic (though I tend to prefer single player games...)

NAME. JOB. BYE.

I find it interesting watching the processes this is going through in development and comparing them to what EQNext is doing. There's a lot of overlapping philosophies at work here. Will be fun to see how each group ties all their stuff together.

Yea. I'm also cautiously optimistic. There were a number of things about the Ultima series and UO that never really jumped into the diku-inspired branch of MMOs popularized early on by EQ1. UO was my first formal UO, but I'd been playing the Ultimas since II (before I even got a color TV for my Apple //e!). So it still holds a special place in my heart.

Even if it's just old school developer developing an old school MMO, that could be enough if the quality and breadth are there.

EQnext doesn't feel like that to me though. It feels like an amalgamation of a number of different evolutionary paths for shared experiences in a persistent world environment. If they can actually pull off an engaging motivation system within a world with SL or lite-Minecraft level of customization populated by avatars with interesting skill sets in an action-y combat system, I'll be there.

But that's a whole lot of "ifs"

Delmarqo wrote:

Yea. I'm also cautiously optimistic. There were a number of things about the Ultima series and UO that never really jumped into the diku-inspired branch of MMOs popularized early on by EQ1. UO was my first formal UO, but I'd been playing the Ultimas since II (before I even got a color TV for my Apple //e!). So it still holds a special place in my heart.

Even if it's just old school developer developing an old school MMO, that could be enough if the quality and breadth are there.

EQnext doesn't feel like that to me though. It feels like an amalgamation of a number of different evolutionary paths for shared experiences in a persistent world environment. If they can actually pull off an engaging motivation system within a world with SL or lite-Minecraft level of customization populated by avatars with interesting skill sets in an action-y combat system, I'll be there.

But that's a whole lot of "ifs" :)

Very true but if you followed the development of UO there's a lot of things they tried or wanted to do but had to ditch due to the tech wasn't to the point that could handle what they wanted. Those things are being put into place by EQN which is what has me excited for it.

Plus keep in mind that the Minecraft portion (EQN:Landmark) is a completely separate and standalone game on it own and feeds into the actual EQN game itself.

First shot at game is Dec 12th

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/fo...

RELEASE 1: December 12 - December 14, 2013
•Install / Patching system: Step one for you guys to play the game is for you to download the game and then patch the game. Since this is the first hands on impression of the product, it is critical.
•Login / Registration: Players should be able to log in using their existing accounts and if they have not yet registered, they should be intuitively led to the steps to register.
•Character Creation: Players should be able to create and customize their character. Creation / Customization options for Release 1 will include: name, gender, head shape, skin tone, hair style, hair color, and eye color.
•Single Player Online: All public releases prior to commercial launch will be online only. For Release 1 and 2, it will be constrained to single player online only.
•First Town: Our first town (perhaps Owl’s Head) will be open for business. This is important for testing purposes so we can better tune our performance metrics on real user machines. For Release 1, exiting the town will just funnel you back into the same town (anyone see Groundhog Day?)
•Conversation: Important that players converse with the townsfolk so we can start expanding the dialog system. As you talk to NPCs, we will be tracking your conversations and using them to add more content based on your input.
•Bag Inventory: This is a hot topic in the forums so we want to get it in your hands for feedback on preferences. Immersion vs. ease of use, let the battle begin!
•Equipment: Players will be provided with several chests full of “ph@t lootz” (armor, clothes, weapons, etc.) for trying on for size.
•House Claiming: Players will be able to select a house from the entire list of player houses (even Lord of the Manor!) for free so that we can test out the various size houses on the lots and allow players to test drive the various houses so they can have a better idea of which they ultimately want to own.
•House Decorating: Chests full of furniture and decorative items will be provided so you can stress test the decoration system and try out various styles of interiors. Help us figure out all the ways you can break things! (Look forward to screenshot contests on this!)
•Metrics: All the while you are playing, we will be stress testing our metrics system. This system is critical to maintaining a balanced economy, tracking exploits, and gathering data to improve the experience.

So, is this an MMO?

garion333 wrote:

So, is this an MMO?

Yep but they're doing a single player component that allows folks to swap around as well.

Email update from Starr Long, beta access for a couple of days.

Thank you for being a loyal backer of Shroud of the Avatar. Early access for all backers at First Responder / Adventurer level and above begins with Release 1 tomorrow, Thursday December 12 at 10:30 AM Central Time. Release 1 access will end on Saturday December 14 at 10:00 PM Central Time. Starting today you can begin installing and patching (see instructions below) but login will not be enabled until Thursday morning.

