Good day fellow Avalonians! We will be having some big announcements coming to you over the next few weeks and the team here is really excited about them. To start things off I wanted to let you all in on a change that will be coming very soon... until further notice we will be making Avalon Lords: Dawn Rises free to play! “Why are we doing that” you ask? Well, we understand that there are many people out there who shy away from any game that is in Early Access. However, something that simple should not stop people from being able to enjoy the game and, equally important, being able to give their feedback and suggestions. We would like to create the best game that we can and the more people we have sharing their ideas and opinions, the better off we are. So, if you have been waiting on the sideline for the right time to get the game, then that time is near – June 2, 2016, to be exact!
Does this mean that we will be slowing down production or reducing any of our plans? Not at all. In fact some of the upcoming announcements will be about expanding certain things. How will we fund the game development? For that we will (at some point) be introducing an in-game shop where those who want can buy various cosmetic assets for their account. Now, I know what you are thinking, “Whoopie, another free-to-play/pay-to-win game...” Nope, not here! Anything that becomes available in the shop will be purely cosmetic; there will be nothing available that would put someone in a better game balance position over other players simply because that person spent some cash. One of our goals is to make Dawn Rises an eSports game and the whole “pay-to-win” model is in direct conflict with that, so it simply won't exist here. A quick look around our Steam Community Hub will show you that we really do care about our community. Your enjoyment as well as getting your feedback is much more important to us than making money off people.
Which brings me to the next point. We know there is a whole big bunch of you out there who have already spent money to buy the game. It would be simply horrible of us to just swap over to a free game and not give you something in return for your investment. So, we have some things to offer you in compensation. First, once the game shop goes in, we will credit you $30USD in shop assets for you to enjoy – even if you bought the game on sale. Secondly, we have a very well known composer working on the official soundtrack for Dawn Rises (stay tuned to further announcements to find out exactly who!) and we will send you a digital copy of the soundtrack once it is complete. You will also get the ability to play on nightly builds, so you get to see fixes as they get put in before official patch releases. Finally, we will give you access to our private internal Discord chat server where you will be able to speak directly to the staff here at Animus Interactive and help shape the game even more with an insider's track.
So that's it for now, please stay tuned for more announcements on a variety of things we have coming up. As always please feel free to comment here or on our forums. If anybody has any issues or whatever, you can always email me directly. Especially if you have already purchased the game, please email me with your Steam name as well as your Dawn Rises gamer name.
We will be hosting a "townhall" type meeting for anybody who has questions or comments on our live stream tonight. Join us at 9pm EDT/6pm PDT on our Twitch channel at https://www.twitch.tv/animusinteractive
May your sword be quick and your shield be light. For Avalon!
Chris Schoolcraft (aka “Knightmare”)
Community Manager, Animus Interactive
[email protected]