Final Wipe and Lot Selection

Having been dragged into that scene with Sandy Chapman the merchant today when I was trying to do something more useful, it strikes me that a 'two birds, one stone' solution here would be to make Sandy (and others like him) be the NPC merchant that buys the expired crafted gear from public vendors.

 

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;

May be a dumb question, but can someone clarify this for me, which quests have to be completed before you can place. Say I end up after the starter area where I choose my path and then sent to Highvale which is most likely, which quests would I have to complete? If I understand correctly it would be Island of the Storms and the Highvale one right?

 

I think it will be like it has been in the pre-alpha. You meet Arabella, get transported to a scene, and you can run through the scene like crazy, only carrying out the dialogue necessary to leave the scene (e.g. get Edvard to open the Highvale gate), then you can proceed to your lot and claim it. After claiming the lot, you will be able to delete your avatar and start over, secure in the knowledge that your lot (which is attached to your account) is still claimed.

 

Thanks!

 

This is new information to me, or I misunderstood the previous information. Is this how it works right now?

 

Yes, you can delete your avatar and you lose only what your avatar is carrying in his/her inventory. So it is a good idea to stash all your valuables in the bank or in your home (if you have one). If you have a fortune in gold you can let some trusted friend take it until your new avatar is ready.

I want to make it clear that it is only my assumption that this will continue after the final wipe. I haven't seen any information to the contrary.

 

Hi All

Let's not forget that there are only 15 accounts currently affected in a way that could force them to rush through the start:

ROYAL FOUNDERS: (pre-May 20, 2013 Backers)

• Group 1:
  • Total Pledge > $11,999
  • Start Time: July 28, 2016 11:00 CDT (16:00 UTC)
  • Backers: 15

The game last went live at 1030 CDT, so if the same format is followed, they will have 30 minutes to travel to the lot they prefer. Everyone else will have hours or days in which to travel to their preferred lots.

Cypher Black

 

Yep I am one of them

 

You should talk to the other 14 and come up with a shared plan for mutually agreed placement.

 

Curious as to when Britanny and any other major NPC cities will be introduced into the game? Does anybody have an idea or have they (devs) said anything concrete?

 

From https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/q2-2016-schedule-update.48263/
RELEASE 29, April 28, 2016

• Full Wipe: Once again, we are going to make some fundamental changes to item and quest architecture that require us to do a full wipe for Release 29. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please note that if you have been waiting to convert your purchases to store credits, this is your chance to do so as long as you do NOT log into the game once R29 goes live (which automatically claims the items and prevents conversion). NOTE: This is the last wipe before the final wipe in July.
• Story: New scenes will appear in the regions of North Paladis, Midmaer, and Verdantis, including the city of Central Brittany which will appear in the game for the first time. At this point, the Love storyline will be playable from beginning to end and we will begin final polish on that storyline.
• Lot Selection Sequence: The lot selection sequence process implemented and tested by players. Pacing for these initial tests will be very accelerated with lot selection windows being mere minutes versus a full 24 hours.
• Player Towns: Player Owned Towns that have locked submission forms will appear in the game, and more Player Run Town scenes with small NPC cores with basic functions (banks, shops, trainers) will appear across Novia. New variations on the town templates may also appear.
• Performance: Major efforts will be done to optimize performance. This will include frame rate improvements, load time improvements, and memory footprint improvements. We will also begin officially supporting Windows 10.

 

Not my PoT, but this has become my plan as well. With the new teleportation system, I don't see a reason to have my lots anywhere but in the PoT, where I will spend most my time.

Looks like I will be waiting for the placeable Keep Island lot though.

 

Ultima Online Has Hottest Real Estate Market in the World

Thousands of house lots open, causing historic land rush

This week, the hottest real estate market in the world isn’t in New York, London or San Francisco. It’s in Ultima Online, one of the first and most successful online fantasy games.

Where else would thousands of prospective land owners camp all night waiting for prized lots to open up? And where else would swords and spells and the occasional duel to the death be used to settle property disputes?

The Ultima Online land rush is happening now because of a recent change to the “house decay” policy, where houses unattended to for more than 90 days begin to crumble. After five days of decay, the house disappears, the contents are displayed for all to pick over, and the land opens to the first player who can stake a claim.


“It’s something our players have wanted for a long time, and I’m thrilled we could finally give it to them,” said Anthony Castoro, producer of Ultima Online. “The day before the houses started falling, we were seeing stories of players calling in sick for work, players staying up all night waiting for particular houses to fall and players making plans to expand their existing houses into castles or towers.”

