[A SotA Public Forum post by Starr Long]
Greetings Avatars,
Thank you to our loyal backers of Shroud of the Avatar. Release 17 access for all backers at First Responder level and above begins this Thursday, April 30 at 10:30 AM Central Time (16:30 UTC).
NOTE: The server will be going down at approximately 6 AM and will stay down until 10:30 AM in order to deploy this release.
Please read this entire message, as well as the linked instructions and known issues.
We are far from launch, and in a constant state of change, and we do not yet have in-game systems to inform players of these changes, or to share ways to help them to explore new content and systems. This means we rely entirely on this message, and the linked instructions and known issues to convey the current game state. We regularly have to answer questions or filter bug reports, because players elect not to read this valuable information. By taking a few moments to read through this information, a great deal of our time and efforts can be redirected to focus on new “unanswered” questions, and addressing critical issues impacting each release. We greatly appreciate you taking the time to review this post, and for all the truly valuable feedback you continue to provide.
As mentioned last release, we are still having to pay some debt incurred by our move to Unity 5. However, even with that factored in, we still managed to deliver quite a bit of new content, including our first Player Owned Town, Crafting Events, Player Titles, and Lot Access Permissions. Unfortunately, the amount of architectural changes in this release required us to do a full wipe of everything except Friends and Guilds. To slightly decrease the pain of this, we implemented an Experience Doubler that will temporarily speed up leveling (see details below).
Also, remember that while we are providing new content with each release, our community is working overtime to make new events for you to enjoy. So, be sure to check out a couple of the Community Events Calendars run by our community members (via in game book or the player run websites Avatars Circle Community Events and Events of the Avatars calendar).
Without further ado, here are the R17 deliverables.
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