Could Catnip Sell SotA to the Players And/Or Open Source the Code?

Since Chris is reducing the time he spends working on SotA, what are the best options to ensure that SotA has a long and happy future?

Are there any players that would be interested in purchasing SotA and working with the devs and player base to manage the game going forward? If so, would Catnip be willing to sell the game to them?

And/Or would Catnip be willing to release the SotA game code under an open source license?

I feel like either or both of these options would help ensure the continued operation and improvement of SotA.

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Now then, let me answer that question with a question which opens up allot of questions of the direction the game should go;

How much do you want to sell SOTA to "me" for?


~Time Lord~

 

I would not like to see the game change hands. I have zero desire for a game "managed by committee" and what that would eventually do to this community.

However, I would like to see at least a promise of open-sourcing as much as legally possible. Should the time ever come to shutdown the servers, it would be extremely helpful to have as much of the code as possible available to anyone that wanted to setup their own "shard".

 

BTW, Love what you've done for fishing!

I'll stick this leadership rant link here below I posted on another thread, of how we got here, where such a question as you are asking, would mean nothing but continuing our current funding trajectory, which is not in the direction of "up". Doing the same things and expecting a different outcome is not what is needed. No bunch of Hale Bopp Technolians will be steering the wheel, on anyone else's funds if anyone did buy our game. This proposal is nothing more than squatter's rights masquerading as a success story.

Business as usual has brought us to where we are.
(The Hale Bopp Tech Overloards Rant is where this link leads to, which is not flattering at all.)
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...ch-this-news-story.171742/page-2#post-1341740

The first one to name a price looses,because that's the way of the world in selling anything, including an idea Ep#3 is only the half way point and we're not there, because we've been lead here ~TL~

 

If we forget everything else, the things that make this already impossible,
what about the data?
There is no way, they can open it nor hand it to just about anyone, because of the laws surround us.
So unless you actually buy the company, it gets pretty hard.

This is a wild dream and I remember that there is an answer already for this, just cannot find it now.
( It was a no no ).

Is it a time to start building private server and hooks to client ( like in any other Unity game, to mod it )?
// No, Its a joke.

 

You joke, but given that the engine and most of the assets in the game are licensed, the game is free-to-play and whoever owns the IP still has lingering liabilities left over from the Kickstarter and you might not be too far off on the book value of the game.

 

I do joke, because the bits of news I am hearing/reading here, and there, are just so...sad. My biggest concern is the news that @Chris, will be splitting his time between SotA and LB's newest "endeavor". I like what Chris and the team have been doing, but the perception (at least to me) is that Shroud is even more on the backburner than it was before. Increasing my doubt that we will actually see an Episode 2. I truly hope I am wrong...

 

As far as I know, the development of the game is still continuing and that isn’t changing (per the last stream with Chris). As for players buying the game, I don’t see that happening (for legal reasons, intellectual property, and operating assets).

Don’t see any reason for this at the current state of the game, which is, still in development.

 

Yep, I copied my transaction history and have been playing in offline sota, which I now call my life boat.

I mean, just in case the web site goes down, the forums abruptly close or something like that.


I have faith in Chris as he has said time and again that he does have a plan so that the server itself won't ever go down, but there's always the unexpected that may not allow him to be able to do that. Life always has humps and bumps which can be rough on even best of plans, wishes or intents.

I think my offline game won't fail if the lights ever go out, will it?
R100 seems OK ~Time Lord~

 

The stuff Chris does David can do fyi on the programming side. they are not stopping development, Chris's time is the only ones who time is divided. the rest of the team is going full bore. As he stated he has been working on the other game for some time now and nobody knew any different until he mentioned it.

That said nothing is changing and releases will continue to come. There is a lot of focus right now on getting all the bugs stomped out and a lot of back end rewriting I believe from David (DC) to fix bandaids and the likes. you also have Ravolox and Sannio still working on everything they do. (dungeons, scene building, quests, and bugs too.) There are others devs too on the back scenes adding things from time to time too, and some of those devs work on multiple projects too.

So I think people keep jumping to conclusions when there are none really there as its business as usual

 

Then we need to make sure we have one of these:

 

Whether or not this gets a happy face is pretty dependent on whether or not you think "business as usual" is good or not in this case.

 

that is a fair statement Business can always be better.

 

So what are you saying here @Xee , do you want to buy sota or what?

We can point to a really nice engine when a car is working and still call it a car sale, "no matter if the main mechanics quit, or until all the rest of the mechanics quit?"

I'm not saying things are stopping or have stopped, but each time I hear another who should know something say something or ask something about releasing the last of what was Portalarium from their personal liability, even when that liability is in name or reputation only, it doesn't make me a more confident buyer.

I know you're trying to blow some sunshine on sota and I'll help you do that, but... I'm still the only one here in this thread that has actually offered to buy Shroud of the Avatar, which makes me ever more confident that the price I'd pay for sota may be too much for what I'd be buying.