We are happy to say that we are going to deliver just about every single Release 1 item (except for head shapes in character creation). Here are those deliverables again (along with a few extra notes about each):

RELEASE 1: December 12 - December 14, 2013
Install / Patching system: Step one for you guys to play the game is for you to download the game and then patch the game. Since this is the first hands on impression of the product, it is critical.
Login / Registration: Players should be able to log in using their existing accounts and if they have not yet registered, they should be intuitively led to the steps to register. NOTE: To thoroughly test login we will be kicking everyone off periodically and making them log back in to stress the servers. We will do our best to broadcast in game prior to when we do this.
Character Creation: Players should be able to create and customize their character. Creation / Customization options for Release 1 will include: name, gender, head shape, skin tone, hair style, hair color, and eye color. NOTE: Character wipes will happen periodically prior to launch so name choice during these early releases is not final.
Single Player Online: All public releases prior to commercial launch will be online only. For Release 1 and 2, it will be constrained to single player online only.
First Town: Our first town, Owl’s Head will be open for exploration. This is important for testing purposes so we can better tune our performance metrics on real user machines. For Release 1, exiting the town will just funnel you back into the same town (anyone see Groundhog Day?)
Conversation: Important that players converse with the townsfolk so we can start expanding the dialog system. As you talk to NPCs, we will be tracking your conversations and using them to add more content based on your input.
Bag Inventory: This is a hot topic in the forums so we want to get it in your hands for feedback on preferences. Immersion vs. ease of use, let the battle begin!
Equipment: Players will be provided with several chests full of “ph@t lootz” (armor, clothes, weapons, etc.) for trying on for size.
House Claiming: Players will be able to select a house from the entire list of player houses (even Lord of the Manor!) for free so that we can test out the various size houses on the lots and allow players to test drive the various houses so they can have a better idea of which they ultimately want to own. NOTE: Character wipes will happen periodically prior to launch so lot choice during these early releases is not final.
House Decorating: Chests full of furniture and decorative items will be provided so you can stress test the decoration system and try out various styles of interiors. Help us figure out all the ways you can break things! (Look forward to screenshot contests on this!)
Metrics: All the while you are playing, we will be stress testing our metrics system. This system is critical to maintaining a balanced economy, tracking exploits, and gathering data to improve the experience.
So now that it is clear what you can expect we should also be as clear about what you should not expect:
Mac & Linux: We are definitely going to support these Operating Systems but we were unable to get them working satisfactorily for Release 1. For Release 1 we will only support Windows. Our goal is to try again for OSX and Linux support for Release 2.
Performance: Our goal with Release 1 was to build a machine challenging scene with Owl’s Head. We have only done rudimentary optimizations and we do not yet have a full suite of fallbacks (LODs, etc.). This means for R1 the game will be quite slow on lower end machines and due to memory usage might be unstable in certain conditions (like densely decorated areas). With each release we will be doing further optimizations and adding to our fallbacks to improve performance.
Game Loop: Even though we have clearly stated that there will not be a complete game loop (adventure, loot, spend, craft, quest, etc.) until Release 4 there is still some expectation of those activities. For R1 there is just character creation / customization, NPC conversation, and home decoration.
Advanced Player Housing: There are some advanced features for player housing including basements, home exterior decorations, and ceiling decorations that are not yet integrated. Expect to see these appear in future releases with the goal that by Release 4 they should all be present.
Below my signature you will find instructions and known issues. Thank you again for your continued support. This is truly the most amazing community we have ever worked with and we are proud to be on this journey with you.

Sincerely,
Starr Long
Executive Producer

PS We have included some surprises around Owl’s Head so be sure to explore thoroughly.

I got my copy installed last night but the servers aren't up until later today.

How many Goodjers do we have in the beta access? Anyone going to be on tonight?

OK, I played a bit of this. All there is so far is single-player online, so you log in but there isn't anyone there but NPCs.

The thing is clearly pre-alpha. Character generation options are minimal; basically just gender, hair and eye color. You can run around the town but there isn't much to do there. Most of the houses are for sale and you can get one for free at the moment but there isn't much to do with them. I found a crate of furniture in the upper floor of a store and you can put it out in any house but that's about it.

One thing I think is interesting is the conversation system. You don't get a box with a set of responses to click off. If you are near an NPC they talk. You then talk back to them using your chat window. Certain words the NPCs say are in bold and if you use one of them you get a response about it. (Sometimes. See pre-alpha.)

Here's a few screenies I took.

IMAGE(http://imageshack.com/a/img809/1223/3blt.jpg)

IMAGE(http://imageshack.com/a/img706/9733/iyp0.jpg)

IMAGE(http://imageshack.com/a/img689/9896/2oin.jpg)

IMAGE(http://imageshack.com/a/img801/954/jrdm.jpg)

IMAGE(http://imageshack.com/a/img585/445/1uf4.jpg)

IMAGE(http://imageshack.com/a/img89/857/wh5l.jpg)

I was going to complain about the resolution but when I was logging out I noticed that it had reset itself to 1024 x 768 and I hadn't realized. I reset it to full-screen resolution and it looked better, though the textures are still pretty basic. Again, see pre-alpha.

