If you had to describe this in a sentence or two, what would it be?
Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen - MMO on Kickstarter
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clicked the link and it didnt work then i noticed the date ha ha
am keeping my eye on it though i do like a good mmo !
am keeping my eye on it though i do like a good mmo !
Not sure what you mean, describe what the game is in a sentence or two? Um..I'd say ... An old-school EQ style MMO, high on socialising and high on group based content and the need to communicate with other players.
If you mean, describe my post in a sentence or two, I'd say.... An accurate assessment and prediction based upon the experiences of a player who has been in pre-alpha for the last 2 years
The first one.Not sure what you mean, describe what the game is in a sentence or two? Um..I'd say ... An old-school EQ style MMO, high on socialising and high on group based content and the need to communicate with other players.
If you mean, describe my post in a sentence or two, I'd say.... An accurate assessment and prediction based upon the experiences of a player who has been in pre-alpha for the last 2 years
I'm amazed after all the endless WoW clones (give or take) that somebody is (genuinely) trying to go back to the EQ mould, rather than just paying lip-service to EQ.
I'd be pleasantly surprised if they pulled it off. And if they succeeded.
ah, well in that case, yes...its very EQ like in terms of its mechanics and the aim of the game. Of course, MANY modern MMO'ers will have a multitude of complaints about it, so I'd expect lots of people moaning at release about slow levelling, the need to group, corpse runs, slower combat, xp death loss and so on, but they will have to accept that they are not the target userbase.
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i find communicating with people in an mmo very important it is an opportunity to get really into the role playing aspect of it
everquest was good for that
you can do it in wow too of course but i feel like it has got a lot more lonesome now
and when people do talk it is less role play ish
everquest was good for that
you can do it in wow too of course but i feel like it has got a lot more lonesome now
and when people do talk it is less role play ish
I think the key to communication in an MMO, is to force the players into it, make health and mana regen slow, so that there is forced downtime. In my time in MMOs, its the forced downtime while you regen health/mana, in games like Daoc, EQ etc, where your party would all have to sit down to regen and its that period of downtime where you would chat about stuff. In more modern MMOs, there is so little downtime because stuff regens so fast that grouping consists of "hi" and then kill kill kill kill kill kill and "cya". Thankfully as Pantheon is going with the more EQlike model of very slow regen times meaning that you all have to sit and rest between pulls, you get that opportunity to chat/communicate/bond with the people you are grouped with. Which all helps to meet folks of a like mind which in turn creates stronger, more cohesive guilds
Forced downtime is a terrible idea people will just alt tab > youtube or go afk until the party is ready
get rid of the fast travel nonsense and you probably see chat go up a lot as well as the world seeming more alive
most people join a group, do a dungeon run, leave the group.
never having spoken a word you might as well be playing with bots
there was a time you were relying on making ingame friends to have people to do content with now in games like wow you don't even need to play with people on your own server. where's the fun in that
get rid of the fast travel nonsense and you probably see chat go up a lot as well as the world seeming more alive
group finder/dungeon finder killed most interaction imo.
most people join a group, do a dungeon run, leave the group.
never having spoken a word you might as well be playing with bots
there was a time you were relying on making ingame friends to have people to do content with now in games like wow you don't even need to play with people on your own server. where's the fun in that
That says a lot about the modern gamer really doesnt it. Back in the days of EQ and Daoc, during forced downtime we chatted. We didnt youtube or go afk, we talked about all manner of stuff with members of the groups but then again gamers back then were a slightly different breed and didnt require instant gratification I guess. Irrespective of all that, Pantheon is going to have the slow health/mana regen of the EQ style, so sitting down between fights will be expected and so far people are fine with that, the unwashed masses will no doubt complain about it (along with complaining about corpse runs, slow xp gain, dying to equal con mobs, having to group to level up, xp loss on death and a multitude of other things that the modern MMO'er wont be used to) but as I say, they will have to understand that its not an MMO for them
For me that is only part of the story.
The gameplay mechanics are important, no doubt, but EQ really hooked me with the intrigue, mystery, and almost overwhelming (as a newb) depth. Being placed into a world where nothing was handed to the player on a plate and everything was learned by exploration in a fairly natural manner. Hailing NPCs, reading in-game books, even just following an NPC around and picking up things they dropped! It wasn't perfect, and some times you just had to feed items to NPCs (who kept them) almost at random, to see who wanted what. But mostly it was like a giant puzzle that the player could solve.
