Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues

used to be fun, but it has lost direction and passion, now its jsut doll houses and milking the whales with ''rares''

"Shroud of the Avatar" is a perfect example of wasted potential. Almost every system feels unfinished or outdated. Travel is a chore, combat is clunky, the UI is cumbersome, and the game never seems to decide whether it wants to be a classic RPG or an MMO. Instead of capturing the magic of *Ultima*, it ends up feeling like a collection of half-finished ideas held together by nostalgia.

Backed it, spent literally thousands of dollars, got reamed by a greedy scammer (garriott) who took the money and ran. Very much would not recommend.

I backed this game at Ancestor level for $275 in 2014. I tried to play during the years of 2014, 2015, and 2016 but didn't end up playing long due to my weak hardware. The only span of time I put into SotA that was memorable enough was from Feb. 2024 to May 2024 in which I would play day in day out playing and learning as I went. I played through the main quest and spent the rest of my time using the forums/wiki to find side quests to do, repeating dailys, and gathering materials for crafting. The first and primary reason why I quit was because how incredibly grindy this game is. I felt starved of exp throughout my entire time playing. Like real money, spending xp is so much easier than earning it. Its obvious that quests are the main source of it but once those ran out I didn't know what the next best thing to acquire it was so I felt stuck with secondary sources like mining, and other gathering skills. Randomness has its hand in almost everything in this game. At worst its in crafting. It didn't affect me up until I wanted to craft a house, a Greenhouse Four-Story Row House. Based on my current skill at the time, I had a 73% chance for the house to be crafted successfully, otherwise I'd lose the materials I gathered to make it. There was a chance that I had to do the grinding I had done again just because the chances were not in my favor, and the feeling I had was dread. I considered grinding the relevant skill to raise that chance to craft the row house to 100% but I crafted anyway and succeeded. The fear of something as important as a house failing to craft and having to go grind materials again shouldn't have any place in a crafting system. What a disgusting and terrible design choice to integrate gambling into crafting this way. Getting into player housing was stressful but rewarding in the end once I established myself. Expanding my bank slots was not sustainable with how many items I was accumulating. I ended up in Nauvoo with the 4 story greenhouse. Because you can place containers in your house it became where I stored and organized my things. If I played longer I would have fully decorated it too. Even for a row lot its an adequate size, and even then you can add a basement level which is its own instance. Decorating is free form, and you can even somewhat scale most items. The structure itself isn't customizable, so you'll see many of the same houses. The world map is littered with player owned towns (POT), which are instances owned by players. Most are abandoned by their owners, yet will never go away. It just makes the world cluttered. Not only that, but they are all so cookie cutter due to terrain being the same across many because there are "templates" you choose from. Want to make a desert town? You have 4 terrain options, and that is it. Its not customizable. Why are resource nodes about an equal distance from each other? wtf? This game does have its strengths but I warn you, stay away from this game.

Realistic 2026 Review: Prologue: I come from a long history of online multiplayer games. In fact, I still admin a multi-user dungeon (MUD) that's been up since the 90s. And just like this game, mine has like, 2% of the player base we once had. People came here, they played the heck out of it, probably had some really fun and amazing Imms that ran awesome quests and things (this is what brings these kind of mmos alive), and they amassed wealth and items that seem wild and then over time they ran out of things to do or ran into real world responsibilities and moved on... and it's all on display for new players to see. This is kind of a cool thing, it shows you, the new player what is possible. Gameplay: It's a bit old-school, as one would expect based on it's release date. A mix of text-based MUDs and point-and-click MMOs. Fighting is meh, but you're not really here in a quasi Ultima-themed game for amazing fighting interactions, right? Graphics are also meh, until you get into homes and see some of the cool things they've added since they did the orig. world-textures, and then you appreciate that at least recently added items have improved f/x. Why it'll be hard to play: If you want to play solo, it's going to be a challenge. it's meant to be a massive multiplayer. Offline you will be grinding forever. Online, you will struggle to get beyond the core offline game experience because, naturally, the economy has succumbed to inflation, purchasing anything better than basic is going to take a hell of a grind to amass the gold required. How you should play it: 1. Imho, send a signal flare to your clan, get that group of friends together and play. Hello, it's FREE, you don't have anything to loose. The game world is so big and so very very barren, you and your buddies can find an abandoned town, setup your houses, create a small community, and take on the world. 2. If you enjoy exploring worlds, go visit not only the base game-cities, but all the player-created towns. Walking down every street and talking to every npc just like in any Elder Scrolls game can be rewarding with all the custom homes to explore. Tip: Once you get past the intro zone and up to the first camp, just go walking until you zone out. That will set you free to get to a nearby player-town, and from there you can fast travel all over the world. Visit a bunch, you'll get 250gold from each crier, then find some player-crafter newbie gear from a player-shop and go back and finish the beginning zones.

Barebones dev team spending each month updating the cash shop.

It was supposed to be an Ultima Online style MMO but they quickly went another direction. The game is nearly impossible to get into, heavy grind, not worth it. I'm actually pissed I paid for the game only to be let down like this.