I hit a few glitches. There's a horse in a stable that looked like it was having a fit of some kind, twitching back and forth. I could also clip through it from some angles. Actually, there were a lot of clipping issues going on. That was the main problem I encountered. Well, most of the townspeople seemed to have no relevant dialog beyond a few canned phrases and there didn't seem to be any way to interact. (There are merchants but you can't buy or sell anything.) But yeah... pre-alpha.

I'll probably play around with it a bit more before the weekend and see what else I can find. Anyone else found anything of interest?

It looks like there is a decent variety of player ownable homes available. I especially liked the tree home.

It always amuses me to see the old trope of the town gate guard that approaches you with, "Halt, we don't take kindly to strangers around here, so just move along." Then after you greet him, he suddenly treats you to every bit of friendly gossip as if you two are long lost friends.

I couldn't find the bandit cave or throne of bones, so just kind of wandered a bit and logged out.

I think I've seen more about their homes than anything else. Shroud of the Avatar: Extreme Home Makeover edition. It's coming.

garion333 wrote:

I think I've seen more about their homes than anything else. Shroud of the Avatar: Extreme Home Makeover edition. It's coming.

It's funny cause it's true. The add-on store gets away with mostly selling houses and basements. Also the 2nd batch of deeds for an early shot at Village level land plots, taxable I might add, sold out immediately after the RC1 pre-alpha dropped and people could freely see and try out all the different homes.

The 1st batch of deeds goes to all the Kickstarter backers at Citizen level or higher. Which is around $200 as I recall.

While I do sound harsh, I am an original Kickstarter backer as well but at one of the lower, more sane, levels. Most likely will be playing this as single-player only on a local server where I can go hog crazy with housing if I wanted without tax, the Windmill house is a beauty for example.

I dunno, Star Citizen seems to market this much better and I can see actual benefits in playing online (enconomy and such). While for Shroud of the Avatar, it just sounds more interesting to play at my own pace, enjoy the world around and dive into the story; just how I played the earlier Ultima games.

Yeah, a few friends and I are likely going to be playing this, but using a private server of our own for limited multiplayer, rather than on the full mmo scale.

Alpha release 2 just came out and is live through Saturday. Here's what's in the latest:

Shroud of the Avatar wrote:

RELEASE 2: January 23 - January 25 2014

Crafting: We will be opening up crafting for testing with more than 100 recipes. Chests full of crafting resources will be provided. Crafting will initially focus on refining and production for smithing, tailoring, and carpentry.
Shopping: Shopkeepers will be open for business for selling and buying.
Town 2: An additional municipality (likely village sized) will be open for business! Entering the swirling blue portal in the ring of stones will take you from one town to the other. We chose Kingsport for Town 2.
List Inventory: For those who prefer spreadsheets to immersion. The inventory battle royale continues! Setting this option will change all containers into lists except for crafting tables (coming in R3).
Character Customization++: Characters from R1 will be wiped, but you will now have even more options when creating your character! Now there are even more ways to look unique, including: facial features, scaling, and more content (hairstyles, head shapes, skin tones, hair colors, etc.) We were also able to include helmets and offhand items (torch and shield).
Jumping: Tired of not being able to jump that fence? Well tire no more as we now have jumping. And not just any old jumping but player controlled height jumping. A quick tap on the spacebar barely lifts the player but holding down the spacebar allows the player to clear those pesky walls with a high jump. Long term jumping will use focus and will likely be affected by weight carried.
Run Speed: Many of you commented on the slow run speed so we increased it by 50%, which feels much more satisfying. We will continue to tune this and balance it with an upcoming Dash skill that uses Focus as well as the Sprint buff in the Light Armor School of combat.
Mac & Linux: OSX and Linux support is now working (with a few caveats). The game currently requires a two button mouse and while a trackpad technically works we are not fully supporting it yet. For Linux, Unity only officially supports Ubuntu so if you are running other versions it may not work.
Recipe Log: We had originally planned to put crafting in R2 without a recipe log but quickly discovered how amazingly not fun that was. Discovery is great but not having any record of that discovery is just punishing. So we got in a recipe book that will track your recipes.

I'll try it tonight or tomorrow and post what I find.

I honestly have no idea why I backed this game.

Budo wrote:

I honestly have no idea why I backed this game.

Houses. Must be the houses.

I'm mostly interested in the crafting, but I also didn't back it because Lord British hasn't done a game in foreverz.

Budo wrote:

I honestly have no idea why I backed this game.

I question their choice of showcasing such an early alpha build. Yeesh.

The selective multiplayer is an interesting thing to me, I will follow along just to see how that pans out.

Osiran wrote:
Budo wrote:

I honestly have no idea why I backed this game.

I question their choice of showcasing such an early alpha build. Yeesh.

