Greetings and thoughts....

Hello all and thanks in advance for taking the time to read this.

For the record my name is Twitch not 0342fj and i am 30 years old. I have played almost every mmo to be released of any note since ultima online. I see a lot of posts around the internet talking about trying to get "that feel" when you first played wow and trying to replicate that. For me wow is replaced by UO and without question my fondest gaming memories are of my time spent on the Europa shard.

I heard some time back about shroud of the avatar and was somewhat confused about what it was meant to be and stopped paying much attention to it but last night stumbled across it again as it appeared on steam. Instantly I was excited and scrambled down to the reviews section to see how things were panning out. The scene was not good. Complaint after complaint after complaint. I took to reddit to see if things got any better and it was much the same.

How could I possibly justify dropping money on this with such a tirade of bad feelings surounding it. I looked on the shroud website and saw it was 30 quid or so and figured even if the game is terrible, the years of joy UO gave me were priceless and even if I hated this thing I can always brush 30 quid off as a thank you for that time.

So I paid my money and I rolled the dice.... And im glad I did.

Lets be clear theres a lot of work to be done. Although I dont think the combat is anything special in terms of the deck building i guess it is interesting at least, though the way monsters react and the sound effects could use some love.

I also am not to keen on the load times and do find it somewhat immersion breaking.

That said they are my only bug bears. There are plenty of other things to improve on but this is a pre alpha and to me it seems pretty good.

If i want excellent combat I can go play tera, if I want excellent graphics ill go play the witcher. There is something about this game already though that captures a sense of excitement in me that I cant replicate elsewhere.

I cant wait to involve myself in the community come release or when i log on to mess around. I am not surprised by the negativity. This is far from what people have come to expect from modern day mmos and rpgs but im ok with that as i have other games that meet those expectations. Im looking for something unique and special and I think i may have found it.

Thank you to the dev team for working on what is clearly going to be a labour of love, and thanks to those of you who have invested your hard earned money to make this a reality. I will be increasing my pledge monthly.

Take care all! - Twitch Deroux

 

Welcome........always great to see another Europa player

 

Welcome, Twitch!

 

Greetings and welcome.
If you truly intend to upgrade then please read update 133 on the main site carefully. Some pledges and perks are going away now that they are closing in on alpha and beta etc.
so that you don't miss out on something you thought would be there later on.

And please let us know if you have questions or seek assistance.

Happy hunting

Spoon

 

Welcome Twitch! Happy to have you here. There are many who will help. All you have to do is ask and we will be there. You will find this community to be quite exceptional

 

Hi Twitcha nd welcome to Shroud of the Avatar. As you said you have already pledged so you should not be affected by the change especially if you did a payment plan to get to your desired pledge tier. I think the game will be something special also once the systems are all added in and get fleshed out to be feature complete. Enjoy the journey and then we will say to those naysayers 'see there was a plan and it just takes time to get it up and running and now you can take back your words'.

edited..... Oh and I played on Pacific shard in UO for 6 years and I agree, it was a wonderful time in my life.

 

Thanks for the heads up on the #133 changes and thank you for the kind welcomes and offers of assistance.

I look forward to meeting you all in my adventures in game

 

Welcome to the game and the forums, Twitch!

 

Welcome to the Community Twitch! Glad to see you like what you see and things are just starting to take shape here.

If I can be of any assistance feel free to look me up in game.

Laz

 

There have been some Steam games in Early Access that were never finished. So some people in the Steam community are always skeptical of Early Access games that aren't feature complete.

Some of the negative reviews were people who ultimately wanted a different game (non-consensual PvP, full loot, etc) and wrote negative reviews because they didn't get their way.

This is one of the more transparent development cycles I've ever seen. They've hit every release on time. They constantly show progress. If you're got long-term vision and patience, then I have no qualms recommending to people. If nothing else, the community events make this a really special game.

FWIW, you can help change the perception by adding a positive (and objective) Steam review.

 

I would do this but having invested very little time so far I would struggle to lay out a constructive review. Most of my outlook is based on a general feeling. That being said Ill probably sink some time in this weekend and Im hoping to get along to some of the community events listed in game so hopefully can put something worthwhile together to post on steam.

