We are very sorry that some players feel misled by our communications.



The narrative that everyone seems to latch on to is that this was supposed to be a single player game and never a multi-player game. They then take a single quote “With Shroud of the Avatar what I am hoping we can do is to create a story-driven solo player experience that hearkens back to somewhere between Ultimas IV and Ultima VII" to prove their point.



However the full quote ends with the words "but that ALSO has the ability to play online”. So the entire quote says "“With Shroud of the Avatar what I am hoping we can do is to create a story-driven solo player experience that hearkens back to somewhere between Ultimas IV and Ultima VII but that ALSO has the ability to play online”



Then if you actually read the entire Kickstarter page we say multiple times that it is selective multiplayer and open play mode will feel just like an MMO. That is on the initial KS page. The quote everyone likes to use to prove their single player point is from a FAQ on the page and out of context. Here is the full quote:



“Though Shroud of the Avatar won’t be a massively multiplayer online role playing game, it will be a multiplayer game. We will be describing this in more detail in our upcoming community blogs.”



Blog post #10, during the first half of the KS is where we clarified it. We said that it will feel just like an MMO but that we didn’t want to call it that because we didn’t know how many players we could handle together. Also, we say will feel just like an MMO on the front page and Richard’s own mission statement for it was “Multiplayer Online Game – which can also be played solo player / offline” right on the front page.



And then over time every single month we have been very transparent about out game development about how the game would play and we have delivered exactly what we promised.



Could the quality be higher? Absolutely.

Were we INSANELY ambitious to try to make an offline/online game that could be played single player and MMO at the same time? Yes.

Did we do this with 1/10 to 1/20 the budget of almost every other product that we are compared with on a daily basis (Witcher, ESO, WoW, etc.)? Yes.

Are we constantly trying to get better every month? Yes.

Did some people build certain expectations that did NOT match what we were planning because possibly our poor communication? Probably

Are we sorry that some players misinterpreted what we posted initially and then said during the evolution of the game? Yes, very, very sorry



Now at this point you can choose to accept our apology and our commitment to keep improving things or you can choose to move on.



In either case we thank you for your support and your feedback. Both have made this game happen and we are very, very grateful.

Click to expand...