I think it's neat actually. They are being very open about the development process and taking feedback pretty seriously.

I backed it and played around a bit last night. I'll post some impressions later, although this early there isn't much to tell.

There's no NDA that I know of so I'm assuming it's ok to post some thoughts.

The alpha was very limited this weekend. You got to explore 2 towns, play with housing, chat with NPC's and craft. The main focus was crafting. It reminded me very much of UO crafting and even minecraft to a degree.

I think it's probably a bit early to post and pro's and con's about the game since everything will probably change. I can say that I liked what I saw. The interface and crafting need a bit of improvement but suggestions have been made and I get the impression that the developers are taking those suggestions seriously.

Started looking at this again this weekend.

Graphics are improving and the character creation process invokes old school ultima by asking some questions about a situation. Your answers determine your starting gear and area.

I keep wanting this to be the UO successor that I always wanted so keep checking in every couple ok months.

Huh.. I figured this had gotten cancelled or something.. totally forgot about it even existing.

No it is still going.

Up to release 24 now.

It has a big Ultima feel to it which of course is what they are going for. If you played Ultima Online or any of the other Ultima games it is immediately noticeable,

Character creation now has you answer 3 questions which picks our starting equipment and location. There is some allusion to acts having consequences, such as warning you if you loot corpses it may be frowned upon, but I yet to see any true consequences yet.

Adventure areas are still too small I think. Since they have the overland map dotted with these adventure areas I think they need to be larger or any sense of exploration will be minimal.

In theory they should be coming out of pre-alpha and into alpha but not sure that distinction matters much.

maladen wrote:

In theory they should be coming out of pre-alpha and into alpha but not sure that distinction matters much.

It does for the devs

Some big news announced. Final character wipe and lot selections for housing is all planned. Long amount of text but it looks like July is the last time they will wipe.

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: Final Wipe and Lot Selection

[A message from Starr Long]

Greetings Avatars,

We are incredibly excited to announce that we have scheduled final lot selection and our final wipe, including all social data (names, friends, guilds), for Release 32, July 28, 2016! After Release 32, we will no longer be wiping the game state. Your characters and your properties will be persistent from that date forward.

Please understand that final wipe is not “launch”. We will continue to be working to finish the game's story content well past final wipe, while we remain in Early Access. Until then, the game is neither "launched" nor complete, but as mentioned below, the concept of “launch” may not even be applicable to this development model. Launch will be when we pull the game out of Early Access and we start marketing / public relation campaigns to pull in new customers. We have no plans to do those things in July. We know that this plan will generate a lot of questions and stir up plenty of emotions, but we firmly believe this is the best possible course of action for the project.

By Release 32, our goal is that the virtual world and economy will be fully functional and reasonably balanced. Additionally, the Love storyline will be polished and playable from beginning to end, with all characters and quests complete. The Truth and Courage storylines will also be completely playable from beginning to end, although not in as polished a state as Love. We are purposely holding the finale part of the storyline that ties the three threads together until the entire plot has been polished. This allows us to really focus on the new user experience and one storyline instead of spreading that effort out too thinly. ***Please note that the story is nonlinear and non-exclusive. It is designed to allow free movement between the three storylines and it is only until all three are complete that you move to the finale (this structure will be very familiar to Ultima players). So just because you finish the Love story, you are not excluded in any way from experiencing the other plots.

As part of all of this, we are also announcing the 2016 Spring and Summer Expiration Events.

We are expiring approximately half of the currently available pledges during the Spring 2016 Expiration Event, which occurs at 10:30 AM CST, May 2, 2016 (following the next wipe during Release 29). We are then expiring all of the remaining pledges and Player Owned Towns during the Summer 2016 Expiration Event, which occurs at 10:30 AM CST, August 1, 2016 (following the final wipe during Release 32). After August 1 a purchase of the game on our website or through steam will only include access to the game, it will not include any pledge rewards.

We are also expiring the Stretch Goal Store on February 29th at 10:30 AM CST. After that date, those items will no longer be available and we will no longer be considering those stretch goals as part of Episode 1. As part of that, we have changed these items so they can be re-gifted now. Additionally, Release 26 is officially the final Grand Tour for Episode 1 (so you better log in to get the very last Grand Tour quest reward!).

Finally, we are going to be making almost all the add-ons and pledge rewards (except tax free lots) available through gameplay in single player offline mode. Players will still have to earn enough gold to purchase them, or gather enough resources to craft them in-game. For reference, the cost to purchase a Castle Deed in Offline Mode will be at least $120 million gold and it will have a very high tax rate. Players that purchased add-on items and received pledge rewards will start the game with them, just like they do now.

