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Ep2 and more
Xee2018
Member UncommonPosts: 168
Been a while since I posted. With the new CV-19 keeping people at home these days figured id POP in.
Been busy these last few months waiting on Ep2 Content to start rolling in. So far we have probably the first phase of Player towns in the new lands getting settled as well 6 more phases of them coming in over each patch which is nice.
3 new zones will be coming soon based on information out there:
Spindelskog is an upcoming Episode 2 adventure scene located on the new Mistrendur continent which is currently deep in design with List Rostov at the helm!
Bunker-C Dungeon
I believe the other which is unconfirmed is the new Mining Canyon adventure zone.
Just to give you all an overview of the first part of the new lands which if you are an old UO fan is technically (Serpent Isles) this is only 1 part of the new lands based on the information that was provided before. As you can see there is only 7 new adventure zones compared to the older Novia map with so many. The new Ep2 Adventure zones are to be Massive in comparison to what we have seen before. There is also only 7 NPC towns and to what my understanding is these will not have player housing in them and be quest hubs for the new adventure zones. Sounds like they are changing things up from what the vision was in 2013 Novia. The other interesting things coming will be Player Adventure zones which is tied with the next round of Player NPC functions and Player monster Spawners which are in the works. These I look forward to myself as I have an adventure only zone coming in the future.
What else is new and coming. Major Crafting and Loot system overhaul is being looked at, some of the information discussed is player made armor sets with bonuses, New Artifact salvage for rare materials to remake player made artifacts, Item Affinity where weapons will gain bonuses against creatures based on number of kills and more. Loot system improvements to make it worth adventure / hunting to get new Artifact Class/school set armor and more.
New taming creatures coming BIG Cats of many sorts. For all the God like tamers this will be nice. They are also working on more specific attacks for various types of tamed creatures to give more options.
These are just some of the things recently discussed and being worked on.
On another note population has been increasing for new players well some vets like myself are slowing down well waiting for new places to visit.
to give some perspective on numbers take a look at the top town sales and compare over all time vs last 30 days you will see that the markets are in good health: https://shroudoftheavatar.net/topLocations?days=30
I run Silverdale Market which as of 6 months ago we went from 12th to the top 5. We are one of the smallest busy markets out of the top 5 with less than half the vendors of the big guys. I have had to expand my market twice now because of the number of new comers starting that want market space.
Don't let people make you think the game is not growing or that its on a last leg. They have been saying this now for 3 years in a row and here we are today still going strong with a fantastic community.
If you want to take a look come check out Twitch Shroud of the Avatar there are many many new streamers and videos to watch to get an idea on what the game is all about.
Cheers,
Xee of Silverdale - GrandMaster Enchanter , Tailor, and Carpenter
Been busy these last few months waiting on Ep2 Content to start rolling in. So far we have probably the first phase of Player towns in the new lands getting settled as well 6 more phases of them coming in over each patch which is nice.
3 new zones will be coming soon based on information out there:
Spindelskog is an upcoming Episode 2 adventure scene located on the new Mistrendur continent which is currently deep in design with List Rostov at the helm!
Bunker-C Dungeon
I believe the other which is unconfirmed is the new Mining Canyon adventure zone.
Just to give you all an overview of the first part of the new lands which if you are an old UO fan is technically (Serpent Isles) this is only 1 part of the new lands based on the information that was provided before. As you can see there is only 7 new adventure zones compared to the older Novia map with so many. The new Ep2 Adventure zones are to be Massive in comparison to what we have seen before. There is also only 7 NPC towns and to what my understanding is these will not have player housing in them and be quest hubs for the new adventure zones. Sounds like they are changing things up from what the vision was in 2013 Novia. The other interesting things coming will be Player Adventure zones which is tied with the next round of Player NPC functions and Player monster Spawners which are in the works. These I look forward to myself as I have an adventure only zone coming in the future.
What else is new and coming. Major Crafting and Loot system overhaul is being looked at, some of the information discussed is player made armor sets with bonuses, New Artifact salvage for rare materials to remake player made artifacts, Item Affinity where weapons will gain bonuses against creatures based on number of kills and more. Loot system improvements to make it worth adventure / hunting to get new Artifact Class/school set armor and more.
