One of the most shockingly dishonest Kickstarters ever has resulted in one of the most expensive Free to Play games yet seen, whose "Launch" attempt failed to expand it's tiny but excessively toxic community, who 6 YEARS LATER are still stalking and harassing critics on Reddit, whilst soon the whole horrendous project will rightfully keel over dead.

UPDATE: Portalarium have been dissolved, sold all the intellectual property to one of their Devs, Chris Spears under the guise of "Catnipgames"; any final hopes of a"Lord British" game have now eternally left the building, along with the Garriott himself and the rest of the developers. All SeedInvest shares have been closed at $0, although Spears lies directly and claims the SeedInvest is still open. (See comments below.)

Said developer actively supported the stalking and harassment of critics; when taken to Arbitration Court over their malicious actions, Portalarium didn't even dare turn up to defend what they'd done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfzXS-H5SzM&t

Since the 4th September 2018 then, despite being ordered to remove any reference to the scheme from their EULA, and knowing I had the legal paperwork, Portalarium have tried to pretend this never happened and haven't updated their EULA to show how unprotected the backers really are. They are liars to the last.

Meanwhile MassivelyOP themselves are fully aware I have the Arbitration Court documents, but were censoring any attempt to warn backers of this. At least that is until the now-owner of Shroud turned up and abused the staff for daring to be critical; and that hilariously happened because one of the most disgusting RMTs tried to manipulate the coverage again... Start here for the context;

https://old.reddit.com/r/shroudoftheavatar_raw/comments/dn0zbe/the_schadenfruede_for_vlad_is_delicious/

Then go to the MOP article and remember that the developer having a temper tantrum in comments, and having to have it spelt out IN DETAIL just how much previously MOP had sucked up to Portalarium, is the same one who is now entirely responsible for running and developing the game.

Now look carefully at the "Hours Played" on the postive reviews. It's easy enough to do; every time the game dips back into Mostly Negative on Steam a few of them will turn up again; The vast majority are either long term backers, with thousands of hours, running Real Money businesses who keep updating their reviews to look new and recent...

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/steam-reviews-needs-some-love.138035/page-2#post-1

... or are under 2 hours played, on accounts with no games, sockpuppets of same RMTS trying to make the game look popular.

But ACTUAL player numbers? Well, why not check Steam Charts and see for yourself?

https://steamcharts.com/app/326160

Here is what you need to know about the game itself;

* The Kickstarter was just an attempt to avoid bankruptcy for Portalarium, but they never had any intention of building the Buy To Own, no microtransactions, plot driven game described there; instead they've created a Real Money Trading MMO, where prices can go up to $30,000 for Golden Castles.

* It is not an "Indy" game now; they've taken somewhere north of $30m in total funding, but good luck tracing that as Portalarium have self-imploded to hide their records.

* The game was to all intents and purposes already launched in July 2016 when they stopped wiping the server, allowed the placing of property, and encouraged RMT to begin.

* There is a Premium Currency and Monthly Subscriptions service too.

* Everything is legal to sell via their forums, including XP farming.

* You CANNOT own property without the Real Money only Lot Deed to place it. There are RMTs who hold those deeds who will attempt to deceive you and say "anything can be bought in game for gold." This is only true for the occasional RMT who can quickly sell the gold itself, although most are now dumping stock in a panic to get out before the game implodes. As it dies, they're taking Cash Only.

* The same goes for the Player Owned Towns. There's no way to get them in game. They were limited time offer, Add On Store only, going from $750 to $6000.

* When those sold out, Portalarium switched to "Player Dungeons" and sold even more deco for that in the Store. Right now, functionality of said "Dungeons" is laughable to say the least. But by god you can sure spend real money on them...

* Because the sheer scale of cash gouging was putting people off, Portalarium openly admitted they were moving it all in game to hide it from new players;

"With that change we feel that having all of the store items visible on the website at all times is an inaccurate representation of what the game offers players and incorrectly infers that everything must be purchased to play."

Don't be fooled; it's not "everything", but it IS hundreds, and hundreds of items going up to THOUSANDS of dollars that form the only real content in game.

* The game launched with single player just a clone of the MMO, minus the online people's housing. The vast majority of NPC cities aren't even finished, and it's not planned to look at it again until later in the year. The game will likely be dead long before then.

* They were also quietly dropped by their European partner, Travian, after they discovered the claimed income from players was an absolute lie

* Also be aware that because the game is built almost entirely around RMT, the sheer amount of items in people's homes cripples performance. Even on a Solid State Drive it's rough, but a Hard Drive can be almost unplayable.

* AND THIS IS THE BIG ONE:

You need to know that the community is unbelievably toxic. Because many of them are using Shroud as a real life business, they will stop at nothing to deceive future backers (and thus try and make sales to them) and will outright stalk and harass critics because you're getting in the way of their money making.

It's hard to express how disgusting the behaviour is; The main RMT above posted under his real name at MassivelyOP and then tried to forge replying to that as "doxxing" him, in order to try and ban any critical commentators. The same RMT organises review bombing any coverage of Shroud to hide how disliked it is. They've openly organised using proxies to stuff polls in favour of Shroud. It's the most dishonest, despicable behaviour I've ever seen online.

Before that, they've even started organising to try and manipulate where Shroud appears on the Google rankings;

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/review-of-shroud-of-the-avatar.113281/

Meanwhile, the sociopath who threatened to kill my family is openly bragging on Portalarium's forums that no one can touch him as he harasses people, because he knows Portalarium are actively supporting him...

https://www.reddit.com/r/shroudoftheavatar_raw/comments/866byc/so_my_experiences_trying_to_get_berek_to_deal/

Click the images in the above thread to see how blatant it is.

And this is just a QUICK recap of SOME of the issues with Shroud! The game is riddled with terrible decisions. Just one week before "Launch", they completely overhauled Skills design to introduce Specialisation... after 4 years of selling people on unlimited power, and they're still scrabbling around desperately trying to work out what core features of the game are supposed to be!

But always, ALWAYS in the background will be more grasping for more money, and horrendous toxic community behaviour if ever dare wonder where the game you backed at Kickstarter went.

Stay far, far away from Shroud of the Avatar.

Don't believe me? Fine, but go for the Free Trial FIRST.

What ever you do, don't waste your money on this. I, no doubt like the vast majority of missing backers, regret ever spending mine on this moral, and miserable disaster that urinates all over the legacy of Ultima.