We have decided to do all of this because wiping player progress decreases player engagement and prevents us from getting the economy of the game started. It has also caused us to push polish until later in the project which is a traditional approach to development, but we are not approaching this traditionally. We are also going to stop using the terms “Alpha” and “Beta.” Our product is in a constant state of development and we have been live since November 2013, so using those terms no longer makes sense. Starting with Release 26, we are going to adopt the term “Early Access,” instead.

Here is a list of all the work going in between Release 27 (February) and Release 32 (July). Please note that we will not be posting a revised Q1 schedule, but you can expect the Q2 schedule at the normal time when we launch Release 28 in March.

Pre-Wipe Schedule:

Performance: We will be spending a great deal of each release making improvements to performance via optimizations and fallback routines.
New User Experience: This part of the game will be much more guided and instructive. It will also be better paced with a bigger feeling of accomplishment when leaving the starting areas and having completed the beginning of the game.
Story: The Love storyline will be polished and playable from beginning to end, with all characters and quests complete. The Truth and Courage storylines will also be completely explorable.
Character Art: Major focus will be put on upgrading the visuals of the characters, with special attention paid to wearables, skin, hair, and face.
Animation: Polish passes will be done across all animations in the game with emphasis on speeding up the combat animations to feel MUCH more responsive.
Combat Balance: Through a combination of regular internal play sessions, community feedback, and metrics analysis, we will be balancing combat across all levels of difficulty, magic/combat schools, gear equipped, PVP, and PVE. We will also finish the last few gaps in skill trees (Shields, Ranged, and Chaos) and will add the ability for unlearning skills from trainers.
Economy / Crafting / Loot Balance: Through a combination of regular internal play sessions, community feedback, and metrics analysis, we will be balancing crafting across all levels of difficulty and crafting schools. This includes tuning resource generation (with higher yields in PVP areas), vendor pricing, success chances, and loot. We will also flesh out the crafting skill trees for more breadth and depth to allow for more specialization within schools (ex. Weaponsmith vs. Armorsmith).
NPCs: Polish passes will be made across the characters and creatures, with special emphasis on human NPCs. You can expect much more polished heads (for example, starting with Arabella). The Wisp will also finally make an appearance as the second support pet (Water Elemental was the first).
Fast Travel: Crafted magical fast travel items created through crafting will appear in the game to replace the /zone currently in game.
Item Use Logging: Players will be able to view which players have used interactive items on their player property including doors, chests, and perhaps books.
Single Player Offline Features: Single Player Offline will differ from Online play in the following ways.
Companions: Various characters will adventure with you.
Pause / Save: Players will at least be able to pause game play, but we hope to also allow the creation of multiple save games.
NPC Economy: The economy in offline mode will be tuned so that creating and selling items to NPCs will be profitable.
Spawn Rules: In Offline Mode, some scenes will never respawn creatures and resources (clearing a dungeon for example). The scenes that do respawn may do so on a very slow timer, or only if there is a game state change that requires them to respawn (ex. a Town Siege by the Undead). We will balance this to make sure the game feels like it is reacting to the player but is also providing enough resources for crafting.
All Items Available: After positive response from a recent poll with our backers, we have decided to make all items from pledges and add-ons available in game through crafting or gold purchase.
Sorting Algorithms for Multiplayer: Algorithms to support sorting players into instances with “people they know” will be polished and iterated.
Novia Overworld: A major polish pass will be made across the Novia Overworld map to better align locations and shapes to the original cloth map drawing, while simultaneously normalizing the scales of objects.
Tier Markers and Enemy Consider System: All adventure scenes that are directly accessed from the overworld will have tier markers near the entrance to indicate difficulty. We will also be introducing a consider system for enemies so you will know approximately how hard they are in relation to your level.
User Interface Polish: A pass will be made through the UI to make improvements on visuals, usability, and customizability
Lot Selection Sequence: This will allow us to sequence players for lot selection without having to limit who can play the game. Players will be able to view their group and start time on their account page. See separate post for the details about how lot selection sequence will work and the start times for each group.
Physical Goods: As soon as the Novia Overworld task listed above is complete we will begin manufacture and shipping of the physical goods with the goal to have this completed by the end of 2016.
Pre-Wipe Feature / Content:

This is a complete list of all content and features that will be present in the game by Release 32.