The end result was that tens of thousands of houses fell, and tens of thousands of houses were built in their places. Open lots are still available, but are quickly being snatched up. Players interested in UO home ownership should log in and search out a spot as soon as possible.

“This week has been the best time,” said one player. “This shows why the housing system in UO is still the best of any online game.”

Another player said, “It’s events like this that really point out why UO is better than the other online games. It’s a fully developed fantasy world, not just a place where you bang on monsters all night long.”

 

"There's going to be a land rush"!
"There will be a land grab, without a doubt."​

These are the words of Shroud of the Avatar backer Tina Swafford (aka Fireangel). She was talking about the decision by the game's developer (Portalarium) to parcel out settleable land-lots to players in its fantasy world, on a strictly finite basis.


Designer Richard Garriott (aka Lord British), working with Starr Long, have decided to limit habitable land in the game, by selling deeds. This move has the potential to cause all manner of unforeseen consequences.

Much like deeds sold in the old West, they do not specify a particular piece of land, only a right to settle. Garriott will open up the land on pre-designated days, and players will seek out the piece of property that is most attractive to them. Their character will literally run to a favored spot and put down stakes.

It's like those old movies of the romantic and chaotic land-rushes of the American West, wagons lining up as the bugle blares, hat-flappin' boomers scuttling across rolling hills in search of land.

This is not an accidental metaphor. Garriott and Long researched events like theOklahoma Land Rush as part of their design process.

Swafford, a longtime player of Garriott's games, lives in Oklahoma, that same state where, in 1889, 50,000 settlers surrounded an area of 2 million acres.

Lines of eager families were held back by U.S Army officials until a designated time — noon on April 22 — when they were allowed to rush in to find and claim their parcel of paradise


HAT-FLAPPIN BOOMERS SCUTTLING ACROSS ROLLING HILLS!

Swafford also knows about the role of land, and of building, in virtual worlds. When the Ultima Online Burning Heart Guild (of which she was a member) decided to build their own town in UO, they were expressing an American impulse; to show their own identity through construction on newly acquired land, to protect themselves in a hostile environment, to gather together among their own kind and, perhaps most of all, to create a separation between their own community and the wider world.

From Mennonite utopias to gated communities, from the gleaming ideals of New England town-founders to the kaleidoscope of identifiable cultural, racial and economic modern neighborhoods, the act of building has separated and celebrated groups of individuals throughout the American era, which is a history of colonization.

The desire is universal, but the American particular comes from the exceptional prize its settlers took for themselves: land, unimaginable quantities of the stuff.

Valuable lessons about how people react to the availability of this most desirable commodity have not been lost on game designers who create their own virtual untamed forests and rolling prairies for players to populate.

Long and Garriott, puzzling on how to bring the best of Ultima Online back to life in Shroud of the Avatar, the need for players to own and build personal properties in a sandbox world, came to two conclusions. Player constructions would need to be part of the game (not some separate, otherworld, mini-game fancy), and there would need to be a finite supply of land, in order to create the most value and, therefore, desire.

"Since Ultima Online and maybe Star Wars Galaxy almost all player housing has been instanced, an infinite supply of space," Long told Polygon. "What ends up happening is that housing is separate from the contiguous game space and counteracts its purpose as a social experience. It's on another map, effectively."

ONCE IT'S GONE, IT'S GONE

He wants players to own land, build houses, craft furniture, go fish and turn the soil, to create that most desirable quality in a multiplayer world, an economy.

Land will be taxed in order to encourage players to interact with the environment. Players will be able to sell property and land to one another, using (officially) only in-game currency, although a real-currency black market is surely inevitable, despite the precautions Portalarium is bound to take.

Land is being sold by Portalarium for real money in order to fund development. High level backers on Kickstarter paid a fat $450 for a bunch of benefits that includes one of the larger portions of land, sometimes tied to special extras, such as waterfront privileges. A new offer is being set up that allows would-be players of the game, due for release late next year, to secure deeds for $150.

These are considerable sums of money. But then, people who take games like Shroud of the Avatar seriously — games that can be inhabited — see value in virtual property and are willing to pay.

"We want people to feel value and attachment," said Long (pictured below). "We want to create a thriving economy. Players want their home and businesses to be in high-traffic locations."

That's a serious consideration. Crafting is going to be a part of Shroud of the Avatar,artifacts and goods that can be bought, sold and traded. Also, as in all multiplayer communities, personal aggrandizement is an issue. If you want to invest your character in a long term, large construction project, with all the furnishings, it makes sense to seek a lovely plot of land in a big city.

