Fair enough gents. You both raise excellent points. Personally, I admire the man, despite his flaws.

Well, if he was pitching a single-player-only Ultima-style game, I would be pledging right now. I never thought he would, for two reasons; 1) Portalarium his company specializes exclusively in social/Facebook games, unless he radically overhauled their business plan and hired new design talent, the only type of game they had the capacity to make was something multiplayer-like. And 2) Over the last decade there's been no indication that Garriot is interested in single-player exclusive gaming at all, he still has this weird view that social/mobile/online gaming is the "Ultimate" future of RPG's.

Unless you have some kinda time machine to grab the young Garriot of the 80's, that is.

I known about this project for a few months, I was expecting some sort of crappy FB game. Like you I wish this was a full blown Ultima game. I guess we have EA to blame. They sit on the IP and almost do nothing with it. What a shame.

Well, this game seems to be Ultima in everything but name. "Avatar", "Virtues", the world map looks very much similar to Sosaria/Brittania, "Lunar Rifts" instead of Moongates.

It's not like the Ultima IP is that special, and certainly wouldn't guarantee instant success. And yes it does disappoint me that he couldn't have just dropped the online stuff completely and made a straight-up traditional RPG. His approach here seems to be trying to please everybody at the same time, and with Kickstarter that doesn't work, because you usually have people who have a specific idea on the type of game they want. Garriot seems to be going for the old-school RPG crowd with the "playable offline" thing, plus saying that SoTC is hearkening back to his earlier work, but yet at the same time the game is basically an MMORPG that's also playable offline.

On Kickstarter you need to go full nerd, you need to pander to motivated niches, because those are the only types who are motivated enough to pay on faith alone for a game. CRPG's have been so successful on Kickstarter because in recent years there really hasn't been any Computer RPG's. And no third-person shooters with romances (Mass Effect) are not RPGs.

This looks great if you like multiplayer games. Its not for me, personally, but it is nice to see the Avatar back. I hope this succeeds.

Also, how dare someone who has spent money they earned to go into space, ever seek funding for any business venture ever again. Outrageous!

I suspect that the use of Kickstarters is as much about having the numbers to prove the project's viability as it is about actually financing it - he surely COULD finance it himself, but if the Kickstarter entry shows enough people/pledges to justify the game in its own right, it'll be something he can point to as proof to the contrary when the naysayers (about him and about the genre/style) start their chanting.

I would like to see what he can do without Evil Corporate Overlords (tm) telling him what that should be. Sure, I'm skeptical of the online-but-not model, but his teams have made the impossible possible before (the pre-takeover Ultima games really did push the boundaries of their times), so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

I have zero problems with Richard Garriott asking for money. I just don't like where the money's going. Cracked said it best: "[Ultima Online] was a vast pyramid of people pissing downward, and your reward for continued play was looking up and climbing." Do not want.

In addition, it seems are publicly revealing the pledge amounts of certain backers without their permission:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/portalarium/shroud-of-the-avatar-forsaken-virtues-0/comments?cursor=2404118#comment-2404118
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/portalarium/shroud-of-the-avatar-forsaken-virtues-0/comments?cursor=2404830#comment-2404830

Classy.

Cheapskates! How dare you give $1 to Lord British AND have an opinion! Anything less than the price of your kidney is an insult!

*checks the tiers*
Wait, the $10 is "tithe to LB" tier? Oh, come on, why isn't indulgence in limited supply?

*hands Crosmando a tissue*

You know, we actually don't know how much Garriot has already invested to the project, given that there is a prototype of the game already.

But yeah, pointing out how much some one has pledged is not classy, no matter what their opinion is. Otherwise you get a feeling that not all tiers are as important.

You simply cannot put a price on the innocence of this face.

(I'm guessing this has already been mentioned. http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/03/akalabeth/)

Ah man, I wish he'd sell an uncollectable disk image. I've wanted a legitimate Apple II copy of Akalabeth practically forever. :(

Huh, Lord British made half a million in a day, what a guy! I think i actually may support this project even though it's bound to have a tons of bugs and disappointments since Richard Garriot's always been a megalomaniac trying to implement like everything in a single game.

Ain't that the fuckin truth :P