Combat
Use Based Advancement.
Classless System with fully customizable builds from all schools.
7 Combat Schools with 65+ Combat Skills.
Blade
Bludgeon
Heavy Armor
Light Armor
Polearm
Ranged
Shield
9 Magic Schools with 85+ Magic Spells.
Air
Chaos
Death
Earth
Fire
Life
Moon
Sun
Water
4 Strategy Schools with 35+ Skills.
Focus
Subterfuge
Tactics
Taming
Free Attack and Auto Attack options.
Fixed Hotbar and Dynamically Dealt Deck options.
20+ Weapon Types: Swords, Daggers, Polearms, Axes, Hammers, Bows, Staves, Wands, etc.
12+ Armor Types: Cloth, Leather, Augmented Leather, Chain, Plate, Epic Plate, etc.
Movement: Walk, Run, Sprint, Jump, Swim, Tumble.
World & Story: 150+ scenes.
75+ Outdoor Adventure Scenes.
25+ Dungeons & Sewers: All connected as one vast Underworld.
40+ Towns.
6 Control Points that block access to different parts of the map until taken (or snuck through).
10 Open PVP Areas: Obsidian Ruins, Shardfalls, etc.
2 Overworld Scenes.
12+ Random Encounters.
100s of unique NPCs with names, conversations, and schedules.
10+ Merchant Types.
100s of quests.
Love Storyline Complete and polished.
Truth and Courage Storylines fully explorable
Minimaps for starting scenes and the Love storyline scenes.
Journal.
Creatures: 30+
Bosses: Dragons, Trolls, Phoenix, Daemons.
Magical: Elementals, Golems, Chest Mimics, Barrel Mimics, Imps, Wisps, Slimes, Maneaters, Flesh Flayers
Undead: Skeletons, Zombies, Liches, Ghosts.
Humanoids: Elves, Kobolds, Bandits, Satyrs, Fauns, Reshapers.
Creatures/Animals: Bears, Wolves, Corpions, Spiders, Deer, Rabbits, Cats, Dogs, Horses, Llamas, Chickens, Donkeys, Turkeys, Ravens, Eagles, Automaton Cats/Dogs/Ravens, Crocodiles, Pigs, Sheep
Character Customization
Facial Feature Morphing, Hairstyles, Skin Tone, Eye Color, Hair Color.
65+ Emotes including emotes that can be taught/traded between players.
9 Slots for Gear: Head, Chest, Arms, Legs, Feet, Finger, Neck, Back, Musical Instrument.
100s of Wearables including dresses, masks, hats, cloaks, and armor.
20+ Pets including eagles, rabbits, cats, dogs, lynx, etc.
Crafting
100s of recipes for gear, decorations, potions, food, etc.
100s of modifiers on crafted gear based on materials, critical success, location, and enchantments.
Recipes that can be found, purchased, or discovered.
50+ materials to be gathered.
Classless crafting system that can be freely mixed with combat skills.
Public and Player Vendors to sell goods.
Purchase Order system to buy goods through vendors.
Specialized Trainers to teach skills.
Regional Economies with relative abundance/scarcity of goods.
Player created books and book printing.
6 Schools of Gathering with 20+ Skills.
Agriculture
Field Dressing
Fishing
Foraging
Forestry
Mining
5 Schools of Refining with 5+ Skills.
Butchery
Milling
Smelting
Tanning
Textiles
5 Schools of Production with 15+ Skills.
Alchemy
Blacksmithing
Carpentry
Cooking
Tailoring
Housing
6 Lot Sizes: Row, Village, Town, City, Keep, Castle.
50+ different houses.
50+ different basements.
100s of decorations including furniture, walls, fences, paintings, rugs, food, trophies, statues, trees, etc.
Detailed decoration system to make your place truly unique.
Land Tax System.
Housing Permissions so multiple players can share the same land.
Dynamic Player Owned Towns where owners can customize lot placement and town decorations.
Servants and house pets.
Public Cache Chests.
Social / Misc
Friends.
Guilds.
5 Musical Instruments (Lute, Drum, Piano, Harp, Flute) with songs played via ABC/MML files including ability to play as a synched group.
Text Chat with multiple channels (guild, party, private).
Radio linked to customizable webstreams.
Banking System.
DnD 1 playable on a teletype machine.
Post-Wipe Schedule

By now you might be asking yourself “but what about feature X?” With this focus on polish and functionality, it is indeed true that some features and content will be going live after the final wipe. We intend to continue monthly updates for the life of the project, so nothing about that will change with the wipe. Please rest assured that we are still planning on getting the content and features below in those monthly releases. Here is the list of Post-Wipe features and content. As before, we will be releasing quarterly schedule updates for when these will go live. Please note that our plan is to complete all of the below before starting work on Episode 2.

