![]() We can all agree that the difficulty of legacy MMOs wasn't just the grind, it was dealing with the UI, the buggy systems, the constant need for GMs to fix the game, etc. Technology was limited making it hard to create an MMO that was easily accessible and people were forced to conform to mechanics that would otherwise be considered heresy in the modern world. Back when fast Internet wasn't easily accessible and you had to live within x number of miles from some technological wizard that would deliver speeds up to 50kb/s to your house there wasn't much interest in the genre or a big audience for it. The interesting thing about SotA is that it isn't made for the mass market, it's made for fans of a specific genre of MMO that over time, have grown to be a very small percentage of the MMO community. The game is made for those who support it, instead of being made for an audience they hope will support it. Richard Garriott goes so far as to hang out in the game, with Starr Long and a legion of other devs working on the game to solicit feedback and talk with players to see how they're enjoying the development of the game so far. Since then, the game has run live for the entire time and at every stage of the development player's feedback has been obtained. It was funded quickly and the pre-alpha server was turned on in December of 2013. To break down how a game works, it went on Kickstarter on March 8th, 2013. One of the interesting aspects of Shroud of the Avatar is that Richard Garriott opened the servers up when the game wasn't even really a game and has kept players involved in the entire development from start to finish. This originally was going to be a news post about the recent Update the Avatar, but I honestly just wanted to take a step back and talk a bit about how Richard Garriot has done crowdfunding and even MMO development right.
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