Shroud Of The Avatar In 2024
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- Опубліковано 24 бер 2024
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Shroud Of The Avatar is an MMORPG Developed by Ultima Online creator Richard Garriott that was fully released in 2018 after being successfully kickstarted to the tune of almost 2 million dollars back in 2013, I know kickstarted MMOs have a bad reputation and the vast majority of them are utter failures but in all fairness to Shroud Of The Avatar the game did indeed release in a somewhat timely fashion and wasn’t a scam.
Shroud Of The Avatar is actually quite a unique MMO, In terms of questing and narrative it feels a bit like dungeons and dragons online, the map traversal reminds me of Final Fantasy 8, The world is full of player owned towns, houses and shops whilst also having a bit of a sandboxy PVE feeling about it in that there’s no linear questing route.
In this game quests aren’t displayed to you, instead you go to a location of your interest, talk to the NPCs and only by talking to them can you find out if they have a quest for you or not, In terms of gameplay Shroud Of The Avatar is classic tab target combat with a skill and classless progression system that’s a cross between Runescape and Mortal Online.
The last time I tried Shroud Of The Avatar was 7 and a half years ago and the games had a tonne of updates since then so let’s see how this old school MMORPG is holding up in 2024.
What do you think about Shroud Of The Avatar in 2024? is this an overlooked classic MMORPG that people have forgotten about or does the game have other problems I'm not aware of? let me know in the comments below!
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Shroud Of The Avatar MMO Steam Description
ABOUT THIS GAME
WHAT IS SHROUD OF THE AVATAR?
Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues is a multiplayer fantasy RPG and the spiritual successor to Richard Garriott’s wildly successful Ultima and Ultima Online games.
Shroud of the Avatar is about testing one’s character on a path filled with peril and tough decisions. Player actions carry meaningful consequences within the deep and persistent world of New Britannia by either upholding or breaking the Principles of Truth, Love, and Courage.
Shroud of the Avatar is developed by the Catnip Games team that includes Veteran Developers and Richard "Lord British" Garriott, the creator of the Ultima series, and Starr Long, the original Director of Ultima Online.
KEY FEATURES
As a revival of the classical in-depth RPG, Shroud of the Avatar binds together many of the key features that made the Ultima series so popular:
A far reaching story written in collaboration with celebrated fantasy author Tracy Hickman, where players are confronted with ethical choices based on Virtues and Principles.
Multiple MMO gameplay features combined to offer a unique, shared online experience set within a persistent sandbox world.
The ability to create a classless avatar allows for distinct play styles and uniquely specialized builds.
Wide-reaching freedom to explore a living, breathing fantasy world enriched by a player-driven crafting and economic system.
Players can opt to play solo or with friends, owning their own houses or even entire towns, and sign up and cooperate within various in-game guilds.
Pay Once to Play with no subscription fees.
AVAILABLE PLAY MODES
Single Player Offline: Enjoy the full game experience without the need for an internet connection. Recruit NPC companions to accompany you on your travels and aid you in times of need. Your online Avatar will not share the progress of your offline Avatar; you advance on different tracks through the story due to interacting differently with the world.
Single Player Online: Play the game at your own pace while still being able to interact with the persistent works of other players, such as vendors, houses and player-owned towns.
Party Mode Online: Explore New Britannia with your friends and tell new stories together. Interact with the persistent works of other players, such as vendors, houses, and player-owned towns.
Multiplayer Online: Experience the vibrant world of Shroud of the Avatar and trade, fight, and converse with thousands of other players, all playing on the same server.
Tags
Shroud Of The Avatar, shroud of the avatar in 2024, shroud of the avatar tutorial, shroud of the avatar beginners guide, shroud of the avatar guide, shroud of the avatar first impressions, ultima online, mmo, shroud of the avatar.
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Shroud Of The Avatar In 2024
• Shroud Of The Avatar I... - Ігри
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I'd love a proper Dofus review from you. The game looks a bit childish sure, but I guarantee you, the class design in this game has more depth than you can imagine. You'd probably start bashing your skull against a wall whilst trying to learn how the Eliotrope portals mechanic works.