Player Housing
Magic Movers: Store/move a house/basement with all decorations intact.
Fencing/Wall Tools: Snapping together automatically and selecting complete sets to surround your lot.
Gear Decorations: Placing armor, weapons, etc., as decorations in your home.
Spawner Decorations: Placeable items that spawn a certain number of creatures like spider eggs / webs that spawn spiders and coffins that spawn skeletons.
Renting Rooms: Players can rent rooms to other players within their homes and basements.
Player-Owned Towns: Please note that following R26 we will have a thread in the forums to discuss PoTs and address specific questions about Static vs. Dynamic (among other things).
Multiple Templates for each Biome: For the final wipe, we will have 1 template for each biome. Post-wipe, expanding each biome to have 2-3 template options will be our highest priority for housing. As more templates come online, we will also create tech that allows us to swap a biome in a town without deleting everyone’s stuff.
Custom Static Player Owned Towns: As soon as we have multiple templates, we will begin working down the list of players who wish to have custom static towns. Order will be based on size and purchase date (i.e. the oldest and biggest will be built first). Please note that as long as you have filled in your form with a town name and template selection by 10:30 CST on May 27, 2016, your POT will be in the game as a dynamic POT.
POT Blessings: Blessings from objects placed in the town that scale based on occupancy.
Dynamic Overworld Indicators: Dynamic visuals that reflect occupancy (total and current) including the presence of nested PoTs.
Dynamic Resource Spawners: Spawners that scale based on total population. The more lots placed the less resources (critters, minerals, and plants).
Offline POT: Ability to access your POT in offline mode
Tools
Snap-to-Adjacent-Lot for Lot Markers: Tool to allow you to place lots directly adjacent to each other and have them align automatically (useful for row lots in particular).
Start Point Selection Tool: Allows owners to pick from a set of start points.
POT Connection Tool: Allows players to define connections between adjacent POTs.
“Lawn Mower”: Clears foliage and trees.
Water Lot Placement on Docks: Allows placement of water lot markers on manmade structures like docks and waterfronts (not just beaches).
Island Water Lot Placement: Allows placement of Duke and Lord of the Manor Island lot markers.
Player Customization
Armor Enamels and Leather Dyes: Ability to add enamels of different colors to metal armor and dye leather armor.
Custom Duke and Lord of the Manor Heads: As soon as we finish with overall character polish, we will begin work on these custom heads and the tech to allow them to be used instead of the heads from character creation.
Custom Family Crest (aka Heraldry): Unique art that can be displayed in game on shields, cloaks, and banners.
Multiple Characters: Multiple characters on a single account with shared property ownership, bank inventory and reputation.
Crafting
Alcohol: Brewing beer and distilling liquor which has mixed effects on the player.
Teachable Crafting Recipes: Teaching recipes to other players, much like emotes.
Public Gardens: Rentable planting beds in public areas for those who don’t own land but want to do agriculture.
Player Made Items in Loot: Crafted gear sold to NPC Merchants will have a chance to appear as loot on humanoid enemies.
Combat
Item Reputation & Affinity: Items will gain a reputation and affinity to the player wielding them after repetition of certain actions. That reputation will be represented by a name and an effect. For example, after killing 1000 dark elves, your trusty long sword is now called “Elf Bane” and deals an extra 2% of damage against dark elves.
Castle Defense Scenarios: PVP variations of control points.
Town Sieges: Story-related towns will periodically come under siege by the Cabalists. While under siege, the town’s functions will be affected.
Cover: The cover system will modify attack and defense values when you (or your target) are behind cover.
World/Story
Weather Game Effects: Weather will affect game conditions including watering plants for agriculture, damaging gear (rust), and slowing movement rates when raining or snowing.
Roving Encounters: Roving encounters (patrolling creatures) on the overworld map can be engaged (pulling you into a scene) or avoided if you wish to sneak past.
Shipping Lanes: Boats will become more than just teleporters to different scenes. They will have schedules and a chance to have random encounters while at sea.
Theater System: Rentable theater spaces with paid seating and audience rules.
Unique Scene Visuals: Once we get Novia filled with all the needed scenes (some created by cloning existing scenes), we will circle back and start modifying all cloned scenes to be visually distinct.
Unique NPCs: Once we get Novia filled with all the story-related NPCs and generic clones for all other NPCs (guards, merchants, etc.) we will circle back and add unique names and conversations for all the non-story-related NPCs
Player-Designed NPCs: Some of these will be present by the final wipe, but this backer reward won’t be entirely fulfilled until we complete the “Unique NPCs” task above,
Place Items Anywhere: Being able to drop items anywhere in the world, not just player property is a hallmark of Ultimas and we hope to support this as well. Please note that this may only be available in offline mode.
Truth and Courage Storylines: Truth and Courage will be fully explorable by wipe, but not in a polished state.
Shroud Finale: The culmination where all three storylines come together
Minimaps: While the system will be complete and in place, we may not have maps generated for every scene prior to wipe. Pre-wipe priority will be placed on starting scenes and Love storyline scenes. Post-wipe we plan to have minimaps for every scene.
Social
Voice Chat: We will integrate something like Teamspeak into the game to allow for voice chat between players
Leaderboards: These track player rankings in PVP, Guild Warfare, House Decoration (determined via voting), etc.
Name on Tombstones: Player names displayed in the Brittany graveyard and on the Ancestor pledge reward.
Name in Domesday Book: Player names displayed in the Domesday Book.
Mail: Players will be able to mail each other (or themselves) items for a fee. This might also be the way we deliver some content like vendor sale proceeds.
Thank you for everything you do for us including your monetary support (without which this wouldn’t even be possible), your feedback, and, of course, your patience. It has been a long road, but we are finally getting there.