New taming creatures coming BIG Cats of many sorts. For all the God like tamers this will be nice. They are also working on more specific attacks for various types of tamed creatures to give more options.
These are just some of the things recently discussed and being worked on.
On another note population has been increasing for new players well some vets like myself are slowing down well waiting for new places to visit.
to give some perspective on numbers take a look at the top town sales and compare over all time vs last 30 days you will see that the markets are in good health: https://shroudoftheavatar.net/topLocations?days=30
I run Silverdale Market which as of 6 months ago we went from 12th to the top 5. We are one of the smallest busy markets out of the top 5 with less than half the vendors of the big guys. I have had to expand my market twice now because of the number of new comers starting that want market space.
Don't let people make you think the game is not growing or that its on a last leg. They have been saying this now for 3 years in a row and here we are today still going strong with a fantastic community.
If you want to take a look come check out Twitch Shroud of the Avatar there are many many new streamers and videos to watch to get an idea on what the game is all about.
Cheers,
Xee of Silverdale - GrandMaster Enchanter , Tailor, and Carpenter
Comments
The bard skill tree is has now officially entered into the world of New Britannia on the live server. Players can find the trainer for this new skill tree on the continent of Mistrendur at the main entrance to the Ruins of Utheim. So many skills await your mastery, Avatars! Go and test your musical prowess with these new abilities: Melody of Mending, Atonal Aria, Anthem of Alacrity, Psalm of Stagnation, Concussive Canticle, Savage Sonata as well as several innate abilities!
myself I have not played much other than on the test server back when it was under QA. from what I have heard it is pretty powerful for groups.
Speaking of which there is now much larger raid size groups of up to 12 which may get expanded further in the future. Despair Dungeon is finally very do able for the weaker.
"So far we have probably the first phase of Player towns in the new lands getting settled as well 6 more phases of them coming in over each patch which is nice."
I do think that the progress is slow on some of the features I am waiting on, but they are progressing which is the important part. The game is not stale and population is still increasing. Always has been... still not where the AAA titles are by any means and then some lol... But quality of the over all game keeps getting better every release. There are still some bugs for sure, but they have been squishing them pretty fast. The only issues I have is one bug that crashes the client from time to time. that I can't wait for them to find the issue which is what they are still looking into.
Short of the main story the rest of the game is indeed a crafting and gathering game with one of the most extensive player housing games out there.
As to the cash shop... like all games these days its all pretty much skins for everything. they do look nice though... but everything needed to play including free row and village size houses are included in the questing so really unless you like to bling up the looks of things or if you feel the need to expand from a village up there is no need to buy anything. beyond the shop there there are outlets to get what you need with in game gold to upgrade and get all the bling from other players in game through crowns. there are gold to crown exchanges which allow you to get anything you want on the store using gold you earn. Nothing in the store gives anyone any one an advantage for game play side of things.
The changes they have worked on the last month have been amazing, especially for new players to get rewarded better. Quests are being revamped to give a lot more xp for the one time quests to help new players get up in levels faster. They also just revamped mining and gathering to now give larger xp bonuses for getting the rare meticulous collections. There is also now xp bags that drop which can be sold to players which when consumed allow you to level up faster. they are rare but ways new players can catch up to the long standing players.
New crafting changes coming galor to finally reward the pure crafters so that there is a better gap between 100 skill level grandmaster and a 140 level grandmaster. this will be better then the current 2 points per armor that one gets for the 200+mil xp they pump into the skills.
The Ep2 new adventure zones are not in yet, they are working on getting the first one out which unlike anything they did before the new zones are suppose to be huge. Which also with the new NPc only towns in ep2 will have the new story quest which none of us really know what it will be. but old streams talk about those that are commanding the Cabilists as part of the story.
Another issue in the past was based on actions you do was to determine an outcome of good/evil concept. there are parts of that in the game but it never really was anything game changing. The have started to lean more on the choices you make which going forward as well in some of the revamped stuff in ep1 really affect options and quests as well rewards.
