"Elves as a playable race", how does it fit in New Britannia lore?

Did I miss something? If so, I apologize if this sounds ranty. Elves have existed in Ultima since before I was born. Ultima....3 I think has them as a playable race as well as in UO. I mean, yeah, they're a fantasy trope, but so is sword fighting and spell casting. The whole point of this argument seems to draw the line in a strange place.

 

Jack can explain, long story short:

1. Richard Garriott on SotA in the beginning: Humans come to New Britannia and are Avatars.
2. Founders: We want to be elves.
3. Dallas: $$

 

First Tracy is blamed, then Dallas. Who's next -- Chris?

 

I am in full support of playing elves in game, but lets be honest - the reason for these new stretch goals is definitely money. I mean a $300,000 stretch goal just to have elves in game? That's a pretty bum deal in my book and I would prefer to play an elf lol. Money is a big driver for what is going into SotA at the moment and that much is clear from the omega focus on housing and the addition of stretch goals with fairly outrageous goals.

 

The aim of Jack's short story was to indicate how we got here.

If Jack has to point the finger at anyone, Jack points the finger of blame at the community. One cannot blame Portalarium at this point for simply saying: Fine you little brats, you can have anything you want, here is what it will cost.

 

Ok :/ I was hoping someone would blame Chris, though!!!!

I'm sure it wouldn't have gone in the stretch goal store without RG's approval, at any rate. And if not enough people want playable elves, I guess it won't get in..

 

I don't even know, or care to know, who any of these people are.
I've heard some people mentioning the two guy's names in gaming circles, but as for the lady...

 

Tracy Hickman (male) - wrote the Dragonlance Chronicles; Dallas - Dev. also male, and Chirs another Dev who is a male.

 

Also, Tracy Hickman wrote "Blade of the Avatar" the story line for SotA.

 

No-one is forcing anyone to ante up. Game needs to be financially driven somehow.

I'm much more interested in Ships and Multiple Structures on our lots than with Elves and Baby Crias.

 

nice update to the sig tradyblix!

 

This is actually precisely the problem with the Stretch Goal Store. Lots of people care more about elves than about sailing or putting a whole barracks on one lot. The community is split, and the rewards for pledging toward the stretch goals simply are not very good. For most backers, Stretch Goal Store purchases will have the lowest priority following pledge upgrades and Addon Store purchases, and by the time most people get the stuff they really want, they'll be tapped out in terms of what they care to spend (or past that point, even).

I'm completely cool with Portalarium wanting to fund this game, but the Stretch Goal Store idea is flawed beyond reason. Stretch goals were much more enticing when they were tacked onto pledge revenue. At least then we were all contributing toward the same feature, and it was nice knowing that our pledge money was actually going toward new game systems. What is new pledge money going toward now? I'm genuinely curious, since they're asking us to pony up separately for these new features.

 

Dude, why does this sound like dejavu of the movie Avatar?

 

Well sure, why not? We wouldn't want to leave him out of the fun.

 

Well then we can blame RG while we're at it! The party is getting bigger

 

"Freeing the Spirit's Wishes Though it's Affinity"

Funding;
Whether it's horses or Elves, things are coming into our world on a schedule of importance to making the game playable. The stretch goals are to "speed up" production of those new things if the stretch goal is met before they are scheduled to begin work on. Your stretch goal funds are "targeted funds" and a way in which "you can step up the pace" and thus effect their scheduled release.

Yes, you are human, or you were with the advent of the Elven, but your body did not travel with you from earth. This is a new body we get when we arrive because if it were not, then we would most all be fat geeky looking people looking for a computer screen to sit down with instead of having a body to do any real fighting with otherwise we'd need a boot camp to get us all back into shape.

Affinity;
When we imagine and travel to New Britannia, this could be a simple wished thing to becoming an Elf, maybe we liked Santa Clause too much as a child which cause us to wish such a thing. Man wished to fly once in real history and he did because "a wish leads to an affinity for it".

Richard Garriott has had games that have elven in them including the Ultima series, so there is no loss of any vision by him in elves arriving or having been here in New Britannia.

Racism;
You can't have issues about races or between them without having different races to deal with, otherwise we must find something else to hate. Hate is a very important thing that needs the brining out within us for our game's Karma System to judge us by, so we need different races just as much as we need different monsters that don't look like the real monsters which is the inside and outside of we real humans. The only reason we do not see ourselves as monsters is because we need to appeal to each other to procreate.
~Time Lord~

 

I think there are two things that irritate some people about the idea (leaving aside the entire paying-for-it issue):

1) As far as I know (having come to the game later and not read all the early stuff), the premise right up until a couple of weeks ago was you get one character slot, you get one race (human), and it is anticipated that you play your Avatar as yourself from Earth. Some people didn't like any of those ideas, although others found it a brave decision that at least helped the game to stand out a little. (Here is at least one thread that discussed the idea, there were a few others.)

2) I don't think it's too much of a spoiler at this point to say that 'Elves' in the Blade of the Avatar novel are not like the regular fantasy elves most of us are used to, but were created by humans being reshaped via magic into creatures that were useful for specific combat tasks. A sort of magical genetic engineering, I suppose. As someone said earlier, "A wizard did it."

While we don't yet know what happened between the time of that story (presumed to be 100-200 years ago) and the present time in-game, there's some confusion over how players can play as an elf when an elf was an engineered creature created by twisting a human. Perhaps elves became more independent and better able to think for themselves, and were somehow able to breed true even though they are really mutants? This description of the race from the Shroud of the Avatar Wiki doesn't explain how elves are still present in the current timeline - perhaps their mutation gave them a greatly extended lifespan and they don't actually breed at all? Who knows - I don't think anything official has been said about this yet.

So it's not a case of 'elves were in other Ultimas so why shouldn't they be here', but more a case of a complete turn-around by the team and a confusion over how this will now fit in with the currently-established lore.

Of course, some people (I'm not one of them) are just overjoyed at the possibility of playing an elf and probably don't much care about whether or not it's logical.

 

4. Not to mention Richard Garriott clearly stated in his interview with Markee Dragon that the current Ultima with elves; "is not what Ultima is in my mind". This is not the first or only time he has ever commented on generic fantasy elements.

Source: Markee Dragon Interviews Richard Garriott

The whole point with Ultima 4 was that it began to branch away from traditional Tolkien fantasy to avoid being some generic derivative. Now this isn't Ultima. But it is frequently referred to as the "Ultimate RPG" or "Spiritual Successor" to the Ultima series. So why the contradiction?

 

Everything is Chris's fault. It is known.

 

karrolanth,
How would you feel about allowing elves to be playable if they didn't have Avatar status like humans? I'm not sure how that would impact the balance of the game, but it would help keep the idea of "human character = Avatar" as well as give people more options in the way of RP and immersion in general.