Sincerely,
Starr Long
aka Darkstarr

Postscript: LOT SELECTION SEQUENCE

This is the final Lot Selection Sequence, including exact start times for each group. This is our attempt to come up with a fair system that is easy to communicate and rewards both early backers and the Kickstarter promise that extra pledge dollars would influence lot selection. This lot selection affects ALL lot placement including NPC towns and Player Owned Towns.

What will be the SORT ORDER?

Tier
Era (Royal Founder, Founder, Benefactor)
Pledge Amount
What will be the NUMBER OF LOTS?

The final number of lots (outside of Player Owned Towns) for final wipe will be locked at midnight on July 27 and will be based on pledges sold, plus Add-On Store lot allocations, plus 30% more for in game gold purchase.
When is START OF LOT SELECTION?

Final Lot selection begins on July 28, 2016, at 11:00 CDT (NOTE: All times are given in 24 hour format).
Where is the LOT SELECTION LOCATION?

Lot selection will happen in game.
All lots will be available, but please note that you will have to complete the first two starting scenes (Island of Storms and Highvale/Solace Bridge/Bloodriver) before you can proceed to lot selection in game; which is why start times are 30 minutes after the start of Release 32.
Lots in Player Owned Towns won’t be available until the owner puts down the appropriate markers. Once that is done, lot selection in PoTs will be governed by all the same rules
What will be the LOT SELECTION METHOD?

Each pledge tier will get a LOT SELECTION WINDOW of time to select a SINGLE lot.
Inside the tier window, the amount of time available to each sub-group will be based on their pledge era (Royal Founder, Founder, Benefactor) and total pledge contribution.
What is the LOT SELECTION WINDOW DURATION?

Each Pledge Tier will get 64 hours total, with each subgroup starting in 5 hour increments, before the next group begins selection
The lowest subgroup in a tier will get 24 hours to pick their lot before the next tier window would start.
Lot selection for a group continues from their start time until the start of Release 33 on August 25, 2016, 10:30 CDT when we will begin selling lots inside the game and allowing those to be placed.
MISC:

Add-On purchases do not factor into the dollar total that affects lot selection priority.
EDIT: Many backers have inquired how to add dollars to their pledge.
Option 1: Start and cancel a payment plan
Option 2: Purchase a $25 Service voucher and send a request to support@portalarium. We will then add that $25 plus whatever amount of available store credits or gift coupons you wish to your pledge.
Only 1 pledge allowed per account. If you have multiple pledges on a single account you will need to convert any extra pledges to add on store credit or move them into separate accounts prior to lot selection.
You can change your mind and claim another lot at any time but there will be a time limit on how quickly you are able to do this.
Only 1 Lot can be claimed per account until the start time for Group 91 (Add Ons and 2nd pledge lots)
What is the TIER ORDER?

Tier order would start at the most expensive tiers and work backwards.
Dollar amount over minimum pledge amount will grant priority by being sorted into groups (i.e. NOT literally per dollar, but rather greater/less than).
Total dollar amount will never get you sorted before another tier nor before another era (i.e. it is the last sort variable).
TIER ORDER Sequence:
Lord of the Manor 1 and 2 (Castle Lots and below)
Duke (Keep Lots and below)
Barons 1, 2, and 3 (City Lots and below)
Lord and Lord Marshal (Town Lots and below)
Knight and Knight Marshal (Town and Village Lots and below)
Edelmann and Edelmann Digital (Village Lots and below)
Citizen (Village Lots and below)
Developer (Row Lots)
Navigator (Row Lots)
Ancestor (Row Lots)
Add-On Lots plus Secondary Lots (Lord and above): These will not have any sub groups and would all go at once (but still before general public)
SUB TIER ORDER Sequence and Duration
ROYAL FOUNDERS: (pre-May 20, 2013 Backers)
Group 1 = 64 hours
Group 2 = 59 hours
Group 3 = 54 hours
FOUNDERS:(Benefactors who received Founder gift pledge)
Group 4 = 49 hours
Group 5 = 44 hours
Group 6 = 39 hours
BENEFACTORS: (post-May 20, 2013 Backers)
Group 7 = 34 hours
Group 8 = 29 hours
Group 9 = 24 hours
OFFICIAL START TIMES FOR LOT SELECTION:.All times are in 24 hour format. These times will appear on your account page no later than June...

Anyone playing that can chime in on the game?

I've created a character and made it to the main town. Not touched it since

ranalin wrote:

I've created a character and made it to the main town. Not touched it since :P

Same. Twice, actually, and stopped playing at about the same point each time. Not that it's bad or anything, it's just rough around the edges and I get distracted by shinier alternatives.