 

SotA is not feature complete. Those people in the steam community are right to be skeptical. To speak in behalf of those people, it's very misleading for a game to claims that Lord British is back and claims to be the spiritual successor of UO to in fact lack so many aspects of UO. This is a quote from a project gorgon in KS. "While most recent MMO's have chased the EQ/WOW models, it's great to see games like Project Gorgon, pursuing the more open world and sandbox style that I think is underserved to gamers." -Richard (Lord British) Garriott." However does the opposite with his game, go figure. I've read those negative reviews and I don't believe they are out of place.

 

The other Early Access games that were abandoned often had a single developer who wasn't an established professional.

This is a fully funded game from a studio with established industry vets.

And this is absolutely a spiritual successor to both single player Ultimas and UO. It is vastly more like UO than it is different. And he never promised an exact clone of UO. In fact, he never really cloned his games from Ultima IV on. Each game changed fairly significantly.

 

Not 0342fj,
Welcome to New Britannia!
I behoove you to, once getting settled, please provide feedback in the various threads of this forum to help inform the Devs what you feel makes this game fun, what you think could use more work, and what might make it better.
30% of each months' release is dedicated to development based on player feedback!
So we have a true opportunity to feel a part of this experience to a degree I've never witnessed before.
Can't wait to see you in game.

 

Welcome to SotA! I suspect with big patch/releases like the upcoming R20 release this game should be getting more of the better sort of reviews. R20 looks really exciting so your timing is not bad in joining the pre-alpha Welcome and enjoy!

 

Welcome Twitch Deroux!

 

Maybe some of the reviews that are bad, are just bad reviews.
Maybe not everyone is stupid, just because a review isn't favorable.
This isn't the only game that is early in its development that is on steam. Several of them have good reviews.
Being early in development isn't an excuse for a poor review.
If you like the game, in its present state, give it a good review.
If you don't, give it a bad review.
Giving it a good review merely to boost its sales and/or reputation, is an unsatisfactory response to what is going on.
Honesty is always an appropriate response.
If the reviews continue to be unfavorable, perhaps the devs will take a moment to reflect on why.

 

Well if you are here playing the game and watching the progress eventually you will see it get to a more fisnished state. This game is not like any other game since the meat of the game is the last to be prepared. You would not want to cook a steak all the way and then start the potatoes cooking and make the salad and vegies while in the meantime the steak gets cold.

Some of the truly great things about this game come in last. So no matter what the reviews the Devs are doing their job in adding the components of this game in the order that they need to be added. The look and feel of this game is in progress and while people continue to judge it as a done deal it is by no means close to that. Some aspects of the game may not even be known at the moment as it is being developed as we go in some instances to flesh out systems and interactions and general feel of the game.

So for me I do imagine the reviews will continue to vary depending on how different people view what is going on so we have to deal with that for now. I am not saying that people do not have valid points of course since feedback is valuable, I am just stating my opinion of the reviews and that I don't watch them or worry about them for reasons I mentioned above. I am just enjoying being involved and watching the development of this game.

 

The most important elements that made UO were intense death penalty(full loot), no tab targeting, skill based training, no levels, open world, non consensual PvP, fast travel, items in the floor, among other things . Is it spiritual succesor because it has housing, and talking to NPC's I don't see any other resemblance. SotA has no death penalty like WoW, combat like WoW, level system like WoW, instanced like WoW, consensual PvP like WoW, graphics like WoW just to mention some characteristics that resemblance WoW.

What devs in the last decade fail to understand that if I wanted to play a WoW-like game I would play WoW.

 

Hmmm maybe you haven't played WOW for awhile. It is a bit cartoony looking and no openable doors etc. Items can't be placed on floor yet as Devs have mentioned that would cause problems to the game, that will come later. WOW combat is not card combat. Well I see you are new so I also welcome you to Shrouds. Hopefully as you play you will start to see the aspects of UO that we all ask for since there will be aspects just not a clone. I have been able to tab target but who knows since combat is changed so much in this next release and will continue to change as they are working on it. Oh well I am not here to argue. I actually liked WOW since I played it for 4 years. I loved UO and played it for 6.