My Pact With Richard Garriott

Hail and well met! (I haven't typed those words since I last played Ultima Online, it felt good!)

Here's the deal: I invest time and money to take part in online virtual world play and have done so since the release of UO. Some of my fondest memories in UO were are of around with a PK guild during the dread days of UO but, surprisingly, I have equally as many good memories doing far more time consuming and dificult 'chores' like leveling up a miner and then a blacksmith to be able to stand at Brit Forge selling suits of armor to players. I later retired my 'red' to start a blue guild which rose to 600 members complete with fan site, and owned one of the most frequented rune libraries on Atlantic shard...

Sadly, after UO was sold, I moved on to DAoC because the red in me called out and the realm versus realm action in DAoC is the closest to PvP done right on a large scale that I've ever played. I ran a guild and website in DAoC as well but missed some aspects of the game that UO had done better. Some years later I moved onto World of Warcraft.

SotA is set for release in Oct 2014, or sometime thereafter if it still needs some polishing, and I very much like where it is heading. I feel no loyalty to World of Warcraft because, simply stated, it hasn't earned it for me in terms of community involvement. While extremely popular, the game experience is not the same. I grow tired of telling new players to make sure to collect exclamation points and to visit question marks on quest NPCs, the 'give me better loot NOW' mentality it creates is insatiable and, ultimately, unsatisfying. I much prefer to earn it!

SO, if you can point me in the direction of some writings, on this site or off, from Lord British himself that state he will not shut down the game within 10 years (which I fear EA will do with UO) I pledge to remain an active member and be a driving force of enthusiasm to those I meet along the journey. The idea of returning to a game created by Richard Garriott and his team does speak to me but the idea cannot be without a pact that my time and energy will not be short lived.

Is SotA going to be around until 2025 or later? If so, and I can hear that from Lord British himself... I'm in.

 

In a "recent" video (I think he was in Germany) LB answered a question like yours from the crowd, and I'll paraphrase his response. It was something to the extent of "I plan to be making Shroud of the Avatar for the next 10 years."

Someone else will probably come along "soon" and post a link to the video. Until then, enjoy my memory of the event.

 

Welcome, and well met. I hope you will join us in this new yet familiar world that is being built but if you are looking for a promise of 10+ years first....

well, good luck with that anyway!

 

I want to help build it, building things gives me great satisfaction in life even when i'm playing a game, but you can't build anything worthwhile without a good foundation as they say. I just need to know that I'm not going to shut down my current game for SotA only to see it shuttered if followers prove more difficult to acquire than anticipated. I realize that's a tall order, the realities of running a business can put a damper on things sometimes, but if Richard Garriott is building for the long term then that my friend is a journey I want in on.

In short I suppose the sale of UO to EA and the premature shutdown of Tabula Rasa are the only two real concerns I have at this point given my playstyle is to build longterm and I'd like SotA to be the last online game I ever play. I was extremely disapointed when UO was sold, even more so when Mythic was sold, and now I'm playing WoW which does not satisfy my playstyle...

 

UO was always owned by EA. EA owned OSI since 1992, 5 years before UO was released.

The big difference with SotA and the earlier games is that SotA is currently being done as an independent company without having an EA/Activision/Vivendi/etc Parent company. To that end, SotA is being done much more on a Crowdsourced basis (Kickstarter, Scene Jams, etc) than you would see with big company produced titles.

SotA is slated to be 5 Episodes (Forsaken Virtues being the first) and likely take about the 10 year timeframe to complete.

 

I think we all hope that is the case, but there is no way anyone, even Richard Garriott himself, can guarantee that a game will still be online 10+ years from now. The one thing you can fall back on though is that SotA can be played a single-player game, so even if something happens in the future you will always have the ability to play it that way. That isn't the best-case scenario, but it is somewhat comforting to know that if/when the game stops being supported, there will always be a way to access it in some form. Hopefully that scenario is a long, long ways away, but I would not expect to receive a 10 year commitment from even the most confident game developer because nobody can really know what will happen with the game and the industry in that amount of time.

 

Yeah, 10 years is way too long to say with any certainty. Heck, 5 is even crazy in this genre. Argh, now you're going to make me look this up but I think it was actually more along the lines of having to make all 5 episodes which might require him to work on it through the end of this decade.

I believe he (and the rest of his team) are dedicated enough to do that, but there's one big issue: they need a sustainable business model beyond crowdfunding. And if it ever does get to the point that it is no longer sustainable, I think the community will have already reverse engineered the server code and have unofficial private servers going by then. But let's not get ahead of ourselves...

 

Gods, I can't imagine playing the same game for ten years. Simple technology advancement would probably make us demand Lord British make SoA II or something before 10 years are out.

 

I would rather expand on this one.
Starting from scratch just so you can have better graphics is not worth it.

 

It is an effort in futility to speculate about the future - "Life is what happens while you are making plans".
So even with the best intentions, what happens tomorrow is anybody's guess and there are no guarantees, unfortunately. Besides, who is to know whether a new genius with a whole new and unforeseen concept enters the gaming scene and creates a game world that leaves everything as we know it in the virtual dust?
Be content with what is here today, and rejoice with what tomorrow may bring!

 

You may also want to consider the fact that so many are pledging so much. For example, I'm probably up to 1k at this point in total. My average yearly gaming budget is probably more like $200. So the financial commitment alone is going to keep me here for a long time. I'm rooted in the success or failure of this game because I believe that the people in this community will actually be roleplaying with or without the support from the development team.

That said, the development team has already shown that they understand what roleplaying is and that they know how to support it. The big question for me is if they understand what pvp is and how to support it. Either way, I've already bet that they do understand pvp and that they will support, but that's the part that's currently a leap of faith. We should know the reality soon enough.

As for the 10 year thing, I plan on playing this game for the next 10 years.

 

Correct. The basic functionality of most MUDs allows players to do everything that SotA and any other modern MMO can do - there's just a lack of graphics.

I'd be ok if SotA were in 2D, as long as the game functionality is enough to satisfy my need for RP and PVP. I realize that most gamers are nothing like me and demand the latest and greatest technical advancements regardless of the actual value to game play. So it will be interesting to see how many people SotA will need to retain to justify continous development.

 

Well there are 4 expansions planned to add to SOTA. So one every 2 years would be 10 years. Don't really think they'll get that far but hey, they can dream.

 

RG has gathered an excellent dev team and has a fairly large and loyal following (us). That makes for a winning and long lived formula!

 

It's a good start.

 

I don't think anyone can give you such assurances. Even if RG himselfs says it, as you seem to be expecting and maybe he indicated somewhere, ultimately there are no guarantees. A lot will happen in 10 years.

I suppose you could wait 10 years after release to see if its still around and then try it

 

Except they're close to a million dollars short in cash. Game is to narrow in scope and not enough people are interested in pledging.

 

According to who?

 

Welcome in, OverLord. Wellmet. Your adventuring history, experience, and memories are rich. Your hope and confidence in Richard Garriott's potential to create again a world for us is shared by many of us here. Potential doesn't guarantee the end result, unfortunately. Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues has a great deal of potential to turn all of our [gaming] lives around, and for the years you're seeking. Will it? Will we [the supporters] be able to keep it funded without some corporation coming into the picture? Will they [the Dev Team] keep true to the initial vision? Will Richard Garriott?

 

From an interview RG gave that was posted on here earlier this week I believe.