Of course then we all started looking things up on 'Zam, rather than finding stuff out in game. Which again says something about the players tbh. There is a natural tendency to try to optimise reward rather than enjoying the experience naturally and sub-optimally wrt time.
It's an interesting problem, but one thing is for sure, there is an opportunity to engage players once again who simply aren't interested in any of the modern, post-WoW quick/fast/now-now-now models of arcade-like, theme-park MMOs.
There is a market for a more traditional RPG experience in an MMO.
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Even loyal backers starting to lose faith in this ever being a successful game or even actually being released properly!
Not me, I backed it to the sum of £1000 and have thoroughly enjoyed Pre-Alpha. Its more likely that those who have lost faith didnt have much faith in the first place.
EQ was based on MUD games.
Old school D&D.
Hard, slow and rewarding.
Then people desired content, solo instead of group centric, chatting, plan, working together.
Now we got world of warcraft.
with a bunch of people that wanted instant stuff.
This game follows the same formula for EQ and MUD games.
Brad that died recently was a big fan of those.
Is it going to be successful?
Its likely to be a niche game as if you dont offer instant gratification content people simply wade to those games.
Graphically it looks dated if you asks me.
Old school D&D.
Hard, slow and rewarding.
Then people desired content, solo instead of group centric, chatting, plan, working together.
Now we got world of warcraft.
with a bunch of people that wanted instant stuff.
This game follows the same formula for EQ and MUD games.
Brad that died recently was a big fan of those.
Is it going to be successful?
Its likely to be a niche game as if you dont offer instant gratification content people simply wade to those games.
Graphically it looks dated if you asks me.
Its definitely going to be a niche game, the majority of gamers today want stuff fast, most will not like the slower pacing, most will not like that its nigh on impossible to level without grouping unless you want to go even slower. Most wont like the emphasis on the social side, increasingly in MMOs players want to be able to do stuff and not have to talk to anyone. Most wont like the harsher death penalties and so on and so on. However, a game can be niche and still be successful. A game doesnt need millions to be successful of course, the gaming industry is littered with games which are both niche and a success.
I'd agree that the graphics are comparatively dated and will be more so by the time it releases, though again, you only have to look at the undisputed game of 2021 so far, Valheim, to see that you dont need state of the art graphics for a game to be good (you can add Factorio, Stardew Valley, Terraria and others as examples of how good a game can be and have dated graphics). There are many who still play EQ1 or Project Gorgon because of their depth of play even with decades old graphics.
The largest issue Pantheon will have is that people are screaming out for a new MMO and a lot of people would buy Pantheon when its released purely because its a new MMO. Unfortunately a lot of those people are people who the game simply is not aimed for, but instead of them understanding and recognising that its not aimed at them they will instead sprint to the nearest forum/youtube video and slate the game. So there will be a lot of negative press from vegans who have bought a burger and then complained that its got meat in it. Weathering that initial bad press without kowtowing to their wants , will be the largest initial hurdle.
I've been in the prealpha for Pantheon for 4 years, I'm still confident
Would be interested to know why you think it will never release and why you think it would be exploited, thats perhaps for another thread though.
There's various reason why I don't think it will ever release. The main reason is just the glacial pace of development, it's been 7 years since the failed Kickstarter - 6 since they announced they were able to start properly after the cash injection in 2015 and all they have to show for it is a couple of half completed zones and a few reskinned dungeons. The gfx looked outdated when they reannounced in 2015 and with the like of New World and Ashes of Creation they look even worse. Yes I know graphics aren't the be all and end all of a mmo but even the animations look off, very static and they don't look like they have any weight behind them - the combat animations in Ashes for example look 'floaty' if you know what I mean. Speaking of Ashes, considering they announced around the same time as Pantheon they appear to be years ahead of where Pantheon should be (Ashes themselves are a good 2 years off of release judging from their alpha test/recent streams and previous mmo alphas/and a 6-7 year announcement to release schedule). Pantheon feels a good 5 plus years out from any sort of meaningful alpha, a good 7 years from a decent release... slightly hyperbolic maybe but then again maybe not.
I see your hopeful of this as you want a slower, more group centric mmo, from what I've seen I think that's probably new world, the levelling seems far more chill and relaxing than other mmo's and I don't feel the class design/pve design lends itself to the faster paced MMOs like WoW for example and what dungeons I have seen from the odd streamer they look very limited, i.e very old school.
