QA Server, Forums & Release Instructions Now Open to All - Shroud of the Avatar - MMORPG.com

SBFord · July 2017

QA Server, Forums & Release Instructions Now Open to All - Shroud of the Avatar - MMORPG.com

Shroud of the Avatar News - Something of a firestorm has cropped up on the Shroud of the Avatar forum with yesterday's announcement that the QA server, QA Bug Forums and Release Instructions are now going to be available to all backers regardless of financial commitment. According to Starr Long, this is being done to remove potential advantages gained by those who had previously had exclusive access to these areas.

Read the full story here

hasho83 · July 2017

And you can all see how generous they are,giving you the patch notes for free and stuf ! LOFL !!! Is this a joke ?!?

Aeander · July 2017

Hold on. I need a soda after all that popcorn from the previous Shroud thread.

blorpykins · July 2017

lol

Here's Darkstar telling a player that the QA server was never part of the Dev+ deal.

And here's what happens if you try to log into the QA server without Dev+ access.

SpottyGekko · July 2017

Now that enough players have paid for "exclusive access", we'll open it to everyone else for free, seeing as sales have almost stopped, lol...

rune_74 · July 2017

The reason this happened was because people who paid for access were getting info on changes that would be coming up later in the live game and then were using their inisder information to make a ton of gold in game.

This isn't seen as an issue to some of them.

postlarval · July 2017

Baron, in his usual snobbish way says this:

"I can think of one very important reason, the masses are not very good with information or changes."

THIS is what the SotA in-crowd (aka RG boot-lickers) think of the rest of the players. Too stupid to handle game changes, as if the whales are. The guy is a class A twit.

Or as one whale referred to them: the unwashed masses.

Those that continue to support this embarrassment of a game deserve whatever happens to their money.

rune_74 · July 2017

postlarval said:

Baron, in his usual snobbish way says this:

"I can think of one very important reason, the masses are not very good with information or changes."

THIS is what the SotA in-crowd (aka RG boot-lickers) think of the rest of the players. Too stupid to handle game changes, as if the whales are. The guy is a class A twit.

Or as one whale referred to them: the unwashed masses.

Those that continue to support this embarrassment of a game deserve whatever happens to their money.

Thing is this guy thought that kickstarter promises weren't that important, until they affected him. This is amazing group of monsters able to bend the devs ear on most things to date. The game you see is really partly at fault of some of these winners.

Baron Drocis was directly responsible for a lot of players being banned that he didn't like their ideas. I'm willing to bet he will threaten lawsuit against port before the end.

blorpykins · July 2017

LOL so what's up with the thread getting locked. Community management's time to shine and all they can do is lock the thread and dismiss everyone's comments by saying "Locking the thread. Nothing positive, not constructive happening here."

Maybe it has something to do with $$$$$ backer status, because people get banned from SotA for asking questions and participating in open development all the time in those forums... why do the whales get a pass?

MightyUnclean · July 2017

Maybe that Baron dude is just roleplaying being an elitist asshole, and he is very good at it?

Aron_Swordmaster · July 2017

And just to make clear to those who haven't grasped the wider implication that we former Kickstarter backers who have left the game were long, long aware of;

We were promised a Buy to Own game, instead it's been hauled off by the economic designer Chris Spears (who incidentally thinks everyone who posts here is awful, do find his past comments) into being macro transaction driven and having a Premium Currency on top
It is also legal to Real Money Trade both the items in game, the Premium Currency, but also the basic gold itself.
Many of the early backers intended to push development towards this, and are responsible for pressuring the team into make the game Persistent so they could begin trading the stock they had built up. The economy however was so seriously unready for this, and the game so badly designed still it was instantly broken upon launch. So much so that Starr Long publicly stated that 90% of players couldn't even afford to play, and they've had to introduce a daily Log In bonus of both gold and XP to allow people to still take part.
The RMT backers specifically signed up to Dev+ to get information ahead of time in order to take advantage of Inside Information on all the changes they knew would thus have to be made. In this case, the drama begins when a user who still cares for basic fairness becomes aware that one piece of information is that a vital component in crafting (which like everything else, is tied to not just RMT but the in game Premium Currency) was about to become 100x rarer on the live server. So RMTs were buying up these goods...
... however if you discuss anything you see in the Dev+ forums outside of them, you can be banned from the forums and even the game. So you have a situation where you can get a real money advantage over other players based on hidden information only you have access too, and have them banned if they try and discuss it.
So despite Chris Spears pushing an insane Libertarian economic design for 4 years, Portalarium apparently don't understand what they've actually created until the above poster risks it all to call it out all the same, at which point the damage control kicks into affect... probably because Insider Trading where real money is concerned is ILLEGAL.

Now I personally agree this was the right thing to do. However if you read the thread, even amongst those agreeing it was too there are many still asking for some form of compensation for losing the forums.

But they should have been closed at least a year ago, when the game effectively launched. And it was, it doesn't matter how you can spin it, once you start allowing full scale RMT, the game is effectively live for any realistic definition.

