Richard Garriott’s Shroud of the Avatar will see a second open period on January 22nd and will open up permanently in March. In the meantime, it’s crossed another Kickstarter milestone with $3 million in crowd-funding.

Writing in the latest update, Garriott stated that, “Shroud of the Avatar has crossed the $3M milestone thanks to your generous support. The team and I would like to express our deepest gratitude to all of our Backers for your belief in both our team and our vision for New Britannia.”

As of now, Shroud of the Avatar will be exclusive to the PC and will incorporate a shared worlds approach as opposed to being a massively multiplayer online RPG. More importantly, it will be the spiritual successor to the Ultima series and hopefully wiping away the horrible mess that was Ultima IX: Ascension.

Will you be participating in the open release period on January 22nd? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

You guys remember Richard Garriot? You know, the guy who created the Ultima series of video games. The guy who created role playing games as a video game genre, the guy who went on to inspire future RPG franchises like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Baldur’s Gate? You remember him? Well, the grand daddy of role playing games is returning. Bye bye Bioware, Bethesda, Blizzard.

Check out the newest trailer for his upcoming project Shroud of the Avatar if you don’t believe me. The game, due for release in Q4 2014 on Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux, looks awesome. Somehow, Garriot seems to be taking a rather tired and generic, cliched setting, especially in context of the genre, and he seems to be making it interesting.

Shroud of the Avatar is due late next year. Stay tuned to GamingBolt, because you bet we’ll have more coverage for you on this game as and when it’s made available.