I've made an offer here to buy our game but I'm feeling lonely being the only one who has. I haven't seen any contracts without employee escape clauses offered here, which makes me feel even more lonely and far less confident. It's the continued maintenance policy that comes with the car that has me worried.

So, I'm the only buyer?

Buisness as Usual = Results as Usual.
~Time Lord~

 

I don't believe the software is for sale based on what Chris said last stream, and I have my own software that I have to build/maintain in industrial side of things so no time for such things

As to " but each time I hear another who should know something say something or ask something about releasing the last of what was Portalarium from their personal liability, even when that liability is in name or reputation only, it doesn't make me a more confident buyer." you have to keep in mind that most of the people are just expressing opinions based on nothing factual or only based on their perceptions or partial truths.

Peoples perceptions are their reality.

Just like yours where you mentioned "I hear another..." you than get a new perception of something that could be true or not. If there is something you want to know for sure the only way to know is to AskaDev and or email support. there is no such thing as a bad question but there is bad response's sometimes

I do think that sometimes information gets messed up because of things communicated wrongly which is what causes a lot of negative views.

I believe in the big picture of all that can be based on what I know well at the same time though I am very realistic in knowing that time frame is really the short fall because of limited resources.

That said "Everything in time" a phrase I use often which I believe holds true today.

I also know some choices well not the best were made and some cost SOTA. I do think every release makes the game better than before and we could probably all agree on that for the most part.

Player base is all that is missing, and unfortunately there is a few old backers who are not helping SOTA paint a better pictures because they feel betrayed in many things. well in reality if those people some being seed investors and some being media outlets instead choose to help build the player base rather than spending all that energy painting a negative perception they could have had most likely a good investment, but instead they choose to poison their own well yet expect return well trying to sink a ship every turn they get.

Nothing positive can come from anger or negativity. And those that surround themselves with others who are angry or negative will feed each other into a downward spiral with nothing in return but anger.
Take what is at face value and learn is all you can do, and use that knowledge to move forward as you can't change the past but you can plan for the future!

I will continue to always be optimistic in life as I always look for the positives. Shroud long term is UO successor but the journey could be long only time will tell.

My perception in everything, life is too short and to enjoy what you have today as tomorrow may not come.

-Xee

 

OK, now remember the first rule in buying or selling anything is, "the first one to mention an amount looses"

So, this establishes that Xee's company is worth more than sota now we're getting somewhere! (I won't mention your company or company you work for. This is just a way of estimating true value without a number.

Customers are always a good thing and a large part in estimating value, without yet mentioning a number. When valuing a franchise or individual shop, traffic through it means allot, which is usually a part of any good market survey.

I've been here long enough to see trajectory in many things sota, and trajectory has allot to do with valuing anything proposed to being offered. I know some privet shards I could afford of UO and some turn a good coin of non-profit... "profits". I think this suggests we are on par with UO, or at least one of the privet shards, maybe UO Forever? I actually think they have a larger player base.

I agree with this, which is why I've offered to buy the game But nobody else is, which means I'm as yet the only bidder here, by anouncing my interest, because that's what was asked in the OP's thread description.

I'll say this again, remember the first rule in buying or selling anything is, "the first one to mention an amount looses".

I'll also mention something here that's been only slightly touched on, the Kickstarter and initial backers of "our game". We paid for it's coming into being, yet we don't own it. I really don't even think seedinvestors own or owned anything. As far as I'm conserned, the digital rewards from seedinvest were the real value, while the stock itself was a complete toss away, yet a good try at what Richard Garriott has been striving to accomplish in this new venture.

Certainly no one wants to see our laundry, but our laundry is a part of our sota crowd funded journey together. Neither Chris or Richard have violated any trust with us throughout this journey together. "The virtues have been followed and continue to be followed". Our development funds may dry out to a point where all we can afford is to keep the server going. I don't think that it will reach that point, but life has it's challenges and sota's future is just as shaky or stable as the real world allows.

If I don't buy SOTA, we could be looking at a non-profit opportunity where we seek to set up an endowment fund.
(which I thought for sure that seedinvest thing would have gone to, as our trajectory back in those times was at a tipping point. It seems to have turned out to be a sort of junk bond investment, but there was and is nothing nefarious in that. It just is what it was. So far I know of no seedinvest that has become truly successfull. I once got very close to buying out a gold mining company called Quartz Mountain Gold QZMGF when it was actually on the stock exchange. It was amazing what could be accomplished through junk bonds back then. But then for some reason Washington state passed laws banning Bio-Heap Leaching just because they didn't want the taste of cyanide in their ground water coming off the mountains, so I let go of the that offer. 2.34 oz of gold per ton mixed with quartz rock, profitable mining begins at .030 gold per ton.)

