Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Here?s what we have for you in this week?s edition of Update of the Avatar:

Founder Teachable Emotes
Founder Lord House Servant
Golden Eagle Pet
Blade of the Avatar Novel: Chapter 14
Alienware R5 Weekend Access Keys and $20 Pledge Upgrade Coupons
Upcoming Events
This Week In The News
Only 17 Days Remain to Purchase/Upgrade/Gift Founder Pledges

Founder Lord House Servant

Included in the Founder rewards of the Lord pledge tier is your very own, unique, house servant, appropriate to your stature as a Lord!

Alienware Sponsors 1000 Release 5 Weekend Access Keys

Every week for four weeks, starting March 24th, 250 members of the Alienware Arena Shroud of the Avatar Group will receive Weekend Access Keys to SotA Release 5, scheduled for April 24-27.

Giveaway Periods:

March 24 ? 30
March 31 ? April 6
April 7 ? 13
April 14 ? 20
250 members of the Alienware Arena Shroud of the Avatar Group will be able to gain weekend access to SotA?s Release 5 during each giveaway period. For more details, jump on over to the Alieware Arena site and make sure you?re registered in their Shroud of the Avatar Group!

[Note: Weekend Access Keys are non-transferable; Make sure that your SotA account uses the same email address as your Alienware Arena account in order to utilize the Weekend Access Keys]

Release 4 access for all backers at First Responder level and above begins this Thursday, March 27 at 10:30 AM Central Time. Release 4 access will end on Sunday, March 30 at 10:00 PM Central Time.

RELEASE 4: March 27 - 30, 2014
Performance Optimizations: Introducing multiplayer in Release 3 exposed some performance issues that needed resolution sooner than later. To that end, we made this a top priority for Release 4 so more players can enjoy the game.
Overworld Map System: Our dual scale navigation system will launch and players will be able to use it to navigate between towns and adventuring areas.
10 Scenes: The Hidden Vale, a hidden island northeast of the mainland, will be complete with 10 scenes, including towns, wilderness, caves, and dungeons. NOTE: We actually have 14 scenes (although two are merely placeholders).
Combat: Those first scenes will have nasty beasts in them, so we’ve decided we should give you a way to fight back! This first release of combat will be extremely simple and focus just on auto swing using your equipped weapon. Death will also be kept simple for now: you will auto resurrect at your death location after a short time interval.
Quests: Players will be able to participate in quests that will send them around the world and even change game state in the scenes based on quest flags. Testing this early is important because our quest system operates differently than the current standards (e.g. no exclamation points or convo trees). We will also provide the first version of the journal. NOTE: For R4 we were unable to get the Journal UI implemented but you can still get the data by typing /journal in the chat window.
Loot: Killing those nasty creatures you encounter and quests you complete will generate loot, including gold and resources.
Crafting: Resource Gathering will be added to crafting including resource nodes placed in the world. More recipes will also become available. NOTE: For R4, gathering includes tree chopping (wood), field dressing (animal hides), harvesting (cotton) and mining (ore).
More Recipes: 16 more recipes bring our grand total to 169.
Player Housing: The housing system will be re-launched with persistence in the online space. Since we are still on the small island of Hidden Vale there are not yet enough lots to go around. To continue to allow everyone to try out player housing, the ownership of the lots will cycle every hour or two. NOTE: While waterfront housing and basements are not working yet, we wanted you to still be able to view them. Waterfront houses (Frigate, Galleon, Houseboat, Lighthouse, Duke Island Castle, etc.) can be found in Kingsport and basements can be found in various buildings around Owlshead, Kingsport, and Braemar. These are static buildings / scenes and not player owned.
Parties: We will continue to expand our social systems by adding a Party system so players can group together and adventure.
Mac/Linux Patching: No longer will you have to download a full executable whenever we release a new patch. Mac and Linux versions will patch just like the Windows version.
Swimming: Jumping was just the first step to giving players a much greater feeling of movement freedom. Like jumping, swimming will eventually be governed by game systems like encumbrance and focus.
So now that it is clear what you can expect, we should also be as clear about what you should not expect:
Combat: As noted above combat does not yet include skills, magic, decks, or advancement.
Performance: We have only done rudimentary optimizations and we do not yet have a full suite of performance fallbacks (LODs, etc.). This means the game will be quite slow on older machines, and due to memory usage, might be unstable in certain conditions (like densely decorated areas). With each release we will be doing further optimizations and adding to our fallbacks to improve performance.
Navigation: We have not yet put in a compass or a mini-map, so navigation can be quite challenging at times.
Crafting: The crafting system is in the game as a framework, but is still missing some key components like repair, events, and enhancement. Skill checks are also not in yet, so results are always 100% successful. Long term, the percentage chance to make items will depend on a myriad of variables and can result in a variety of results including: making the item desired, making a simpler version of the item that will need to be enhanced, or making a damaged version of the item that needs repair.
Game Loop: Release 4 is the first time we will have a rudimentary game loop, but it is still very bare bones. Expect this to expand with each subsequent release but it won’t be truly complete until we hit Beta later this year
Advanced Player Housing: There are some advanced features for player housing, including waterfront properties, basements, home exterior decorations, and ceiling decorations that are not yet integrated. Expect to see these appear in future releases.

