I'm alittle intrigued bout this game, and I'm thinking bout funding them. But I don't know if this is a open world MMORPG, or if it's instanced solo RPG where you can meet others if you wanna. Can you choose to play solo if you wanna? And what's with all these episodes? Are they like 5 solo adventures in the game? If it's a MMORPG, will it have only one server, one world. Or will they have several servers for US and EU etc? I want it to be sandbox MMO with everything that comes along with it like open world PVP, territorial control etc.
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All very good questions. While I can answer some of them with certain clarity, I urge you not to listen to myself or anyone else here but simply to head over to the Shroud of the Avatar forum and website for discussions on these topics which have now been going on for months.
There is a wealth of information available for everyone
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php
https://shroudoftheavatar.com/
http://insanemembrain.wordpress.com/
1. The world is dual scale with zone-connected instances but also an overland map that you can use to physically walk across for "fast" travel.
2. You can play this game entirely solo. You can even play it entirely offline.
3. They have planned 5 games for Shroud of the Avatar. They have broken up the story over 5 "episodes". Each episode is a full-length story-driven multiplayer RPG. They expect the main quest in each episode to last about 40 hours, so a lot more if you include side quests and infinite if you play in the sandbox. The first episode only represents 10% of the world, with each new episode doubling it in size. This is going to be a massive game to explore and adventure in.
4. One persistent world, but how they manage latency across the world has yet to be announced.
5. They will publicly reveal the details around PvP "soon" (perhaps this week or next). It has already been revealed to their Dev+ forum members for review and feedback so they can edit and tweak before public reveal.
A good explanation of how the multiplayer works can be found here http://sotawiki.net/sota/Selective_Multiplayer_Online
Sota will be an end to end single player game with a story as well as an ever growing persistent online world similar to other mmos. It uses instances for each hex but they are all synced together so that everyone sees the same things such as live events, your house, vendors and that type of thing. It's a lot different in how it works than other mmos but so far has a very mmo like feel to it.