What I see as the real question here, is just how much of a flat line will our game's development funding become before looking in different directions for customers? We've been slowly limiting our base through the tech game we've made sota to be. We are now a cult who cannot see normal people's fun. Our steep learning curve has no off-ramp where a player can be successfull without buying a calculator or having a sota college degree.

We speak allot about the virtues or did when we came here to back our game and I don't think embracing the anti-virtues hiding truth best suits our future's needs.

Citing the lack of a larger player base without addressing the core issues of why they don't stay or why more don't come needs some technolians to begin making our game more apealing to common people who have New Britannia in their hearts or a sense of immersion into a world rather than in digits. Most don't make it past our opening entry point, because there's no off-ramp. There's only an ever increasing need for that sota college education, working on that keyboard through muscle memory and using a calculator to figure out who has a single point advantage in their build.

I've offered to buy sota and I see nothing negitive about that, all but the anti-virtue sunshine hype over-shadowing truth and the courage to not hide how we've gotten here so close to our flat-line.

The moral compass in our developments aim, is failing to hit the larger target audience, choosing instead to hit the very small tech targeted audience with more of what they demand in order to stay and play.

We came close to our core audience, funded things through kickstarter,


...then we went sailing into oblivion with the small tech niche that came with us, leaving all others behind, while the tech will leave us when another, next "best thing" comes along.

We're in deep space right now and there's not allot in deep space to gather as an audience from, but the next Hale Bopp is here again and we need to let the technolians go where they will be going, but we do need some teriforming for normal people to be lured in to replace those "who will leave".

We are catering our game to the wrong people, because there's a new tech game coming. SOTA needs to become an easier stepping stone for this new game, because it is going to take allot of us away.

"SOTA needs to become an easier stepping stone for this new game"

Hale Bopp is coming and it looks like a tech game!
So we need to be something else!
That's my offer to buy sota.
~Time Lord~

 

This is really not helpful at all.

 

I'll just mention that one big plus of this game is that it can be played in offline mode, so you still have something to play even if the servers do close (although what there is to play may not be fantastic). That was the main selling point that made me back the game Back In The Day -- I'm not at all a fan of MMOs, but played Akalabeth and Ultimas I-IV when I was a kid (and V as an adult) and adored them. MMOs mostly all look the same to me, I don't have 100s of hours to put into a game that is structured like job. I have maybe 40 if I am lucky.

I liked Richard's sales pitch of being able to adjust the involvement of other players up and down in my personal play experience. Although back when I started playing in 2014, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I enjoyed the social aspect.

My son and I are planning to jump back into the game after a long absence tomorrow; we decided to do a quest reset since we largely forgot what we had been doing and it was long enough ago that I suspect some of the quests would be bugged if we tried continuing them as-is.

 

Oh yes please do make sure you get some of the newer bard skills too as they come in very handy. SOTA isn't going anywhere, though our development may seem slow, it's not as slow as it's made out by some so be. I think we're still plodding along at about the same pace as we ever have.

All of this thread is mostly about the need to batten down the hatches and morph into something a bit different instead of our current target audience because there is a comet coming to take some away.

Or SOTA searches for it's purpose and place now, just as any first child sees it's new sibling gathering up all the attention.

I am exploring offline play too, but mostly because it's our online game's direct competitor. I study all aspects of our game now for their monitization potential, thus I speak of our needs to get lean and cut away the un-needed fat that our development budget ends up dealing with, even though, like an Alabama Tic these same minute issues continue to suck the life out of us and push our game into unfundable ever deepening crevasse atop Mt. Everest.

I am one who wishes our game's development to target it's apeal to a more broad audience than the few because the few we do cater to will be leaving us as soon as Richard Garriott's new venture becomes playable.

Being among one of our game's largest monetary contributors of 2021, I tend to brow beat the need of our game to become a rung in the ladder helping Richard's new venture, thereby catching those who step down from it, while aiding those along their way from our game here "sota" to accend up to it. We either become a part of the ladder or we become simply left off the ladder.

We need to become a "catch all" instead of a "catch few" as throughout our past we have been targeted at.

Some day on Richard Garriott's new game's forum, there will be a post that goes something like these examples:

• I know it seems technical and not so user friendly, but you may find Shroud of the Avatar, which is more user friendly to better fit your style of play.
• I'm having so much fun in this new content, but there's not enough of it yet, lets go play Shroud of the Avatar until the next instance get's added to this new game.
• This needs to be done exactly as it is on Shroud of the Avatar, come let me show you!

But if we don't become a catch all for this new venture, because the few leave and the multitudes of common game players were not more accomidated for before our technolians leave:

• You remember Shroud of the Avatar?
• Yes I hear it's having trouble keeping it's server going due to a lack of customers.
• Yes it's still in a zombie state, barely hanging on to it's life support.

One of these predictions will become true, it's which one, which is at issue here.
I like Chris's leadership because he knows games, not because he's a programer at the key board.
~Time Lord~