For non crafter stuff to help balance things some more, one of the other primary issues was loot tables were terrible (still are abit) but that is another thing they are now changing to bring it more inline with what people expect. new tiers of loot on specific mobs and or locations. new armor sets with bonues as well more artifact type weapons. this does take away from crafters as the main market for gear. the best ingame right now is artifacts... however they are also now changing it up so that all the artifacts and new sets will allow crafters to break them down to get special components to allow them to rebuild armor and make their own armor sets with bonuses. they talked even about crafter sets where if all the parts are from the same crafter you get a bonus etc. so lots of stuff begin worked on to help balance things out and to hep drive things further.
So at the end of the day the game is lightyears ahead of where it was last year and the years before. most the new players that I have talked to that just started to play seem to really like it. and as always ask anyone who played the community in the game is probably the most mature and best I have or many have seen in all the 30+ years of mmo's I have played. which could be the main reason its still advancing as many of us want to see the game we payed for eventually
one day, Im still optimistic. The dev's / team are really doing a good job at slowly turning the boat the right direction. all I can hope is one day that they start hiring more and more to speed things up on development side.... one day
I read essays like this and I wonder, "Is this person trying to convince the reader, or themselves?" Perhaps it's both. Oh well.
It's not really alive like other games are, but exists only to reproduce itself on more and more computers.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I got tired of playing mmorpg's,so i never gave this game a try but it also showed me too many signs of being a cash shop R US game which turns me right off.
I come to the conclusion we are in a phase where mmorpg's are done for awhile.Trends in life go through cycles,we will one day see a resurgence in mmorpg's and likely some unique designs.
So yeah mmorpg's are right off my list right now,luckily i have tons of other stuff to do and some other games i like to play.This might be the one named mmorpg i never tried.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
fyi saw this posted on Steam recently
https://playtracker.net/insight/game/6617
according to this site there is around 17k active players now
You really need to learn how those trackers work before you use them in your argument. So 17k active players, yet only 69 concurrent. LOL
Here in MMORPG haven't covered Sota since December 2020, Massively OP places a warning in their sporadic reviews of Sota releases and no other site covers this garbage game.
Hell even on the main forums for the game there are posts like this that asks how to hide empty Player Owned Towns so the game doesn't look so empty to new players.
Half the player base left after the last release of Gems since they made people who spent months of work gathering artifacts USELESS~!
The only thing keeping this game going is the handful of dwindling whales that give Spears money. Spears is GONE just as soon as soon as either the whale money dries up (and it will, eventually) or he finds a higher paying job elsewhere.
All while Shroud players have been trying to make a big deal about this fight. The more they tried to describe it the worse it got. Apparently it is 30-50 minutes long and the one recording the video was the most life in the fight simply by jumping around.
"SOTA is very strong with PVE. But I was rather disappointed (translate: irritated) when I was in a full party, spent two hours taking down the ice giant, and ONE person got an eyeball. That didn't really encourage me to want to do that again."
(That entire thread is great value, especially the dev remarks.)
How is this supposed to hook New World players who were drawn to that game because it wasn't this comatose? Or anyone on Steam?
The Twitch stats were only going DOWN, especially when Chris banned Fzol because how dare a streamer publicly say they are using a game to advance their streaming career. Like, we can't have anyone take attention from his royalness who only shows up to hand out awards to people who regularly contribute more than handing out awards and bailing to the far corners of the Earth! But while you have that open, expand out the upper-left graph's timeline back "3 years in a row" to see the full speed bump and LOL with the rest of the class. Then after screwing that up, Chris spends time making a streamer program and nobody remotely close shows up to fill the job. I wonder why.
How is devs publicly dumping on NW's ANYTHING while admitting their own is trash supposed to do anything but draw attention to how bad it has been all along? I'm genuinely curious how that is supposed to work, just on optics alone. Speaking of numbers, Chris went into NW's numbers saying something about "looking at the low points" being revealing.
Chris, bruh, since you've been playing poker bluff for years, you're gonna have to now Call with Shroud's numbers, all of them - open the API in full.
And this dude has been PvP balancing based upon spreadsheets and not really playing his own game!
This Is Fine: The Game™