Insider Trading should never have been allowed to happen. It's Portalarium's sheer blindness and incompetence that ensured it did; and the linked thread shows why. 1 in 4 of the responders when I did a quick count are outraged that they've lost the insider information. 25% or so of the responding population not just demanding the right to be immoral, but continue doing something outright illegal..?! But this is the kind of greed driven Cult thinking Shroud encourages; those of us who tried to appeal against the ever growing focus on RMT ahead of RPG were slowly driven out (or banned from) from the forums.

Portalarium simply wasn't listening to anyone but the Whales. And now they're getting tied into increasingly awful moral and legal messes... and they're still nowhere near financial security, much less finishing Episode 1. That's why they're doing a deal to add a cyrpto-currency trading network in game next too. They. Never. Ever. LEARN.

MadFrenchie · July 2017

rune_74 said:

The reason this happened was because people who paid for access were getting info on changes that would be coming up later in the live game and then were using their inisder information to make a ton of gold in game.

This isn't seen as an issue to some of them.

Would ya look at that... Using their money to make themselves even more money.. I mean, where else have we ever seen human beings use their elite status to ensure they stay there?

postlarval · July 2017

blorpykins said:

LOL so what's up with the thread getting locked. Community management's time to shine and all they can do is lock the thread and dismiss everyone's comments by saying "Locking the thread. Nothing positive, not constructive happening here."

Maybe it has something to do with $$$$$ backer status, because people get banned from SotA for asking questions and participating in open development all the time in those forums... why do the whales get a pass?

The thread was locked because Portalarium had to defuse a situation they should have seen coming. You can't strive for a wider audience and continue to entertain a special group on the side. They're way over their heads this time.

Besides, those elitist turds have received way more than they should have already...at the expense of a bad reputation for the game. Finally, Portalarium's balls have dropped.

I want to see more whale tears. More!

MightyUnclean · July 2017

blorpykins · July 2017

postlarval said:
The thread was locked because Portalarium had to defuse a situation they should have seen coming. You can't strive for a wider audience and continue to entertain a special group on the side. They're way over their heads this time.

Besides, those elitist turds have received way more than they should have already...at the expense of a bad reputation for the game. Finally, Portalarium's balls have dropped.

I want to see more whale tears. More!

I guess it's all the apologizing coming from the devs that make this move seem so insincere; like their hand was forced is the reason they made the change, not because it was the right thing to do. I can't wait to hear what Lord British has to say about it all, where is he anyway, isn't SotA still his game?

MightyUnclean · July 2017

Portalarium simply wasn't listening to anyone but the Whales. And now they're getting tied into increasingly awful moral and legal messes... and they're still nowhere near financial security, much less finishing Episode 1. That's why they're doing a deal to add a cyrpto-currency trading network in game next too. They. Never. Ever. LEARN.

Is it that they don't learn, or are they just in sheer desperation mode?

Ice-Queen · July 2017

Aron_Swordmaster said:

And just to make clear to those who haven't grasped the wider implication that we former Kickstarter backers who have left the game were long, long aware of;

We were promised a Buy to Own game, instead it's been hauled off by the economic designer Chris Spears (who incidentally thinks everyone who posts here is awful, do find his past comments) into being macro transaction driven and having a Premium Currency on top
It is also legal to Real Money Trade both the items in game, the Premium Currency, but also the basic gold itself.
Many of the early backers intended to push development towards this, and are responsible for pressuring the team into make the game Persistent so they could begin trading the stock they had built up. The economy however was so seriously unready for this, and the game so badly designed still it was instantly broken upon launch. So much so that Starr Long publicly stated that 90% of players couldn't even afford to play, and they've had to introduce a daily Log In bonus of both gold and XP to allow people to still take part.
The RMT backers specifically signed up to Dev+ to get information ahead of time in order to take advantage of Inside Information on all the changes they knew would thus have to be made. In this case, the drama begins when a user who still cares for basic fairness becomes aware that one piece of information is that a vital component in crafting (which like everything else, is tied to not just RMT but the in game Premium Currency) was about to become 100x rarer on the live server. So RMTs were buying up these goods...
... however if you discuss anything you see in the Dev+ forums outside of them, you can be banned from the forums and even the game. So you have a situation where you can get a real money advantage over other players based on hidden information only you have access too, and have them banned if they try and discuss it.
So despite Chris Spears pushing an insane Libertarian economic design for 4 years, Portalarium apparently don't understand what they've actually created until the above poster risks it all to call it out all the same, at which point the damage control kicks into affect... probably because Insider Trading where real money is concerned is ILLEGAL.
Now I personally agree this was the right thing to do. However if you read the thread, even amongst those agreeing it was too there are many still asking for some form of compensation for losing the forums.

But they should have been closed at least a year ago, when the game effectively launched. And it was, it doesn't matter how you can spin it, once you start allowing full scale RMT, the game is effectively live for any realistic definition.

Insider Trading should never have been allowed to happen. It's Portalarium's sheer blindness and incompetence that ensured it did; and the linked thread shows why. 1 in 4 of the responders when I did a quick count are outraged that they've lost the insider information. 25% or so of the responding population not just demanding the right to be immoral, but continue doing something outright illegal..?! But this is the kind of greed driven Cult thinking Shroud encourages; those of us who tried to appeal against the ever growing focus on RMT ahead of RPG were slowly driven out (or banned from) from the forums.

