The hybrid MMORPG that can be played offline and in single player, if so desired, has another free trial period for the next couple of weeks.
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Shroud of the Avatar [Official Site] is the latest project of veteran game developer Richard Garriott, best known for the Ultima series of games, and has been in early access for a few years now. It’s somewhat different to many MMORPGs in that it has a narrative and is planned to be fully playable in offline single player as well as with friends or the more traditional fashions with hundreds of other players.
It’s a game that’s very much rough around the edges still, according to reviews on Steam and elsewhere. You might also be interested in Liam’s brief thoughts on the game a few months ago. The title is still very much under active development, getting major content updates every now and then. A lot of changes and retools of major systems have also happened and a lot is slated to change between now and full release.
The current free trial period runs through September 7-27th and through their own game client instead of Steam. There’s a few restrictions in place for players in the free trial, mainly limiting PVP activity and the economic impact of these players. You can read about these limitations as well as download the client as either a .deb or tar.gz here.
Quoting: Asuffs Lord British, do the free trial thru Steam, please.
Why would he do that when steam is full of negative reviews?
Quoting: cRaZy-bisCuiTApart from the fact I really do not enjoy MMO's (I tried WOW and Guild Wars back in the days) I wonder why they still have to look like Gothic II with a few more light effects here and there.....
The problem is number of polygons. In a singleplayer game you have control over it and can optimize it to a fix number of polygons. You are in control of how many opbjects you have on your screen.
But in an MMO you can't control how many players you have on a screen. It can be one (you :)) or hundred. To solve this problem you have to work with a lower graphic quality.
Another advantage is that you have a larger potential player base available, which was one of the reasons that WoW was such an huge success. It runs smoothly on older machines too, not on high end PCs only.
Quoting: Crazy PenguinQuoting: cRaZy-bisCuiTApart from the fact I really do not enjoy MMO's (I tried WOW and Guild Wars back in the days) I wonder why they still have to look like Gothic II with a few more light effects here and there.....
The problem is number of polygons. In a singleplayer game you have control over it and can optimize it to a fix number of polygons. You are in control of how many opbjects you have on your screen.
But in an MMO you can't control how many players you have on a screen. It can be one (you :)) or hundred. To solve this problem you have to work with a lower graphic quality.
Another advantage is that you have a larger potential player base available, which was one of the reasons that WoW was such an huge success. It runs smoothly on older machines too, not on high end PCs only.
And if you take into consideration the towns things get even worse due to the house decoration system, it's ridiculous. Large town scenes will drastically tank the performance.
Oh and the name doesn't mean anything but coincidentally could be pronounced as "Buttery" which suits me just fine.
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