Final Wipe and Lot Selection

Actually, I believe even group 1 gets 30 minutes into the release before their window starts. ;-D Once release begins, everyone no matter their 'window' can get into the game.. they just can't claim any lots until their window begins.

 

Will the addon store items dissapear for sale after some date???? i read the strech thing will....

 

Many have.

 

Yes. Many addon store items have already expired so it would be safe to assume that the current selection will one day be replaced.

The stretch goal items are a special case.

 

This is very easy: EVE Online. I (and some others) owned a system, my corp owned a couple constellations, and my alliance an entire region - and we all called that "home". We had to take care of our towers, fuel them, the stations, seed the market, produce raw planetary materials, etc. We were around 8'000 pilots. And we had to fight tooth and nail to defend our "home", and the brotherhood (and sisterhood) bonds forged in those fierce battles were nowhere near the ones we would forge with merely purchasing a POT.

What others are trying to say you is that, while true that branding SotA mainly as yet-another MMORPG would open a large online fans base of players, by doing so and alienating and kicking repeatedly in the face the SP Ultima spiritual legacy, they will lose an even larger offline fans base of players - which, in absence of a monthly subscription (as it is), would form the bulk of the CONTINUING cash income.

As I said all too often in the past, the two (conflicting?) souls of SotA will eventually come to a fight sooner than later, a fight for eyeballs, dev time, polish, what have you. The time of conflict for these two souls is approaching fast, and what I fear most, there won't be any turning back once reached the critical mass point.

There is a very, very, very large chunk of players - who post online far less than you or me - who would posit the opposite: they'd never play SotA if it was online only. Richard himself assessed that roughly half of backers are SP-only players, and would be very disappointed to see a single player game that's basically an MMO-without-meeting-anyone.

The risk I see is that the SP could be ditched altogether (Elite Dangerous?), because most income comes from MMO - as you said - so most income should go into MMO - as everyone could expect.

I think Rune's (and a host of more - like Darkmoon for example - but not excluding you or me) fear is that he'll be getting NOTHING for less. Which could be... Well... You can finish the sentence at will.

Starr said that group 1 has around 15 hours from wipe to begin claiming their castles.
__

I still have faith. A lot of faith. A lot of irrational, unexplicable, foolish faith.

But this is not (only) a game. It's also a product. Artisanal or industrial product, doesn't matter, but a product done by professionals nonetheless. We cannot be really expected to view it (or understand it'll be viewed) as something exempt of industry scrutiny and evaluation only because some die-hard fanboys and fangirls have faith in it. It will be torn to pieces if it doesn't matches the actual digital entertainment industry standards and customs (press, gamers, bystanders, competitors, whatever). I'm working my best to reduce the chance that this will happen, also by trying to open the market to my country and people speaking my language. But Portalarium must work with me - not against me!

Dismissing our fears is not a good course. I prefer to work together to fight them. I appreciated Starr asking me something along the lines of "do you still trust us?". I most likely do. But think carefully about pointing that shotgun down to the end of your leg...

Also, some players could really stop asking for finely embroiderd sparkling cloth chiseled neon-colored castle walls every other thread; it WOULD go a long way in keeping devs focused on their work...

 

The problem here, people will see this as a release...some think this is released in some form already.

Poeople like Red Thomas, who many of you most likely know:

"Frankly, I'd call SotA released. They've been making monthly updates for over two years, the vast majority of that has been with 100% up-time. I know they wouldn't like me saying that, as the "Beta" tag is so handy for avoiding criticism. Still, I think you're technically live the moment people can spend money in a store and buy things in your game."

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setView/news/gameId/935/showArticle/38080

This was in the comment section.

I know Katrina stated in very small letters what many are thinking at this point, please stop with the vanity items that people are asking for. You can do those when the games systems are in place. Now more then anything it seems like the time to hunker down and work on the important things.

I can't get over the fact that we have a completely dead map that won't have roving encounters still....this is going on almost 2 years of saying they will be in the upcoming update. Am I to assume there is some problem with implementing them?