Only 6 Days Remain to Purchase/Upgrade/Gift Founder Pledges
Until the promotion ends on April 7th, 2014, Founder backers will be able to purchase and/or gift additional Founder pledges containing all the original Founder rewards, as well as upgrade any of their pledges at original Kickstarter prices. After April 7th, prices for upgrades, gifts, and purchases will increase to Benefactor prices and no new Founder pledges can be created. Don’t miss out!

Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! (Did We Happen To Mention “Thank You?”)

The One-Year Anniversary Telethon was an amazing success, raising over $95,000 and setting a new record for post-Kickstarter single-day funding! The day was filled with tons of community interaction, prize giveaways, and the usual zany antics that seem to be a common theme running through SotA Telethons. If you missed the live streams, you can watch the recorded videos here.


One year ago, at the conclusion of our successful Kickstarter campaign, we wrote these words:

Wow! Words can’t adequately express how overwhelmed we are with the incredible outpouring of support and dedication that all of you gave to the Shroud of the Avatar Kickstarter campaign, and to all of us on the SotA Team! Because of your incredible support, we raised a total of $2.03M, double our original goal!

But it didn’t stop there! Over the past year you have helped us raise another $1.95M, bringing our total funds raised to $3.98M! We have plowed every nickle of those additional funds back into the development of Shroud of the Avatar through new content and enhanced features. Each month that our development funding increased, we would add more team members, and at 31 members we have more than doubled the size it was a year ago.

We cannot thank you enough for the tremendous support that all of you have shown over the past year, with your generous contributions to the funding of the project, and your passionate collaboration on this game we are all building together. The past year we have spent with you has exceeded all our expectations, and it is with great excitement that we look forward to our next year together!

Published on Apr 24, 2014
Shroud of the Avatar Pre-Alpha R5 has been released! Join me as we look at all the new features this iteration brings and I share some tips to help you get the most out of it in the shortest amount of time.

Overview Includes:
New overland map view, early skill-based combat, linear lighting, new creatures, Kingsport Sewers, compass, dialog journal, housing, and more!

Finally, if you have a friend who is already a Shroud of the Avatar backer and you are thinking of backing the game as well, make sure you use their referral code during the sign-up process. This will increase their in-game pledge amount in the game.

Published on Apr 29, 2014
This is the Town Stone Basements in Shroud of the Avatar. Lord level pledges receive a 1-Story Town Stone Basement as part of their pledge reward. The basement shown here is a 4-Story version, but should give you an idea of the size and configuration of each level. If you want to see this particular basement for yourself you can find it behind the counter of Fire Lotus' tavern in Owl's head.

NOTE: This is pre-alpha code. The actual game doesn't come out until December of 2014

It is a testament to the exploding interest in Shroud of the Avatar across the entire world-wide gaming community that the number of New Britannians on the SotA website has surpassed 100,000 and keeps on growing! Long live New Britannia!

The SotA Team is currently comprised of:

31 full-time, 7 part-time
21 employees, 17 contractors
Roles
12 Art
8 Programming
6 Design
3 Production
1 Web
3 Community/CS/QA
5 Markting/PR/Finance/Legal/Admin (all part-time contractors)
If you haven’t already done so, we welcome you to learn more about each of our team members by checking out their bios on the Dev Team Page, including our newest team member, programmer Zack Sheppard, who joined our team last week.

On a personal note, in the 32 years that I (dallas) have been making games, this is by far, one of the most rewarding development projects I’ve ever been involved with, and that is directly attributable to this amazing team that has joined together with all of you, our equally amazing community of backers, to create this amazing game!

e latest installment of the serialized SotA novel, Blade of the Avatar (BotA), written by Tracy Hickman & Richard Garriott, is now available for download! If you are a Founder, or you purchased BotA in the Add-On Store, then you will find a download link for the current installment of the novel on your personal SotA account page (log into SotA website and click on “Account” in the top-right corner).  If you are a Kickstarter backer you’ll need to have your Kickstarter account linked to the SotA website.

2014.05.22 – Release 6 Access
2014.06.10 – SotA at E3
2014.06.26 – Release 7 Access
2014.08.09 – SotA at synDCon
2014.08.29 – SotA at Dragoncon

Open PVP Areas: Certain parts of the map will now allow open PVP. Currently we have been testing this functionality in the Castle Basement Arena. For now there will be very little structure to this; it will basically be just deathmatch.
7 Open PVP Zones: These range from Arena Basements to an entire player town island. They can be accessed from Kingsport (the Brave Coast ferry on the dock and at the northern guard tower), Owlshead (to the northeast of FireLotus Tavern near the gate to the town center and within the weapon shop near the barracks) and Braemar (within the very surprised young lady Bridget’s house). There are also two forest road scenes accessible via the overworld map.
PVP Balance (NOT): Despite daily play sessions and constant tuning for 3.5 weeks, PVP balance is still in a massive state of flux (as expected). Our focus with this first iteration was to get everything to a base level of functionality, balance will come over time. This is why it is is important for us to get it in sooner versus later (as many of you urged us to do). Expect it to take at least 1 or 2 more releases before it is even close to being near a steady state. Until then enjoy the Chaos (and report issues)!!!