Greetings Fellow Avatars!

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

• Come Play Release 6 Now!
• The (voice) of the Guardian Returns!
• Founder Teachable Emotes
• March Duke’s Roundtable, V.I.P. Picnic, & Duel
• Plantronics Partnership
• Wood & Plaster 2-Story with Front Porch Town Home
• Only 2 BotA Chapters Left!
• Alienware $20 Pledge Upgrade Coupons
• Upcoming Events

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Come Play Release 6 Now!

Release 6 successfully launched yesterday, May 23rd, with thousands of backers downloading, patching, logging in, and checking out the new changes!

Release 6 is our inaugural, once per quarter release, focused mostly on polish and iteration. Many of the polish changes were behind the scenes, but some visible changes include: lighting fine-tuning, improved bump mapping shaders, character improvements (skin, anims, movement during combat, etc.), increased environment polys, more crafting anims, looping emotes (dances), new & improved player homes, and more!

Players have posted some great screen shots in the forum showcasing the visual enhancements in Release 6 (like the image shown above)! Here are a few samples:

[Yeah, this is Lord British and Darkstarr ready to kill some sewer skeletons!]

 

You may want to checkout Fire Lotus Tavern in Owl’s head and see if the Dance Rave is still in full swing!

 

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Release 6 Patches

Early players are helping us uncover bugs and we’ve already published two patches that include the following fixes:

May 23, 2014 

Build Numbers:

• Linux: 29
• Mac: 25
• PC: 102

Notes:

• Added chat message for when you zone to another player
• Added a chatlog response if you try to summon your party but you aren’t in a party
• Fixed bug where Female heads were disconnected in character creation
• Double clicking on hostile NPCs now correctly starts combat with them.
• Fixed recipe book not putting ingredients on the crafting table
• Female eye animation no longer looks up too far during combat.
• Fix for crafting stacks of items
• Fix for dark progress bar in patch client
• Fix hair color showing incorrectly in character sheet.
• Fixed females eyes rolling in the back of her head on magic combos
• Fixed seams on male avatar head type 1
• Fix for forcing un-equip item when swimming.
• Harvesting VFX and SFX for mining and tree chopping
• Bow VFX and SFX fixes
• Lich VFX fix
• Fix for glowing shrubbery (Elderberry bush)
• Inventory and performance fixes for recipe book
• Make effects cull distance match object’s cull distance
• Non-combat skills (like Light) no longer put you into combat.
• NPCs should now play animations across clients
• Updates to outdoor fog, new shader to test out lighting improvements for smoke / fog
• Fixed incorrect shader for facial hair.
• House LODs / culling turned back on, should improve performance
• Fix where NPCs would not initialize properly on map startup so they would not attack players (except first in the map)
• Fixed error where some “For Sale” signs were tied to a single lot (creating two conflicting owners)

 

May 22, 2014

Build Numbers:

• Linux: 28
• Mac: 24
• PC: 101

Notes:

• Add /summon command for GMs / Devs
• Fixed pathfinding problem with cotton resource nodes that would lock players to the cotton bushes
• Combat hold pose fixes for female avatar holding shields
• Eye Animation fixes for female avatars
• Fix for chest oddness
• Fix to prevent triggering skills in hotbar with Shift + mapped key when typing in chat
• Materials fix for glowing window frames in Rustic Village house in Braemar.
• Inventory fix for take all button.
• Fix for NPCs and resources not respawning where respawn function was broken if master switched.
• Rebuilt all pathfinding and culling for underground areas
• Looping emotes trimmed for begin and end so they better loop
• Water updates didn’t work with shadow changes also checked in yesterday. Removed shadow casting from water planes and re-tuned water material. Also added a saturate to final alpha value in the shader to prevent crazy values.
• How To Train Your Kobold:
  • Kobold now only barks when in combat. He has about 15 annoying barks that no one was seeing due to faction issues. Now you can see them.
  • Kobold spawns with his warhammer out because HE IS READY FOR YOU
  • Kobold was trying to leash and failing, causing him to heal very rapidly in place. Now he will chase you through the dungeon. There is no escape from Kobold.

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We need all your help with testing the new patches, putting more stress on our multiplayer servers, and testing the new game content, so please join us in playing Release 6.

[Note: This early release contains both multiplayer and single player online mode. Release 6 access will end on Sunday, May 25, at 10:00 PM Central Time]

Hurry and join us in playing Shroud of the Avatar while Release 6 access is open! If you have not backed the game yet, you will need to register and login at www.shroudoftheavatar.com, select the “Pledge or Send Gift!” button in the right side-bar, and purchase a pledge at the $45 Adventurer level or above. For a limited time, you can get the Adventurer pledge for only $25 with the Alienware Pledge Upgrade Coupon (see details below).

(click here for more complete instructions on downloading and playing Release 6)

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The (voice) of the Guardian Returns!

