Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues Kickstarter closes at $1.9 million

Richard Garriot’s Kickstarter project, Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, has come to an end. The campaign has reached all of its goals, and the total amount earned is $1,919,275 through 22,322 backers, which is almost double its original goal of $1 million. The game is expected to be released by October 2014, so it’s still a long way off.

The campaign reached its initial goal just ten days after it started. Back in March, Portalarium announced stretch goals for the campaign, with more additions promised depending on how much more money they could make.

After reaching $1.1 million, the developers were to add a pet system into the game. There will be both social vanity pets as well as combat pets that will help you in your adventures and will be controllable through simple commands. Reaching $1.2 million would have the developers add a seasonal weather system into the game. This means that weather will be dynamic and will depend on the in-game calendar.

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There seems to be a large demand for Garriot to get back into making games

In March, the game’s Tech Director Chris Spears explained how the team will be handling the multiplayer component of the game. Shroud of the Avatar will have four modes—single-player offline, single-player online, friends play online and open play online. The single-player offline mode is a DRM-free, completely offline version of the game. The player’s character is stored on the computer and cannot be used in any of the online modes.

Single-player online lets you connect to the server, receive content updates and see the long-term changes on the world. This isn’t multiplayer, however, as you aren’t visible on anyone else’s screen, nor can you group up with others. You can, however, switch from single-player online to friends play online or open play online whenever you like as long as you’re in a city or on the world map. Some parts of the main story quests may force players into single-player online mode temporarily.

In friends play online, you only see people in your game that you have flagged as friends, and likewise, only they can see you. This is a server-side filter and the game mode is primarily designed for those who only prefer playing online games with friends. Like single-player online, you can switch to the other online modes when you’re in a city or on the world map.

Open play online lets you see everyone that the server thinks you should be able to see. This doesn’t necessarily mean everyone in an area, but the game will have some algorithms to determine who is important enough to be visible to you. This game mode will basically feel like an MMORPG. It will have lots of options for social interaction with other players. The system being employed here has the data flow through players instead of a server. The company believes that this is better for the players and the service, but the major drawback is that the upper limit of players on one map may be restricted.