Lori Treleaven (aka Dame Lori) is a self-confessed Garriott fan, long-time Ultima player,SoTA backer and fan-site blogger. She's also the sort of player who likes to build. "Housing is one of the things I like doing," she said. "I had a lot of fun with it in Ultima Online. I'll probably have a vendor to sell goods and I'll make it look good so people will see it." She has a waterfront license, partly because, "I like the idea of being out on my back deck fishing. It sounds like fun."

Like those settlers back in 1889, the smart move is to have a plan. Swafford said that she always likes to scout an entire world, to traverse it on foot, before she really begins developing a character. Likewise, Treleaven will be using the beta to look for prime settling positions. Of course, so will everyone else.

EVERYONE WILL BE SCOUTING THE BEST LOTS!

In the Oklahoma Land Rush, it was not uncommon to arrive at a favored location, to find some fellow already there, a corrupt official or a 'Sooner" who had found a dastardly way to sneak onto the land and evade the authorities. And although cheating in SoTA, under the baleful gaze of Garriott's alter-ego Lord British, doesn't look likely, it is nevertheless going to be chaotic.

"Everyone will be scouting the best lots, once the beta starts," said Treleaven. "I saw this happen when land opened up in Ultima Online. There's always a mad rush. People will be ready the second it opens up. I know I will be. I definitely need to make a plan and plot it all out ahead of time, but that's all part of the fun."

To bring some order, Long said different windows of time to settle land will be opened up, giving those who pledged high and early, prize picks of the best lots. Of course, those who come to the game late will be disappointed, effectively homeless. (To be fair, the game is about a whole lot more than settling. It's an RPG in the old adventure-story sense, as well as an open-world, in which players can indulge in lots of different behaviors.)

"People who have the first deeds can place first and then it'll go in order like that," said Swafford, who has been an active member of the game's community, consulting with designers on how the world evolves. "Once they're taken, they're taken."

"If we have enough players, we will run out of land in Episode One," said Long. "There won't be any more left. That's when we think the secondary market between players will really pick up, when people will want to sell real estate between players." There are also plans for subsequent episodes, which will no doubt open up new land areas, and more land rushes.

Long said that he had researched the land rushes of the old West because "it's the perfect model" for his design projections. "We're very much inspired by that westward expansion and that exact behavior of new land being discovered and offered up and the kind of behavior we want to see. It's different and it's challenging, but we think it's more interesting for the players."

One of the effects of this, he said, would be communities gathering together of their own volition. Back in the Ultima Online days, the Burning Heart Guild worked hard to create enough gold to buy the land that became their exclusive domain. They did so partly because, as Swafford recalled, 'it was a blast" and partly as a way to discourage "griefers" who took pleasure from bullying the weak. Protection from violence is a prime concern for settlers in all times and places.

"We absolutely believe people will group themselves not just on individual pieces of land but in adjacent land as well," said Long. "Over time certain villages and towns will start to define themselves with certain characteristics. Some of those groupings will be influenced by the nature of the game world, proximity to resources being the biggest factor, but sometimes the groupings will just be based on common play patterns like adventuring, gardening or commerce. What will be really interesting is if there emerge groupings based on ideology around contentious subjects in the world, like player-vs-player, min-maxing or role-playing."

As in the real world, players could form communities based on their ideology. In this sense, Shroud of the Avatar begins to behave more and more like American communities, congregating on new territories.

 

Ever watch the movie "Far And Away"? The land grab scene is historically accurate.

 

Holy cow Leelu, that is the BEST way to describe it! Youtube video below for posterity:

 

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Right now, like all housing bubbles, its a sellers market, and Portalarium's doing the selling. Like all bubbles it is based upon hope for the future. Like a slick real estate salesman from the movie 'Glengarry Glen Ross', Portalarium is making a lot of cash on selling these trinkets to those who should know better. You almost wonder how ethical it all is on some level, but the rubes keep signing on the dotted line. Always Be Closing thinks Portalarium.

Like all bubbles, it will burst post Episode 1 (unless they have some pretty amazing surprises for us in that release), because reality always catches up. Reality will come in the form of people getting bored, getting tired of paying taxes. Spots will open up aplenty in the player towns and NPC towns.

You know what it takes to sell virtual real estate?

 

Yeah and unfortunately it ain't simoleons lol

 

Well expressed all . Also too you have to think like a company. Who would you want influencing the economies in the most relevant cities? The $45 pledge that may or may not have the resources to kick start the economy ? The $10,000 + pledge that may have more resources but may or may not have the savvy to kick start the economy in that city? Or the Huge Guilds with many players and the extra resources to jolt the cities economy? After all, all games are companies and their thinking is company oriented. Games do not run on air or pixels or emotional factors. Sure they want to interact with their backers and listen to what they have to say, but after all is said and done , they still have a business to run.