YES PLEASE!
The Steam numbers were unreliable back when the game released to early access in 2014, because most players (i.e. backers) used the launcher provided by the developer. Steam numbers were always lower than the actual player count. No idea if that is still the case, but I suspect players who backed the game, and thus are using the non-steam launcher, are likely still in the majority.
there launcher patch's the game faster then steam does ,least it does for me i wasn't a ea backer but i picked up the game in 2020 and still play off and on
Hello, could you do a first impression on Tibia? Played it as a child and heard it had decent updates. Keep up the good work!
This is one of the few MMOs I actually feel like checking out in a long while, just to look around
This review is well made. I'm an active player for many years. There's another launcher other than Steam. The game world is instanced to reduce player population lag. You can select three multiplayer options on how you may encounter other players in combat zones; "Open", "Party", or "Private". The nice thing about Shroud of the Avatar is they do monthly release updates, the game is on release 124 right now. The game world is huge; overland and underground. It takes time to absorb all the content.
How does one find a populated world that is accepting new players? I last visited SoA back in 2018 I think 🤔
@@dupre7416 it doesn't matter which launcher you use. you still end up in the same world, but it's instanced. you'll see the most players on the world maps as it's too big otherwise to run into many folks. It's just that the steam numbers only count people using steam to launch the game. Just add everyone you see to your friend list
Thanks for the update /review. I had completely forgotten about this game having owned it it since early access. I will jump in and try it out
That UO sound track, the memories bro. Best MMO ever made.
So true.
Indeed
100%
and no competition whatsoever
Come play on uo outlands, it's fantastic
As soon as you died and turned into a ghost I had flash backs of that happening to me in UO and running around trying to find out how to be resurrected.
ooooOOoOO
That BDO enhancement fail sound gave me Vietnam-level flashbacks :(
The comment I was looking for or else I was making myself.
Lol I heard it too 😂
I have 3k hours in this game.. Some very good times were had. Lots of things I wish were better, but if you can look past the flaws there's fun to be had.
What kind of group content does the game have raids, sieges, open world bosses ? Kind of gave me Vanguard Saga of Heroes vibe feel like Brad McQuaid and Richard Garriott have a similar game design aesthetic when it comes to 3D MMOs. Also what would make you come back, I kind have a feeling like AI voiceovers and few graphics overall could bring dead games like this back.
@@southcoastinventors6583 It is very much a sandbox. There are group bosses in several zones each with differing loot or resources required for crafting higher tier items/weapons.
I was more of a solo type player, but it definitely has areas that require groups. At least they did in my time.
AI Voiceovers and updated graphics would definitely help, but I don't ever see the graphics changing.. The devs have made it clear that they like the style.
(This was half of the problem - the devs were stubborn, and wouldn't listen to feedback, but it is under new management from what I heard.)
It was very much a cash grabby game. The cash shop has changed a lot.
I don't think it will ever have a player base..
They had their time, and they dropped the ball.
@@southcoastinventors6583 yeah it has "sieges" which you need to team up with a group eso style to do, and there's the hidden vale, which is for elite players and is a wave mechanic, the portal only shows up periodically but you can get a snowglobe in the game that shows when it's available. There's wave enemy caves like "upper tears" too which is to the left of the zone when you enter behind a waterfall, and was a hell of a lot of fun. It has some pretty hard dungeons too like the fall and a few others. It has dragons which are kind of world bosses. There's also a second world area which is ridiculously hard, the way level scaling is done is completely wrong, but that's how it is.
Nice review thank you for taking the time to make it. Loved the updates of your impression of the game as you continued your play. The inventory UI is something that is brought up consistently as an issue, but when taking the time to utilize its extensive features you will find it is very flexible. Tabs for different item types, column sorting, quick filter dropdown, and ultimately a text search if you can't find something the other ways. Is it perfect? Absolutely not but for the hundreds of different types of things you can have in your inventory, I think it would be difficult to come up with an inventory UI to handle it all gracefully and am perfectly happy with what is there.
