Spam Spam Spam Humbug 113 – Rant of the Avatar
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Some of you may have taken note of one particular news item in — as of this recording — Golem Dragon’s most recent summary of Shroud of the Avatar-related news. The news item in question concerned the second phase of backer physical reward shipments, which Portalarium is at present undertaking:
As the SotA devs prepare to do the next batch of shipping and hopefully get Collector’s Boxes to backers who didn’t get theirs before. However some backers learned that despite already paying for $15 international shipping back during the Kickstarter, they are now being charged the International Shipping again. To add insult to injury, Portalarium is charging them double the cost it was during the Kickstarter.
Please note the “bug” mentioned below in a dev team member post to be suspicious. In a previous forum post, they claimed it was “not working the way we intended”. I chalk this up to poor planing after all these years that, along with the double charging of shipping, can be attributed to being just another piece of proof of the continuing mismanagement on the part of Portalarium. I know many backers like myself who are still waiting for an actual secure website after all these years, that doesn’t use a highly customized version of WordPress.
Golem doesn’t name names, but the affected backer in question who was asked to purchase international shipping again was myself, Withstand the Fury Dragon.
A brief timeline of events:
- I backed Shroud of the Avatar on Kickstarter, and later topped up his pledge to the Explorer level. This was a physical reward tier; it didn’t come with the full game box, but it came with the cloth map.
- Other Kickstarter backers, upon migrating their pledge information to the Shroud of the Avatar website, found that they had a $15 USD line item on their account labeled as “International Shipping”; shipping was baked in to the Kickstarter pledge price.
- I was later bonused a certain amount by Portalarium for various reasons, and subsequently topped his pledge up out of his own pocket as well; his final pledge tier was Knight (about $800 USD).
- Not thinking anything was amiss, I was surprised when, after September 21st of this year, his game box had still not arrived. He dutifully contacted Portalarium support, and was subsequently informed that he didn’t have any international shipping on his account, and would thus have to pay for it in the form of a $30 USD add-on.
- The need to pay shipping was subsequently confirmed to me by Richard Garriott.
- I did eventually pay the specified amount, and hopes to receive his game box soon.
Now, it’s impossible to say exactly what happened here. Other Kickstarter backers have shared screenshots of their Shroud of the Avatar account pages, showing the $15 USD shipping line item thereupon. Why it disappeared from my account (assuming it was ever added thereto) is a mystery. About all I can say for sure is that this sequence of events, and its resolution, has left me feeling profoundly unenthusiastic about Shroud, or about the game box and the feelies therein. Maybe this will all change once the box arrives — assuming that the recent Canada Post strike does not delay it still yet further — but what if it doesn’t?
Has this happened to anyone else?
Community & Patronage
And, as always, this episode of Spam Spam Spam Humbug is brought to you by our Patreon backers; thank you to everyone who supports Spam Spam Spam Humbug and the Ultima Codex by that means. And, as always, a hearty thank you to our co-producers: Seth, Dominik, Chris, Violation, Adam, Erik, Thorwan, Pascal, Helgraf, Dark Wraith Dragon, the Hearth of Britannia, Edward, Stirring Dragon, Cranberry, Slegnor, Bruce, Christopher, and Gradilla.
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Music
Ultima VI Gates of Creation by OC ReMix
In which Withstand the Fury vents some recent frustrations he’s been wrestling with regarding the physical rewards for Shroud of the Avatar.
Ultima V – Stones 2001 Remix by DJ Lizard