Last night we did our first voice recording for Shroud of the Avatar. We taped voice overs for our upcoming promotional trailer which we will use at E3, as well as a first pass at our intro cinematic. Our actor was none other than Bill Johnson who was the voice of The Guardian in Ultima as well as the narrator for Ultima Online’s intro. Since Origin was one of the very first companies to ever use voice in their games Bill is one of the very first voice actors in our industry. Bill is probably more famous for his role as Leatherface in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2! You can learn more about Bill over at his Facebook page. As a teaser here’s the closing line from the upcoming promo:

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Founder Teachable Emotes

Get ready to show off (and teach) your unique emote, included in the Founder rewards of every pledge tier! Here are two of those emotes:

Citizen: Dance 1 (dances a jig)

Edelmann: Dance 2 (dances an allemande)

 

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March Duke’s Roundtable, V.I.P. Picnic, & Duel

One of the most valued rewards for the Duke pledge tier is:

 

Friday March 7th, 2014 kicked off a weekend full of fun for visitors and Portalarium employees alike. Taking place in the middle of SXSW, backers were treated to a tour of Portalarium, a talk from Starr Long and Richard Garriott at Hackney House, and an epic duel between Lord British and Darkstarr during a Portalarium picnic at Richard Garriott’s scenic Lake Austin property.

 

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Plantronics Partnership

We are excited that Shroud of the Avatar will be a featured game at the Plantronics booth at E3. We want the audio landscape of SotA to be as immersive as the visual landscape and Plantronics is a great partner for us to work with on achieving that goal. During our one year anniversary promotions you may have noticed that some of the prizes we were giving out were Plantronics headsets and at that time we hinted about more to come, like this, from that partnership. Richard Garriott, Starr Long, and Finn Staber will be representing the game at the Plantronics booth in the South Hall at booth 515 so if you are at the show come see us!

If you’re a fan of Plantronics Gaming Headsets (like we are), then check out their Plantronics Gaming Facebook page, and if you like what you see then give them a “Like”!

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Wood & Plaster 2-Story with Front Porch Town Home

Next up in our line of Wood & Plaster homes is this 2-story, 2-room with second-story loft, town home, now available in the Add-On Store (this home is also used as the Fire Lotus Tavern in Owl’s Head):

 

Get Your Wood & Plaster 2-Story with Front Porch Town Home Now for 50% off!

For a limited time we’re offering 50% off this home!  Reserve yours (or send as a gift) at the Add-On Store!

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Only 2 BotA Chapters Left!

The 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 (click here for instructions to link your Kickstarter account).

Here is a brief excerpt of the latest installment (illustration by Denis Loubet):

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Chapter 23: Epiphany

General Karpasic pushed his way through the group of confused and listless satyrs. He choked suddenly, coughing from the dust that filled the corridor from the collapsed wall he had just climbed over. He had ‘liberated’ a lantern from one of the cities shops earlier in the evening. He now held it high over and to the side of his head, trying to pierce the darkness of what had been an enormous, elegant hall.

It had taken the greater part of the day to break into the citadel. The flood of warriors into the city through the open and broken gates had, predictably, resulted in considerable chaos for the first few hours; as such discipline that had existed dissolved into cutthroat greed. They poured into the abandoned buildings of Opalis all along the Muse Way and down into the back alleys among the smaller shops and homes. The warriors spread over the city like locusts devouring a field. The crashing sound of ransacking each building grew with each moment.

That sound was soon followed by a growing howl of anger and betrayal. There was gold and and even a few gems to be rutted out here and there among the buildings, but the legendary wealth of Opalis was not evident in the shops, stalls or homes of the city. The scavengers washed back and forth within the walls of the town like water in a bucket suddenly jarred, desperately seeking the hidden trove that would make their hardships and spilt blood worthwhile.

It was just before evening that the the focus of their frustrations fell on the towering citadel near the middle of the town…

Download your copy of the latest installment of BotA to read the rest of this exciting chapter!

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Map Reveal

For your map puzzle collection:

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Alienware Sponsors $20 Pledge Upgrade Coupon

Alienware’s powerful gaming rigs are a perfect match for Shroud of the Avatar! To show their support, Alienware is sponsoring $20 SotA Pledge Upgrade Coupons to members of their Alienware Arena community!

These coupons can be used to start a SotA pledge account (for new backers), or to add $20 to an existing pledge account. If, for example, you have a $90 Royal Artisan Pledge, you can use the Alienware coupon to bump you up to a $110 Virtual Collector Pledge.

Pretty sweet deal, right? So, hurry over to the Alienware Arena website and get your $20 Pledge Upgrade Coupon now!

[NOTE: Only one Alienware Pledge Upgrade Coupon can be used per account. Coupon does not apply to Add-On Store items]

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Upcoming Events

2014.05.22 – Release 6 Access
2014.06.10 – SotA at E3
2014.06.26 – Release 7 Access
2014.07.04 – SotA at RTX
2014.07.24 – Release 8 Access
2014.08.09 – SotA at synDCon
2014.08.21 – Release 9 Access
2014.08.29 – SotA at Dragoncon
2014.09.25 – Release 10 Access
2014.10.23 – Release 11 Access
2014.11.14 – Duke and Lord of the Manor VIP Design Roundtable with Lord British and Portalarium Studio Tour
2014.11.15 – HoBLotH II: Legends of the Hearth
2014.11.20 – Release 12 Access
2014.12.18 – Release 13 Access