SotA may not have the population of the cool kids, but it does have a great community. We are larger than Steam graphs say, especially since many players don’t use the Steam launcher as it is not a Steam exclusive game. Combine this with the Open/Party/Private instancing system and it segregates players even further, sometimes to a detriment. Keep the universe chat open as there are usually folks always chatting there. It’s a great place to get assistance too especially when you are first starting out. As for a more accurate population count, you can utilize the PvE Leaderboard to get a better indicator. It still is not going to be exact as there are many players that choose to not participate in stats, a certain amount that do not do PvE, and of course folks with multiple accounts/chars. Still, it is the best indicator we have available.
No question the dev team is not large, but they are involved and have been releasing updates every month without fail along with a post-release live stream on twitch. I don’t always agree with the dev’s priorities but that doesn’t mean they aren’t working hard and continuing to move things forward.
SotA is most certainly not for everyone. It does not hold your hand and is not forgiving. There are many things it could do better but that same thing could be said about an endless amount of games. If players give it a shot and still don't like it, great. It’s free to play and you can move on to another game. It does take time though. A few hours is simply not enough to get a grasp of the depth of this game.
For the folks that are not aware, here are just some of the things SotA offers:
- Unique combat deck system. Use it like traditional RPGs or take advantage of the dynamic deck system for greater flexibility and power.
- Classless character progression. Use any skills from any tree however you see fit. Just like pretty much every RPG out there, you can say there are a few builds that are most popular but it doesn't mean you can't be successful with outside-the-box characters.
- Main story quest, side quests, daily quests, buff quests. Players who say there is nothing to do haven’t taken the time to realize just how many quests there are in SotA.
- Deep crafting tree. Multi-tiered recipes. Masterworking. Enchanting. Cooking.
- Loot system that includes items sold by players to NPC vendors
- Mining, woodchopping, foraging, field dressing
- Fishing, Trophy Fish, Tank Fish
- Agriculture, Trophy Pumpkins, Jack O'Lanterns, Decorative Plants
- Artifacts, Artifact Combining, Jem/Jewel artifact power harvesting for use in crafting
- Dungeon building with adventure spawns and fishing spots.
- Extensive deco system. Construction system.
- Player owned towns
- Player vendor system and player economy
- Taming with 147 different creatures to tame. Pet equipment.
- Mounts
- Housing, Basements
- Seasonal Bosses
- Lua for building addons
- PvP, controversial on how it is implemented yes but it is there
- Extensive music system including composing and group play of music
- Book writing
Not an all-inclusive list but hopefully gives players an idea of what SotA offers. Again, it’s free to play so there is no loss in seeing what it might offer.
As someone who loves Ultima games, how is the story and atmosphere? I have heard nobody talking about the single player aspect.
@@tmm4461 As always opinions will vary on this. I haven't played the offline single-player mode but did finish the Episode 1 story online. It took me over a year, though that was not full-time playing the story as I sidetracked to do many of the other things in-game. The Ep1 story is big and very much resembles play in older Ultima games. Lot's of talking to NPCs and travelling to various towns with many fights and puzzles along the way. You definitely need to talk to random NPCs in this game to get the most of of questing just like Ultima's of old. You never know when one will have an adventure for you :) I think where some people go wrong is they utilize the available walkthroughs a bit too much. If you do that you can of course burn through Ep1 fairly quickly.
@@garrittg I have owned it for years and it'd be great to give it an another go. Thanks! It sounds like it could be something I'd enjoy tremendously, lots of potential surrounded by satellites of trash talk and, understandably, questionable reputation.
All the times you said "Hmm that's actually sort of cool" or "Ok so this is interesting" is why quite a few people backed the project, played it for a good while, and probably spent money on it. Unfortunately it was run into the ground, mismanaged, and is currently a sad husk of a good MMO that, while was never going to be "popular", could have been a cool little niche game that had enough players and on-going development to be worthwhile. That didn't happen.
husk*
@@LowTempDabr Thank you!
