“Yew” is a name well-known to fans of Ultima, and the town’s namesake lives on in its spiritual successor, Shroud of the Avatar. For Release 50, the team is working on “uncloning” the current version and giving this new Yew its own identity.
“The Elven city of Yew has been shielded from outsiders by a nearly constants shroud of fog that only clears during certain alignments of the heavenly bodies,” Portalarium said. “The city itself is full of wonderful Elven architecture and because of the natural foggy defenses has never been fortified.”
Other projects that the team is tackling for the new year include improvements for its map system and the Wild Boar Clan. Release 50 is scheduled for January 25th and will be the second-to-last update before the game officially launches in March.
Yes, I too can’t wait to visit this wonderful Elven city…
And see $600 steam punk airships, $350 4 story Kobold Halls, $300 Obsidian Towers, $300 bright red Japanese Samurai themed galleons dry-docked on land (because only early adopters can get water based plots and the game will go bankrupt before Episode 2, and that’s when they’d delayed even looking at implementing actual sailing too)…
… and quest there? It depends! The quest lines have been written and finalized for months, so I’ve likely already done it. The final polishing just means moving the NPCs to where they should be, but weren’t because despite being 3 years late, they’re still trying to get the world built, and replace all the cloned instances.
But if not, if it’s all new to me, and I can spend ages trying to even find where the NPCs are in this lovely “Elven” city, because the few remaining backers hate the idea of any modern aides to playing in a 3d environment. No glowing NPCS! No exclamation marks! No map at all unless you buy one! No world chat (except for Whale backers, natch)! Rummage around endlessly in the “wonderful Elven architecture” and “the natural foggy defenses” for that 1 bloke your quest journal hints at in terribly written prose!
After which, I’ll spend months grinding gold to try and buy my own plot in this lovely city, and then discover virtually no one takes in game gold for trade for big ticket items like housing (have a look for yourself)… Maybe I can rent a room, or even a home in the short term in a Player Owned Town (POT: $750 up to $6,000 real money, limited time offer only) and then find the landlord can boot you off and send all your possessions into his bank account… Wonderful!
Or maybe I should just sign up with the anti-elven faction, and role play a resistance fighter. Led by one “Phineas Drumplemouth”. Who was definitely not a Donald Trump caricature. Because the writing is just that brilliant.
How come this isn’t the mmo most likely to flop?
Because it already did. Since it isn’t having anymore wipes, many people consider it already launched.
Legends of Aria (Shards Online) is the spiritual successor of Ultima Online, not SotA
There can be more than one. Just look at Ship of Heroes/Valiance Online/City of Titans.
It is true that there can be more then one, but the way SOTA has prioritised the facilitation of Real Money Trading in the development if the game rather then rich story, deep world interaction, and that they entered persistence with construction signs everywhere really doesn’t evoke the Ultima identity to me.
Ultima was about exploration and adventure. By making the leveling limitless in SOTA the game becomes focused on the grind and how can a developer balance content to a population that has such a disparity in power when its already challenging for games that cap power so devs know where to aim their difficulty curve?
There is too many greedy decisions, bad game mechanics and just poor pr for SOTA to even stand in the shadow of the team that created Ultima Online
There definitely can be more than one spiritual successor. However, this game does not feel like a successor of Ultima Online. To me, it comes off as a selling-point the developers are trying to capitalize on but do not deliver on. Thus, it’s not really in the same spirit of Ultima Online and it is unlikely to succeed Ultima Online. Just because they purport this over and over again does not make it so.
I do love the city building in SotA. I just wish the game world was far less instanced.