To clarify where I'm coming from, and I think some of the skeptics are with me, you have to look at the events leading up to the KS and the early days of the Kickstarter. First off, almost two decades of questionable results from LB. Sure, his early work speaks for itself, but I'm not sure the same skills are required to make Ultima 1 on an Apple II and to make a great RPG in 2013. With the later games you have an argument, but LB wasn't the only major contributor to those projects. He, and much of fandom, act like they were still the one-man projects of his youth, but they simply weren't. Much of us are also skeptical about the team LB has around himself, but that's neither here nor there.
On top of this, LB's turn to social gaming with Ultimate Collector put a lot of people off. His "Ultimate RPG" blogpost is especially worrisome, as it's filled with horrible cliches like social gaming, microtransactions, and MMO elements.
They even announced that they had the money for this social, iOS ultimate RPG: 7 million dollars.
http://www.joystiq.com/2012/07/11/richard-garriotts-portalarium-secures-7-million-funding-for-io/
However, since this announcement, we haven't heard anything. Then, boom, suddenly the "ultimate RPG" comes back in Kickstarter form. It's still quite unclear exactly what happened.
Finally, the Kickstarter pitch itself focused largely on the multiplayer elements. Pay-to-own multiplayer housing took up a big portion of the initial pitch. In interviews, LB talked more about the multiplayer elements than anything else. In a recent interview, as pointed out before, they admitted to not even -thinking- about using NPCs to replace other people for certain tasks in SP.
The comments they made were also all over the place. At times, they'd say there could be room for offline singleplayer. At other times, they emphasized playing "solo" and suggested that there might not be a fully dedicated offline version. When they finally announced that there would be a fully dedicated offline version, they, -themselves-, called it a change and spoke of it as such. Heck, they still admit there won't be an ending per se. This was a game built top to bottom to be multiplayer but, in the shadow of the tepid response, they've retooled the game as something else.
Of course, I could be wrong. Here and there in the first few days they mentioned offline as being there. They say story and morality are important, although details are forthcoming. Sure, they cite the Ultimate RPG blogpost as important for this game, but that doesn't -have- to mean that they really meant it, at least for all aspects of the blogpost. Sure, LB has had some issues with games over the last 20 years, but maybe he just needs this to get back into it? Right? And while he wasn't the only person on board, surely he's surrounded himself with quality people? Portalarium may have only made Facebook games we'd all hate up to this point, but we can probably just assume they're all hardcore RPG fanatics and super talented. Right? Who cares that he spent millions to go to space and just won almost 30 million in court for a mediocre over-promised game? He probably needs that million just to prove uhh interest. Or something.
We can give him the benefit of the doubt on everything. LB says he is excited. He says it'll have a like totally epic singleplayer and everyone will love it. The multiplayer won't get in the way unless you want it to, and it won't direct resources away from singleplayer unless you want it to. Or something.
But not of us can simply give him the benefit of the doubt on every single issue, and I think the total picture is a little sketchy. Here's hoping I'm wrong. I'd love another great RPG on the market, and it looks like this will get the 1 million dollars it "needs".