Dab*
@@Stutz808 lmao
part of it was that they made terrible decisions with charging too much for towns, people spent a ton during the "beta" and then felt really angry they didn't get what they "dreamed". it's a cautionary tale of how not to monetize a game and how not to deliver a game. But, there's some cool things about it, for sure. My biggest disappointment was how toxic the players outside of the game got, inside everyone was friendly.
imagine if this game had even 50-25% the playerbase of other larger mmorpg's , it would be an amazingly vibrant world full of interesting ppl and dynamic interactions ; its truly sad
It's designed to support thousands of concurrent players without being broken up into "servers" (so you can never end up on the wrong one!), but it's sufficiently big inside that it looks much emptier than it actually is.
@@8bitwiz_yep , its truly unique in the space , there is nothing else quite like it
@@8bitwiz_ eso is big too. but there's enough players. It just doesn't have enough players because, let's face it, it's janky
Honestly this game is pretty neat, clearly not super ambitious but seemed like it knew it was going to be for a small player base and tried to make it fun for those specific people, was cool to take a look at !
Looks cool. Imma check it out. I played UO waaaay back in the day.
you'll be so disappointed. I backed the kickstart and I'm still bitter about it.
Nice to see you cover this one. I no longer play, but I have 5K hours in the game. You covered the basics very well but there is much more under the hood. There are player made dungeons. I also enjoy the combat system but I use a dynamic deck. You were using what is called a static or locked deck. Using a dynamic deck allows for some cool customization and that is were theory crafting comes into play. I dropped 500 dollars in the kick starter and played 5000 hours so I got my money's worth. They are providing updates almost every month unfortunately the player base is not there not so much because of the game but more so due to miss management. The best gear is pretty much only craftable. When I say miss management I felt the developers while trying to please everyone constantly changed design on a whim and you can never please everyone and when you try too you please no one.
I am curious what kind of improvements would bring you back because I played Vanguard Saga of Heroes back in the day and kind has a similar vibe ? So far only FF online was actually successfully in reviving a dying game.
I agree. I mean the absolute toxicity of the players on the forum did not help either. But they blew it. They tried hard, I'll give them that, when you consider the whole thing was only done as a latch ditch attempt to save a failing company, it wasn't bad actually. I wouldn't play ESO today if I'd hadn't played SoTa and enjoyed it
Chills when I hear the music in the intro.
DAMN i dont know this mmo but seeing ur review we can see that it was at some point alive with people building memories and stories !! and now its deserted i felt kinda sadge for no reason but it was a beautiful feeling !
It is one game I havn't deleted from years ago due to RG making it. I'll give it another go but into DG2 now.
I had a good time in this game despite that fact I have to acknowledge it's a mess. After you play ESO you realize they copied the shit out of ESO and how much better ESO is at doing an exploration style MMO, but I still had fun, still put in way too many hours
This is my home :) @19:57
SotA is great, the only MMO that I am still playing.
I log in most days to collect my stipend. On the rare occasion that I actually go and do something it's rather fun not being quite so squishy any more!
Haha, nice house!
Good luck selling all those 3 year old items to the steady stream of new players.
walked by it today!
@@fb1767I'm a new player and don't go by the steam community.. I've spoken to at least 200 new people the last 2 weeks
I don't have the time for a game like this anymore but it actually looks kind of cool in a lot of small ways.
Thanks for the revisit. I even forgot this game is still alive. If they had a more... "unique" game world instead some kind of a of standard fantasy setting, this could've been great.
It's technically not dead, but it was never truly alive. Nor will it ever be.
It's really nice that you took the time to review this game. I played the early Ultima games - starting with Akalabeth - on the Apple ][ and have fond memories. Your tour of SotA shows some innovative and interesting features.
This definitely feels like it had great potential. It looks fairly fleshed out, has player housing, and doesn't hold your hand. Kickstarter probably put a lot of people off of it because of so many poorly run and failed kickstarter projects. Thanks for the update!
the towns were a lot of fun. you could get your own towns, set up your housing on there, multiple houses, and set up themes. Unfortunately the instancing was a real issue as there wasn't a reason for most pepole to "explore" to find things - no combat in the player instances made people not bother - player owned dungeons were really promising ideas that they just didn't have enough manpower or time or money to really pull off. It would have been so cool if we could have "named" our player dungeons and linked them up to create mega-dungeons - something no other game has.
