Kotaku article with Richard Garriott interview infos

Here is the link to the article:
http://kotaku.com/richard-garriott-reassures-shroud-of-the-avatar-backers-1795774769

First I have to say that this article is very well written and unbiased. It is very objective which I appreciated very much.

I highly recommend reading the article for yourself, but here a few things that stood out to me:

PROS:
- RG says the additional equity crowd funding is not an attempt to save the company from going broke, but to scale Portalarium up.

- RG says they want to publish other games in the future, which to me says he is very confident in the success of Portalarium, which is always good.

- RG says there’s no cause for alarm

CONS:
- RG says that Port earns about what they spend each month and that has been like that since the beginning. The roughly 500k dollars they have "in the bank" have been there since the start.
Now you can see this as "if they managed to do this for 4 years now then there is no reason why it should not continue to work". But this also means that they do not have a lot of wiggle room with their budget which also means that they can not afford a "hickup" in earnings. Seems a little risky.

- RG himself does not know what the description "conquer a town" means. That is made clear by guessing what it *could* mean on the call with Kotaku. That is not really reassuring.
Don't post things that only sound good, but have no real basis in reality.

- Kotaku points out that the game is not even feature complete but Port claims they will finish it this year. It sounds unlikely.


Interesting times ahead!

 

exactly what I have been telling people so I get an "I told you so"

 

What did you tell people?

 

if that is their source then... not going to give them my view... LOL (as if my view is that important to them... LOL)

 

Well their main reference is their friggin call with Richard Garriott...

 

A lot of the beef that a lot of people have with the game references to things that RG said on the KS campaign that ended up not happening/not quite happening though. I would give the answers to Kotaku a kidney-destroying pinch of salt. I did not come in during the KS, but look what a lot of the more hardcore players in the other threads are saying, backed with actual statements from the campaign etc.

It's very disappointing to hear him deflect all of these with "don't lawyer me bro", even though in the latest telethon it was directed to things he said on the telethon shouldn't imply that it will eventually get implemented in the game. I have friends who are great fans, who started with UO. They backed this game because of him and the promises he made. I am only in this game because of them. I really want this game to work for them.

 

Check the powerpoint like presentation in the files. They claim the game is feature complete. Which is a bummer and together with announcements of conquering anything etc. plain false advertising or at least extremely misleading. Most stuff in this game is so shallow that is could only attract mobile gamers.

 

This is not what he said during Kickstarter but in a recent phone interview. If we can't listen to the guy who is the owner of the company and the director of the project then I don't know.

 

Really? I can't download the documents there, do you have the exact wording?

 

There you go.


File link.

PS: The file link activates a download directly. The file should go to your download folder directly.

 

@Lord_Darkmoon @Pongster - You could also understand this that most features are complete and being polished but not necessarily being "rolled-out" or published. But the whole discussion is pointless, everybody seems to have a pre-set opinion and the only thing we can do is sit and wait. Either our assumptions will be confirmed or we will be proven wrong.

 

Thanks for finding and posting the article @LoneWerewolf !'

One thing the Richard is not is Confefe !'
Very Enlightening!
~Time Lord~

 

I absolutely agree that there is nothing we can do but sit and wait.

I don't mean to sound entirely negative, just trying to facilitate understanding of the different opinions of people. Also, in this case, he is just asking for information and I thought it would be helpful to just provide it to him.

 

Any chance of ever telling us what these are so that some people aren't left being strung along waiting for features that you never plan to implement?

 

...ouch

 

People gave you money because of what you promised on Kickstarter. People will give you money because of what you promise now with the new seed invest. Contrary to what you believe you actually DO have responsibility for what you are promising to people who then give you money in good faith.

That being said, I understand what you are saying, the game evolved during development and not all features you imagined back then make sense now. That is perfectly reasonable and understandable. However there are some features that were promised, that still do make a lot of sense and are not being delivered. Mainly an engaging single player story akin to the single player Ultimas. What I see are typical MMO quests. Yes all the players who only wanted UO2 are happy with it but I honestly do not know a single Ultima fan who says the story implementation so far lives up to those 20 year old games. So it’s not just my personal opinion.

By now it should be clear that many players are not happy with the way you handled Kickstarter promises. As said above, it is understandable that not everything made it into the game and some people are not reasonable, however: it baffles me that 4 years later you start to do the same thing all over again. You should try to earn the trust of players. This *seems* more like trying to get their money no matter how. This time however you went even further by not only promising things you do not necessarily intent to honor, but you claim the game has features it simply doesn't have. Is this really what you want? This is not the right direction to gain (back) the trust. Who wrote the seed invest stuff? You act as if Portalarium has nothing to do with it. A trickster suddenly flew in the window and wrote it? Even if that were the case, go back and edit it.

How do you intent to going from "not feature complete pre alpha" to release in 7 months? Usually betas of other mmos last that long. It doesn't seem trustworthy. Be honest with us PLEASE.

I desperately want this game to succeed because it *SOUNDS* SO GOOD, but instead of giving me cake you keep punching me in the gut.

 

I agree. "Luring" people into giving money up front for a description of the game they would like to play and then changing it afterwards because of some players feedback is not ok, imho.
What about the feedback of those who wanted to have the "single-player RPG with the option to play online"?

 

I dunno why it is so hard to give us PVP guild flags with a little bonus... why is it so hard to make guards react to virtue? Why isn't there basic virtue vs anti virtue combat? Local Economy by making CPs controlled by player guilds??? We do not even have a discussion about those things. There is just NO DESIGN OF THAT. That is your main problem. Give us clear info on your design vision. EVEN ADMITTING that you do not know would be better than what is happening now.

Your game lacks a vision where people could be interested in. Just saying be patient was the death of this community already. Throw us some bones at least.