Portalarium simply wasn't listening to anyone but the Whales. And now they're getting tied into increasingly awful moral and legal messes... and they're still nowhere near financial security, much less finishing Episode 1. That's why they're doing a deal to add a cyrpto-currency trading network in game next too. They. Never. Ever. LEARN.

Awesome post, says it all. Steer clear of this game folks, don't give your hard earned money to this team. Just let this sinking ship sink, don't help them patch it together to limp along prolonging the inevitable. Unless you like games like Sims, then have at this one because sitting around emoting, dance parties, and decorating your house is the extent of content in this game. It's just a cash grabbing grindy game with no soul.

laxie · July 2017

It's a shame, I was looking forward to SotA. The initial concept had some interesting ideas.

The development focus turned from "playing" to "paying" real quick though. Ever since the land deed issue, when it was obvious it would be incredibly difficult (if not impossible) to own decent property without paying, the population was split into two. The game has then turned into nothing but a glorified cash shop.

blur13 · July 2017

Ice Queen speaks the truth! A horrible little soulless game that Port keeps finding new ways to try and prop up but I think we can all see where this is heading - a colossal pile up on the MMO Highway that is going to end in tears. I genuinely believe the dev team should look at where things are at, and how many people play, and the fact that its SeedInvest is still 13 days and $140,000 off making the bare minimum (500K), let alone the two million they were seeking, and realise the gaming community (not to mention the investor community), has spoken. Of course they've never particularly liked dissenting views (just try and make one on their forums, for example, and see how long it lasts before it's blasted into atoms by their over-zealous community manager), but there comes a time when even the most stubborn, "I'm right about everything..." types need to realise that it's time to call it a day and think about something new. Otherwise they're just painfully prolonging the inevitable.

Pemmin · July 2017

blorpykins said:

LOL so what's up with the thread getting locked. Community management's time to shine and all they can do is lock the thread and dismiss everyone's comments by saying "Locking the thread. Nothing positive, not constructive happening here."

Maybe it has something to do with $$$$$ backer status, because people get banned from SotA for asking questions and participating in open development all the time in those forums... why do the whales get a pass?

nah community management was being honest

there is nothing positive nor is anything constructive happening with this game. you gotta read between the lines.

Tiamat64 · July 2017

That thing about the Q&A shard constituting Insider Trading involving real world money is a really good point and really goes to show just how morally awful those who endorsed it were. I wonder... did Port cave on the issue and make that server public for the good of the game, or did they do it because someone on their legal team (now that they were teamed up with the cryto currency network basically giving an official real money value to various in-game items) realized the legal implications otherwise?

kinkyJalepeno · July 2017

Jesus, I'll stay well clear of this impending disaster..

blorpykins · July 2017

Pemmin said:

nah community management was being honest

there is nothing positive nor is anything constructive happening with this game. you gotta read between the lines.

Or maybe there's just nothing going on at all. Just saw this on his Twitter and it looks like RG is already thinking about doing something different. Holy cow! I guess that would explain why he's not working on Shroud anymore, or why he hasn't said anything about this Dev+ disaster.

DarthBumblebee · July 2017

By the way they are now doing monthly telethons:
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?p=75252

Now the whales can spend money every month! I wonder if every telethon will bring them 100.000 dollars. At least they list "stretch goals" up to 65.000 dollars.

blorpykins · July 2017

DarthBumblebee said:

By the way they are now doing monthly telethons:
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?p=75252

Now the whales can spend money every month! I wonder if every telethon will bring them 100.000 dollars. At least they list "stretch goals" up to 65.000 dollars.

Great, more reasons for them to be drunk at work, bunch of damn alcoholics. I always thought devs and programmers liked caffeine, though it does explain the graphics and combat.

Aron_Swordmaster · July 2017

DarthBumblebee said:

By the way they are now doing monthly telethons:
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?p=75252

Now the whales can spend money every month! I wonder if every telethon will bring them 100.000 dollars. At least they list "stretch goals" up to 65.000 dollars.

That's what's really happening; they spin it as being all about feedback... but why would you need to fundraise at the same time if all you want to do is liaise with your playerbase?

The reality is, they're out of money, and the SeedInvest looks like it's going to fail. If it does, they don't get a penny. However it also only has ONE true investor in it, for $25k; so if they run monthly telethons, most of that 300k given so far can be withdrawn from the SeedInvest, and given straight back to Portalarium via regular Telethons instead.

Look for more limited time offer Real Money Rares appearing in the Store in time for the next one then. And which gives them another 1-2 months development time...

But as you say, will every Telethon raise the same amount now? It'll be really interesting to see if the SeedInvest actually squeaks past the minimum; can the Whales afford both the SeedInvest spending AND a monthly begathon? Shroud needs it all now.

Oh and Stretch Goals? Remember when Chris Spears declared them a terrible idea, and blamed people who had left the company for pitching them? But now they're back, baby!

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