This game actually looks cool, going to check it out!
Damn. That Boeing joke by the editor 😂 great comedic timing
I lost it when that popped up ahahaha
I loved UO, was waiting for this game to be released, but somehow missed the release and forgot about it. I am shocked to learn it's been out for 7 years! lol.
Il have to give it a go.
I have been playing this non stop for the last 7 years. The steam numbers are way low over 90% of players use stand alone client. So many changes in the last 3 years with new content and scenes and we have been getting new stuff and bug fixes every month all along.
Hmm, I haven’t visited whatever this world is called in over 7 years. Maybe I should drop in. How do you find an active server?
I ran through Steam on Mac.
There's a bug where your char floats whilst sitting, rather than not floating and standing... I was told to log back in , restart etc but that didn't fix it.
Wonder if the bug is fixed through playing without Steam? You had this issue?
@@coralkarina333 That bug has been present for at least 4 years and happens only on M1 macs. You will need to use an x86 machine to not have it. Since M1 macs are a tiny proportion of the userbase, I doubt they'll fix it - it's been bug reported for many years - i know they've been trying to get on a modern version (or more modern) version of Unity and I assume it'll be fixed then. if that ever happens. The performance via metal is pretty bad tho, you're better off using a PC for this game if you have one.
How is the PvP in this game?
@@XPISTOS-ANESTH there are a few PvP players around to test your skills :)
If this game was populated and released recently I'd probably try it lol
it's very ESO like. Very. It's like a D-list ESO. With ever so slight ultima themes and boring mobs
@@provisionalhypothesis ESO sucks.
Part of the reason you might want to loot random stuff is that you can place it in your house: you get a basic house at the end of the "prologue" questline and there's plenty of room for all kinds of things. I have a table with crockery on it just no the off-chance I ever get to sit down and eat something ;-)
Also, you can recycle quite a lot of stuff at the crafting stations, recovering raw materials that can be used later: that consolidates a fair bit although your complaint about the Inventory window brings up old wounds o.O
*ETA* : yes, you can open almost every door and there's no loading screens, which means that my poor old machine is brought nearly to its knees every time I load SOTA up: everything else just pauses while it's running 🤦♂ maybe at some point the devs might consider a bit of optimisation but they don't seem to have much incentive right now 😞
Make sure you have at least 12GB of RAM and an SSD. Yes, seriously, that is the real minimum, though more RAM is even better. With reduced graphics settings you can run it on a Sandy Bridge with GT1030 graphics if you don't mind 30fps, but you really want to have 16GB of RAM and an SSD. (Spinny drives are just too slow.)
This game is still a guilty pleasure of mine, there is still a community as most of us play on the native client and not Steam.
you forgot about the "main quest line" you never spoke to the oracle. the building with red eyes.
Hello Peon, Have you thought about bringing back your "life is a MMORPG" series!
he is max level already
Questions end with a "?".
I never even knew this game was a thing, but I'm gonna try it.
Holy crap! This game still going? I met the team in austin but wow
Can't really imagine playing it, especially after I play ESO, BUT... there are a few things in this game that i wish ESO did, like lettting us sleep in beds. I'll drop in this weekend in case any new players want to see a powerful OG player still around lol. Hook em up with some collectibles.
this is a game i had on my last few desktops n check in on every now n then(usually 2 times/year)1st time i found it i really liked it n played a bit,but during the years i got into more AAA games w times i am looking for oldschool and games that are pretty unknown in these days(games before 2000 usually+emulated games from ps1+2+3 era w nes8bit and other stuff all in the spirit of gaming n fun with ity)
Thanks 4 video of a game i havent got especially long in gameplayed hours,but probably the game i have had longest on my pc/pcs..still kind of like it
Some good concepts... Always liked leveling skills by using them.
OMG Peon, when did you become an absolute CHAD?! Damn you have brought your aesthetic up to level cap over these past few years. Good work!
Another awesome video. Thanks Peon!