EDIT: I don't want to double post, but what does @RichardGarriott think on all this? I haven't seen a post of the union from him in a long time. He is the reason I am here.

 

A summary of my thoughts can be found here.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/my-observations-on-our-community.44741/

 

Thank you very much for this posting I'm one of these people who likes to play online just occasionally. My focus is on the story and the offline part. Anyway - SotA is a kind of niche game and niche games have not so much potential customers as mainstream games. Therefore Portalarium needs the money from the UO fans as well as from the single-player fans to be able to finish the development of this game and - last not least - to have success after the game is released. My hope is, that Portalarium will not forget this.

 

Will there be a mini map for the overhead map?

I was trying to help someone over the phone to navigate the overhead map last night, since I wasn't in game I wasn't able to just take them to where they needed to go. I gave them a link to the sota map today for help in the future. They're new to the game so they're getting lost on the overhead map a lot. Would it be possible to put some directional signs with names of places up along the intersections and where roads turn to better help with navigating the overhead map? The compass helps once you're close, but with all the cutoff points on the map it can be hard to figure out how to get to places if one doesn't already know the map very well.

 

I always planned on playing in SPO because it gave me the option to adventure with others.

 

All makes me happy, but the fact that there will be instance is pretty saddening.

 

This hasn't changed since day one. The project was conceived as instanced, with an overarching world map both for the similarity to the Original Ultimas, and for the server-side technical advantages it provides. It is the technology that allows the game to be a single world... This Immortal Gem is whole rather than shattered into a thousand shards. Without this they would be relegated to the same architecture of every other online game (Save Eve). Personally, I think the choice fits the application at all levels.

 

Pretty interesting dialogue between Tek and Red in the comment section.

A lot of the games I have on Steam with a robust multiplayer are still in "early access", some that were "released" mmos years ago like Xsyon in 2011. I think gamers are accustomed to the term "early access" whether we like it or not.

 

Seems like Red didn't know much about the game...

 

I think the biggest point to be made here, is that a developers cannot always deliver on everything "promised" via Kickstarter.

They promised an extremely complex project, and are still delivering A complex product. But I don't think they could have known with 100% certainty exactly what that product would look like at the time.

This is why traditional game development doesn't reveal detailed information until much much later. Every single early access game I've been involved in has had the same issue. It's no coincidence.

 

A lot of developers do though, don't promise too much comes to mind. There was a lot of feature creep as development went on.

 

I asked him about this on Twitter yesterday (although I initially looked at the wrong account (Lord British) and incorrectly assumed he hadn't been here since March 2015!). "RichardGarriott" definitely doesn't post very often if you look at his history, and not in threads like this either.

Reminds me of Ultima 7, with the orchard worker languishing to death in Castle Britannia's own prison. Lord British is completely unaware until the Avatar gets him to open his eyes.

 

He hasn't had many posts lately at all....The reason I backed this product was for him.

 

You're right there was. I think that's why it's best to keep an open mind when it comes to fulfillment of these "promises".

SOTA was the first and only Kickstarter I Backed that became successful. I started small because I liked the idea, I upped my pledge because I liked the team. I upped my pledge much much more this past 6 months as I played more and really started to like what I saw.

I can feel for people who backed it really early at a high level expecting exactly what was being pitched in the Kickstarter. Especially the single player offline fans as I agree that aspect so far isn't looking quite as up to snuff. I know I wouldn't have any interest in SOTA without the MMO version.

I honestly think the biggest oversight was their intention to develop both an engaging SPRPG and MMORPG at the same time. The two are often so vastly different in terms of gameplay priorities. It's probably why single player RPGs rarely have robust online features.

 

I can agree with that....I think it's a huge amount of work todo....how do you make 40 towns seem interesting?

Aerie for instance looks nice but is barren...it needs probably at least 10x the NPC(I have a thread on towns as I see it as an area that needs a lot of attention).

The big difference between an MMO and a SPRPG is that one usually has wide open spaces to accommodate a lot of players and the other has a more narrow approach to it.

I totally agree with your last line.