Personally I get a poor man's Vanguard feel from what I've seen of Pantheon, and we all know how ****** that was in the initial release phase, bugs galore, rampant item duping and a **** poorly optimised game engine. Speaking of which, I see Pantheon has gone for a heavily modded version of Unity, from memory there are some serious guestion marks around how well unity can handle large server loads etc. They should have gone for unreal 4 with the potential to port to unreal 5.
I admit it can be hard to judge 'kickstarted' MMOs which is why I'm trying to compare to Ashes of Creation (AoC will always be Age of Conan to me) mainly and not New World.
Do you think the fact you threw a grand at this 4 years ago clouds your judgement a bit? It feels a bit, let's get the barebones out there and hope a bigger dev house buys it off us. Unfortunately, smedly has gone to Amazon games and they have their hands full with New World.
Edit - apologies if I jumped around a little bit, on my phone and god damn it's annoying posting anything more than a paragraph on them.
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I've played both Pantheon and New World and they are leagues apart in this respect. Pantheon is way way more slow and group focused than New World (in Pantheon you can barely kill 1 even level mob solo meaning that you really need to group from virtually level 1). In New World you can slap in 20 hours and be level 30, in Pantheon you can slap in 20 hours and maybe just about be level 6
No, absolutely not, a grand is just a drop in the ocean to me so I feel no loyalty due to that, on top of that I have already had a lot of play out of that money.
It may release, it may not, but one thing I can assure you of is this. What the general public is seeing/has seen of Pantheon , is much less than what we've seen in pre-alpha so far. Pantheon is 100% the spiritual successor to EQ, its so EQ like that it is literally THE most old school MMO on the horizon. New World is frankly, imo, an utterly terrible MMO in its current state. Its lacking so much that I would require to be in an MMO that its more like playing Ark or Conan Exiles than an MMO. As it stands currently I wouldnt touch New World with the proverbial ten foot pole. Perhaps in time, one day, IF Amazon flesh the game out, it will be a worthwhile MMO, it has the foundations there but nothing more.
Pantheon on the other hand delivers what I want in an MMO , in almost every way, a modernised, graphically updated Everquest. Truth is that Pantheon is my final last hope for the MMO genre, a last shot at returning to the glory days of MMOs before the whole MMO market got dumbed down for the masses.
I'm not playing new world either, and as someone that's picked up every mmo at launch bar aion I would love to be able to sink myself in a decent one again, same reasons as yourself it's not what I would call an mmo.
Do you think they would have been better off just buying the eq franchise and just updating it graphically, and adding a few modern elements - I'm talking quests/expansion storytelling and just letting folks have fun in the world? For me that would probably be more of a financial success.
Do you think they would have been better off just buying the eq franchise and just updating it graphically, and adding a few modern elements - I'm talking quests/expansion storytelling and just letting folks have fun in the world? For me that would probably be more of a financial success.
I think the only problem there would be that the people who are looking desperately for an old school MMO like EQ will have probably played EQ and a remastered EQ would mean doing the same dungeons, zones and quests that they are already familiar with. Pantheon is as close as you can get to EQ without being EQ, which means you get that old school MMO vibe but with all new zones, dungeons and quests.
Dont get me wrong, I dont expect Pantheon to be a big financial success anyway because I dont think most modern MMOers will tolerate Pantheon, the combat will be too slow for them, the need to group and more importantly the need to actually socialise with other players instead of just going around in silence barely speaking to anyone outside of your group will be something they dont like, they wont like the fact that your dungeons are shared with other groups and not instanced and they really really wont like the fact that you lose xp when you die, meaning that you can actually end a play session with less level than you started with. It will likely be a comparatively small number of players who specifically like that old style of MMO, the bottom line is that Pantheon simply is not aimed at the average modern MMOer and I fully expect A LOT of negative reviews from many "newer" MMOers when it releases
The old school mmo players that loved eq are now mid to late 40's with limited playtime, I think even those types won't be that impressed with older mmo mechanics anymore.
I'd also add that xp loss mechanics are hugely overblown, in eq you'd have a cleric with a 96% XP Res in your group or have multiple in your friend list, hell I rocked a necro alt in addition to a cleric for the complete corpse summon and rez experience.