This game is what got me to stop kickstarting games.
Nah, Just got me to stop giving Lord British money.
But i also don't Pre-order AAA games either. Happy to give Indie devs money though if its something I like the look of
90% of kickstarters were turds in all catagories
To be fair to the game, most players do use Shroud's own launcher. Thus, your Steam numbers are unreliable. It also is still working on a chapter 2 story line, but it has been months since I have poked my head in. It still receives regular, but smaller updates/bug fixes on a monthly cadence. It's got its charms and annoyances and some very supportive developers and player turned developers keeping it alive.
Let's get real, if the server population was so much bigger than Steam Charts numbers, the devs would be sharing player count in real time.
Hard evidence is this guy's experience where he wholeheartedly cheered every time he met a real (AFK) player.
@@fb1767 Its still a 10-year-old game at this point and an indie. Populations for most games that fall in that category are never going to be Wow level; so why would you advertise those numbers? It's still a nice smaller game for what it lets you do.
Just started playing the game and leaderboards have about 500 daily players @@fb1767
@@fb1767 There's probably around 2-300 players a day
LOL ok so what amount do you want to add? Say 100+ players (being super generous)??? WOW so games got 150 people playing it amazing!
Leave it to LazyPeon to have an updated video of a MMO despite it being still pretty obscure of a game, despite many years being out. I was surprised it still exists as well. Just shows games never really die.
I went and checked and apparently I own this game and forgot that it existed as well :-) I don't seem to have played much when I did though.
Spent about half a year there a few years back. Was quite nice experience for the money 😁
I'm a loot goblin to any game that had Inventory system but I hate it whenever they use the Bethesda scrolling Inventory style, I love looting but I appreciate it more if there is a inventory management like separated Tabs for each loot types.
There were separated tabs for each loot type. He just didn't use them.
@@TheBrockwellBroadcastNetwork but they still using Bethesda style inventory system which getting annoying spending your time scrolling and scrolling later on.
Wonder if you'd consider revisiting Project: Gorgon. It's still going, and it's definitely one of the more unique MMOs (at least to me, since it manages to capture that sense of wonder, not only in exploration, but even in discovering new skills and mechanics, if you avoid just scouring the wiki).
when you saw the other player i was almost sure its Josh Strife Hayes xD
there was a few cool ideas for this game but they were not all seen through so well. I did play it for a bit and liked their sort of deck building combat idea. But it was sort of lonely and those types of games and dungeons are just better with others.
I like that the ghost is not running but rather just floating around.
Holy crap.... The "bruh" New World pop-up when the swimming comment came up, had me dead. Always enjoy the videos. Thanks for the content.
Met a lot of great people playing shroud of the avatar but we all moved on. Have you ever checked out Ultima online outlands server?
legit popped for the ad spot. Dofus! yo Wakfu was legendary. love that universe
Do Project Gorgon next please
No, that's a toxic PvP MMO with a highly zealous fanbase and developers. Minor criticism can lead to a ban.
@@Ninja40K Exactly! Devs are notoriously known for being childish
its a great game if you ignore the devs, kinda like caves of qud
play runes of magic. gorgon is a mess and its never gonna recover.
@@Ninja40K what? project gorgon has no pvp whatsoever and the community is very supportive of newer players, you must be mixing it up with something else.
Nice to see a Dofus add... ( I am a Dofus Content Creator myself ) We need more people to find out about this game since its so AMAZGIN!
Playing stones in the background was beautiful
I spent 500 aud on this game and never received my physical rewards. They ghosted my ass.
This game was actually peak, the combat and skill system was incredible. What lost my interest was there is no universal auctionhouse and you had to labourously hunt down crafters and beg them to make you armor, because dropped loot was trash.
The AI thing is currently 100% possible, the only issue is the operational costs for the massive amount of work it would have to deal with in case of a big userbase. This is honestly one of the very few AI use cases that I like and can't wait for, instead of trying to dismantle the entire world's economy as we know it and steal everyone's jobs.
@ 19:37 in the player town it had a sign saying "Alynne rest in peace" maybe thats why the town was so dreary.
