Shroud of the Avatar

GENRE: Multiplayer Online RPG
PLATFORM: Windows / Mac / Linux
DEVELOPER: Portalarium

OVERVIEW

From the creator of the ground-breaking Ultima series including Ultima Online, Richard Garriott brings Shroud of the Avatar: Forksaken Virtues. The game creates a single player RPG experience and allows users to play it cooperative play with friends or through an open multiplayer

“Selective Multiplayer” system. This fantasy-based online RPG defies the current norms of the “massively multiplayer” genre and lets users choose who they play with.

KEY FEATURES

- From the mind that brought us the acclaimed Ultima series of games
- A unique spin on the online multiplayer RPG genre
- Play single player off-line or online with other players
- Classless skill-based system
- Focus on being a combat character or a pure crafter
- Full housing construction and decorating available
- An interactive world where choices have their own consequences
- The unique story driven adventure
- Crowdsourcing allows players to submit content (music, sfx, art) to be used in the game

LORE

Set in a world whose troubled past has been lost to the ages, where what came before is found in only fragments of ruined sites and discovered parchments in foreign texts. So much of what happened before is forgotten, the Cataclysm happened almost 400 years ago and the actual events are uncertain, two moons of the old world collided and brought the world to its knees. This is a story of survival and rebirth and the new magic that brought with it terrible monsters thought only as legends and the heroes that will rise to defeat them.

SKILL BASED SYSTEM

There will be no classes in the game, instead using a skill-based system where players unlock various skills through a skill tree as they level up and gain experience. Outside of combat players can choose from a number of different resource gathering and full crafting skills making a crafter character a full-time profession if desired.

Combat seem to take a similar form of a trading card game where players will have different combat skill cards that they can learn and use in combat, however the skills that you have access to appear randomly when you and so combat in your “deck”. Available skills often tied in to weapons, if a player wants to use a particular attack manoeuvre and they may be required to have a particular weapon equipped as a prerequisite before they gain access to it.

HOUSING

Players are able to have their own player housing in the game, requiring a deed to claim your own lot of land, however as available land is so limited there will be a finite amount of player housing available and thus creating a tangible cost and real estate market.

Homeowners are able to fully customise their abodes with a whole manner of crafted furniture that ranges from cosmetic shelving and pictures to more useful workbenches to aid you in your crafting skills. With a detailed tool for moving, rotating and resizing items players will be able to get the exact look they are trying to achieve in their home.

HAVING AN IMPACT

One of the key focuses about the game is that your actions will have direct consequences, as often as not these will be in response to events that are happening within the game such as a city coming under siege being inaccessible and staying that way unless the players do something about it. More so if your own home is in that city you will for a time be unable to access it for your items stored the.

NOT AN MMO

Whilst the game has all the trappings of an MMO RPG, it does in fact avoid the “massively” element to the genre and whilst players can play in online multiplayer, often with around 50 people in a scenario/area instance, it focuses more on cooperative play with your friends and Guild. It is the players that host these areas and so access to them are given preferential treatment from their friends, Guild mates, people they have grouped with, people they have interacted with and more moving down the list of people that you have in some way come in contact with. With this system players will be able to see where their friends are and if they have any active scenario areas running and are able to jump into them.

OFFLINE PLAY

Players will be able to play the game off-line in single player content from small period of time, then when they log back into the game these changes will be uploaded to the online version. Players cannot play for an extended period and expects all their changes to be saved and it is meant more for a useful tool where players do not have access to the Internet.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENT

Unknown