Shroud of the Avatar gets Kickstarted with 16 days left

Lord British is no doubt drinking from golden goblets

Here’s some news that will likely surprise not one single one of you: Richard “Lord British” Garriott’s latest foray into roleplaying and morality, Shroud of the Avatar, has gone past its Kickstarter goal, and is now sitting at $1,087,097 at the time of writing, with 16 days left in the campaign.

Despite the fact that Garriott hasn’t made a decent game since Ultima Online in the late ’90s, the genre-defining franchise still holds a lot of weight. More recently his MMO, Tabula Rasa became one of biggest MMO failures, he went into space, and he won a vast amount of money, $28 million, in a lawsuit against one-time employer NCSoft, when he helped develop the giant MMO flop. Oh yeah, and he also took the time to bad-mouth all of his peers.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m filled to the brim with nostalgia over Ultima, and I’m genuinely interested in Shroud of the Avatar, but I’m less sure of how I feel about wealthy old men using the Kickstarter platform in an attempt to become relevant again. Regardless, it appears to have worked.

Over the next 17 days, extra funding will go towards stretch goals. The first one, set at $1.1 million, adds pets to the game; the second, at $1.2 million, will allow the team to employ seasonal weather; and the third is yet to be announced. The estimated release date is October, 2014, so we’ll have to wait until then to see if Garriott can live up to his boasting.