0:57 the music in the background right now is from Ultima Online originally
Actually originally it's from Ultima IX: Ascension
I think the game in general look good, if it had players. I would like to see what is going on on the town sieges, and pvp...
It almost feels like had this game been marketed as a singleplayer game as opposed to an MMO it would have been more successful
Nice Stones intro. Kenno Arnold wrote that :D
At least if the game dies you already got it in your archives for us to see ancient jewels. Ty my guy 👍
Weidly enough this game has some charm to it.
it looks like a lot of potential! especially for massive online game!
This game still exists?
Just dd path tracing, and UI overhaul, chef’s kiss
Yeah, Steam (and thus SteamCharts) is mostly irrelevant to this game. Adding Steam access was almost an afterthought. At no time were Steam players more than 25% of the population, and it's surely less now. It doesn't help that the way that Steam does patches can cause even a small patch on the native updater to balloon to a gigabyte on Steam. And supposedly part of the agreement with steam was that they can't outright say how many players are on.
If it had been 7+ years since you last played, that might have been before "locked glyphs" (as opposed to dynamic glyphs, which are like a deck-buliding card game) were made usable. Originally there was a ~30 second warmup upon drawing your weapon before locked glyphs were enabled. When it was pointed out that the reason everybody used dynamic glyphs was because locked glyphs sucked, Chris (lead dev) not only fixed that, but added "charging" glyphs (hold them down for a while to make them more powerful). This was important because it was a game mechanic that a new player could understand. It took me three months to learn dynamic glyphs even with the motivation of locked glyphs being barely usable.
As for the graphics quality, a lot of it was determined by the choice to go with Unity in 2013 or so. (In hindsight, Unreal might have been a better system to go with, but it's way past too late now.) A lot of old scenes are really small, and a lot of the models came from the Unity asset store. There was no tech for enormous "streaming" scenes. (Just look at how far you can go in LOTRO without ever crossing a zone line! That's what streaming means.) Fortunately the "overworld" trope was already established in older Ultima games. It also meant that they could add scenes without having to tear down a bunch of trees to make room for a new town or something. They ended up selling a couple hundred player-owned towns during the kickstarter years, and in the end it accidentally solved a potential housing problem.
But that also brings up the biggest problem. It really looks empty, and that's not just because of few players. It looks so empty because there are hundreds of places you can go, and most people rarely want to go to the same place. The game uses layering tech based on all the individual scenes, which means it could possibly support thousands of concurrent players, all on the same single "server"! It also had the tech to allow you to play in a private instance of public towns, but they disabled that because it made the game look even more empty.
Player housing in NPC towns is something that sounded cool at the time, but they've decided to stop doing that in future expansions. It reduces performance and makes it hard for the level designers to make the town look good when they don't know what tat players might set up. And there's that little problem where you couldn't find NPC vendors selling arrows because you couldn't find the "downtown" part of Soltown. Most of the lots in NPC towns ended up occupied by either speculators, or by players who didn't have the time to furnish them. Sometimes it's because a player has extra houses and lots to set up. Again, it makes the place look more empty. (are you seeing a pattern yet?)
You had so much trouble buying arrows because all you found were player vendors. But arrows just aren't economical to craft, so players won't be selling them. Sad that you had to go to an "outskirts" zone just to find an NPC vendor, but at least now they understand the downside of player housing in NPC towns. If you want to see how deep the horror of player housing can get, take a stroll through the housing of Ardoris, not far from where you went in the video. People discovered "loopholes" in the deco placement system that allowed them to place objects in the sky above houses, and Ardoris is where it got abused the most.
One thing that you didn't interact with that adds to the appearance of emptiness is the public vendors. They made one public vendor per town, made them expensive to use, and they DELETE your item if it doesn't sell after a week! That makes them almost universally empty, yet another way that the world can look empty. Just connecting them as one common sales space might be enough to fix this.
