This week’s Community Spotlight shines on the very talented Melchiormeijer!  Not only has he provided us with some pretty amazing Unity Art Assets for the game, but now he is wowing us with his SFX work!  I had a chance to interview him earlier this month, and I thought you guys would love getting to know him a bit more just as much as much as I did!

FireLotus:  If you were an NPC in Shroud of the Avatar, how would describe yourself?

Melchior:  Well, if you would be looking for that NPC for some specific reason he would probably be the hardest to find in the game. Not because he’s hiding, but because he’s off doing something different every time you log in. He’s interested in almost anything, can be busy with the smallest insignificant thing for hours until it’s perfect. If something seems to be impossible to solve, this guy would find the weirdest way to solve it. BUT he WILL solve it.

Same thing when I’m working or creating 3D and sound assets for SotA. i can tweak some things on a small insignificant item that is almost too small to actually see. Like my bobbers for instance  . One of them is a cork with some letters on it. You will probably never be able to read those letters, but i spent WAY too much time on them to get them perfect.

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Once in a while, we like to check back in on our Community Spotlight Sites and see how they’ve grown.  This past week, I had the privilege of chatting with Vallas over at The Bear Tavern as they celebrate their one-year anniversary.

So, tell us a little about The Bear Tavern.
The Bear Tavern is a community which is building towards the establishment of a fully working Tavern within Shroud of the Avatar. Our aim is to build a landmark, providing everyone a place to freely interact with others in a neutral environment. We aim to become a prominent feature within the lore of New Britannia, both as a leader in our craft as well and a contributing member of the wider community.
We operate primarily across both East Coast US and EU timezones. We have a broad membership, which we intend to expand even further as time goes on.. Read more…

I am happy to shine this month’s Community Spotlight on Avatars Radio!  Created by the Shroud of the Avatar community FOR the Shroud of the Avatar community, Avatars Radio is dedicated to serving the needs of our community while playing some of the best crowd-sourced music the community has to offer!  And they not only play music from the game, but welcome player created submissions for clever station identifiers, sound bytes, and are looking for some DJ talent to fill out their ranks. You may even recognize one of their newest guest DJ’s, (that fiery lass over there ~>)  who will be making her On-Air debut this Friday, April 25th at 5 pm CDT, spinning tunes from Fire Lotus Tavern during R5.

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It has been an amazing year, and a huge reason for that is because of you, our Community!  And once a month, we shine our Community Spotlight on one of those amazing community members, fan sites, or player groups who make the Shroud of the Avatar Community the best that I’ve had the pleasure of working with. So, as we celebrate our one-year Anniversary, it seemed fitting that we should take another look back at some of our most favorite Community Spotlights!

Our very first Community Spotlight featured one of our favorite fan sites, Forsaken Virtues; and Dame Lori is still one of our favorite Community Leaders!  Not only did she set the bar for what a fan site can be, she created the Runic Font you see everywhere in game!  She is currently re-imagining the Forsaken Virtues site to be more than a news hub, and we can’t wait to see what she comes up!

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Unseen Dragon is at it again! Already famous for modeling the Hearth of Britannia, Tortoise & Hare, and assorted SotA homes in Lego, Mr. Drasin has created our liege Lord British, chilling in his Ye Olde Hot Tub! (in front of a Founder Knight’s home!)

LB’s Ye Olde Hot Tub!

This week’s Community Spotlight shines on SotAwiki.net.  This past weekend, many of you may have gotten familiar with this fantastic resource, as they have a growing library of crafting recipes, but I thought it would be fun to get to know SotaWiki founder Baron Violation a bit more as well!  Here is what he had to say during our interview. 

If you were an NPC in Shroud of the Avatar, how would describe yourself?

“The unnamed wondering guard! I would bring aid to those who go to adventure and become victims of thieves, murderers, and the like. I would be the one who protects the weak for the sake of doing what’s right. As any just player should I would take no credit for the work as it was the right thing to do not what I wanted to do. After a day’s work I would grumble from the exhaustion and be frustrated but my desire to help would overcome the feeling and each day and I would continue the work to protect and serve the next day.” 

What do you think sets your Fansite apart from the rest?

“My site is unique because I’m building the framework for the fans to make their own resource. Currently sotawiki has been visited by 31 countries and had contributions from over 15 players and we’re just at R2! We have wiki designers from three countries. My goal is to provide the most extensive library of SotA information and keep it free, without ads, and updated. Many people have a hard time facilitating the content but wiki sites in general have made this possible due to the contributions of the users.”

What are YOU most looking forward to in Shroud of the Avatar?

“Wow, what a hard question. There are many things that I am looking forward to and it’s hard to narrow it down to just one. If I had to pick the thing I felt was lacking from almost every other decent RPG that I’ve played over the last 10 years, I would say the ability to share my experience with my family. My wife, daughter, brother, and even my mother have all backed this game.  I look forward to being able to take my passion for my family and my passion for games and allowing them to mingle in a way that has never been possible due to the online content not being controllable. With the ability to filter online chat I am comfortable having my daughter play with me where I wouldn’t have been if there was simply “online only and everyone is mixed!”

For this week’s Community Spotlight, I had the privilege of sitting down with The Mad Hermit.  Many of you may already know of him though his exceptional Shroud of the Avatar Home Walk-though series.

When asked what kind of NPC The Mad Hermit would be in New Britannia, his response was:

I would be hold up in a secret underground lab experimenting with magic and tesla coils attempting to create new hybrid technologies like:

• ·         Electrically generated magic that could be used by non-magic-users
• ·         Electrically rechargeable wands
• ·         Magic amplification techniques using tesla coils

I would be a wealth of information but consumed by my research and understanding of how things work, so getting the information out of me might be hard. That’s the “madness” I guess.

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Greetings Community and welcome to the latest edition of the Community Spotlight!  One of our very talented users, grnarrow (who has also submitted some awesome art assets) is holding an an unofficial contest for aspiring writers and fans of storytelling.  His goal is to generate a series of fables for The Dev Team to collect and put in a book called “Cave Fables” that will tentatively show up somewhere in-game! These fables would be ones that would have been written during the time that humans who survived the cataclysm were forced to live underground.  Here is a sample written by grnarrow:

The contest will run through Noon CST on Monday, January 13, 2014, so if you have a gift for storytelling, you should definitely check out the full details and submit your Cave Fable on our forums.  I, for one, look forward to reading everyone’s entries!

On Monday November 25th from 5-9pm EST, Space Bards will be streaming a live musical event entitled “Neon Shroud of the Telethon”, created specifically for the Shroud of the Avatar game community to help fund the kickstarter for their upcoming album “Neon Milk.”

During the live-stream there will be unique Shroud of the Avatar related pledge rewards and stretch goals, live musical performances, raffle prizes on the hour, mp3 giveaways, and open community discussions about bards and music within the game.

The event will feature special guests Chris Spears and Starr Long of Portalarium, Hearth of Britannia Founder Joseph “Rustic Dragon” Toschlog, Grandmaster Bard Holt Ironfell of Poets’ Circle, Stile Teckel of The Caverns, Steven J Goldman of Four Legs Records, and more – including Shroud of the Avatar creator and astronaut Richard “Lord British” Garriott!

During the telethon, the Space Bards will also be unveiling some original tunes they have composed for consideration in the game.

The live stream will available on www.spacebards.com on November 25th at 5pm Eastern Standard Time.

You can sneak a peek at the Space Bard’s kickstarter page for “Neon Milk” here: Space Bards Kickstarter