Thank you very much for this informative comment. I hung all my hopes on this game back in 2014 or 2015. I followed the development and even kicked in for early access. I was hoping for something to replace Vanguard which had recently shut down. Unfortunately, SoA could fit in the smallest of Vanguard's 16 racial starter cities with room to spare. I do like how games you thought died long ago can still be chugging along with a small group of dedicated fans.
I love the editing so much
I might check this one out
Nice video 👍
Nice job on the video, a fair account of the current game. I would add that the game still has a non-steam log in option. Not sure how many folks use it but the low steam numbers are not all the players in the game. Thanks for the video. If you opt to give it another look try interacting with other players. They tend to be very helpful!
8:45 Cracked me up
Would love to see an update video on Project Gorgon
I thought this game was dead before it was even released.
That's what I remember hearing.. so I had no idea it's been alive since 7+ years...
props to the editor for making this watchable for people with low attention span and ADHD 🔥🔥🔥
that swimmin meme got me good :D
20:22 "Hoes & ot aaiab" poetic...
Tried this a year or two ago. Remember checkin steam charts and was around 50 people on there. I liked alot of the ideas. Would love a reworked, updated version honestly. Could've been a cool game.
I love playing these games but I'm always thinking ahead like, what's my goal? Is there any type of end game challenges? I just can't play a game that's purpose is to just gain levels and gear until you cap then stop playing. A basic story arc at least is needed.
Yeah, it has a world story. You will get a special kill screen when you beat the main story, and then you can keep playing. It's a weird story that its derivative of past Ultimas. Just a hint if you're an old Ultima fan - The Oracle Colossus is Minax. lol. I did it, it may be worth doing it. Some of the writing is awful in parts tho
0:37 Stretchable plate armor. 10/10 IGN
ngl I might want to play this game if the adventures that you can make for yourself in it's sandbox was similar to that of Outward.
So what's the best MMO to play in 2024? You should make a video on some recommendations.
This just makes me more excited for AoC
I first heard of this game on a sci-fi/horror podcast back in 2014 or 2015. I placed all of my hopes of a new MMORPG home to rival Vanguard. This was the first of many shattered dreams. I’m currently hanging my hopes on AoC and Pantheon. The later is looking bad after 10 years of hard development.
Interesting to see Dofus Touch as a sponsor. I’d love for you to cover Dofus or Dofus Touch. They are great games in their own turn based MMO genre. They are true MMO’s
I’m always amazed at how some people can keep playing extremely mediocre games, sometimes borderline scams for SO much time while they could be playing similar games that would satisfy them so much more.
The text entry was a hold over from the original Ultima. People didn't like it because they said it was too hard so they added the clickable words and underlining. In the end nobody was happy. They should totally look at integrating some kind of 3rd party AI to allow conversations with some NPCs tho, that would help.
I still play Ultima Online, its a timeless classic.
UO Outlands has been a renaissance for UO.
yo, hope you are doin good mate. Just wondering what the status on "Life Is An MMORPG" pt.2 and pt.3 looks like (since the last one was 2 yrs ago). Are we going to get an update to that?
I remember trying this game, it gave me a headache after a few hours. I was so annoyed I even removed it from my Steam list.
20:28 "It actually looks better to have small Cottage that's populated with furniture than to have a massive Mansion that's just full of empty rooms"
The bdo fail enhancement sound effect on the mining u thought u were slick Heedun🤣🤣🤣
This is a good game. Not as great game but a good one. However, it is an oldschool game; very old school. There are still about 2k players. Unfortunately many play offline to avoid competition for resources. Those resources are still sold in online mode. The player economy is still very active so we know there is at least a critical mass of player base.
Don't go into this game unless you like the idea of self motivated exploration, complete freedom with character development, and little hand holding.
So many new uploads, yay!
That UO music tho 🤌
I like DDO online, so... time to have a peek. Thanks.
i really want to see a first look at dofus
think you could do Zenith VR? I am curious how you would feel about what they did.
FYI, most people play using the stand-alone launcher and not through steam.
As someone that just played this game for the first time this weekend I think you missed out on a lot of things that make this game amazing, I socialized and was taken around the game and given tips and had things explained to me, this game is actually incredible and this review gives the wrong impression of it. Still love your content though.