Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen

[Halicia]

It's got a comparatively small budget and will likely have low operating costs due to the small team.

And so long as its targeting a niche that WON'T be successful on a AAA scale, it will attract a certain playerbase that can't be satisfied by AAA products.

Reading thru the keywords a lot of this sounds "interesting". Group oriented grind is... fun for me in a way that Raiding and PvP just isn't.

Like any MMO in development though, I won't hold my breath until its launched in a playable state. No point "eagerly anticipating" a product that never sees the light of day.

[Black Rider]

Graphics sucks.
Especially animations, what the hell was that?!

[Edge-]

Graphics sucks.
Especially animations, what the hell was that?!

Pre-alpha for a low budget MMO. You know, an unfinished game that's still in deep development and not only nowhere near working with finalized art assets, but also with nowhere near the budget for AAA quality art assets.

[Enitzu]

Graphics sucks.
Especially animations, what the hell was that?!

Pretty sure it's been said like what 50 times in this thread ... Pre Alpha. Which means in progress, mostly placeholder, animations and graphics for the most part. If you go back and look at pre alpha footage of say CU, it's 100 times worse than this.

People need to stop looking at games in development as if it's the final product. If this was a beta, sure i'd agree its unfinished. But their last stream looked really good for a game that hasn't let even a first round of testers in yet. Still have over a year left of development for this so graphics, animations, and all will improve drastically.

As for the 'times have changed' peeps ... think you're all going to be in for a shock on this one. There's over 10k actively watching every stream they do and going by the last stream chat ... over whelmingly positive which is highly unusual for any in development game. It will be a niche game for sure as not everyone wants to actually have to use their brain to play a game but it will easily succeed.

[Netherspark]

The weather/climate system sounds cool. Everything else just seems like a generic obnoxious MMO though.

[Cattleya]

As for the 'times have changed' peeps ... think you're all going to be in for a shock on this one. There's over 10k actively watching every stream they do and going by the last stream chat ... over whelmingly positive which is highly unusual for any in development game.

All other points aside, the quoted part is basically because it's a Cohh stream.

[Nmkyungri]

All other points aside, the quoted part is basically because it's a Cohh stream.

Cohh is an sellout, no sense in getting any good gaming news from him. He literally changed his persona to a kid friendly stream when all he did is cuss in the past and rage. Not to mention he has awful opinions on good games.

[Gorsameth]

Cohh is an sellout, no sense in getting any good gaming news from him. He literally changed his persona to a kid friendly stream when all he did is cuss in the past and rage. Not to mention he has awful opinions on good games.

You can disagree with his opinion all you want but how is not cursing and raging 24/7 'selling out'?
Most people would call it 'growing up'.

[Nmkyungri]

You can disagree with his opinion all you want but how is not cursing and raging 24/7 'selling out'?
Most people would call it 'growing up'.

Because he literally changed his persona and his stream for views...He wasn't like that at all then he changed it, when he beta tested ff14 ARR years ago he wasn't the way he was now, he also had less views. He literally is a sellout.

I have no problem with him not doing it but now his chat has to be 100% kid friendly which was also not the case before, toxic people got banned and so did racist statements, but not the way it is now.

[Lazuli]

Graphics are terrible wtf strait outta 2003 yo garbage game

Really though that last stream it looks like they are making nice progress, already a bump in quality. I suspect this had something to do with people not understanding they are watching an pre-alpha test so they wanted it prettier lol.

If you want to see the difference between an alpha and a complete game check out the original Guild Wars alpha then look what it is today. They are literally 2 completely different art forms. It looked like WoW at first, makes sense since they were Blizz devs.

[Tonden]

I played EQ1 from May of 1999 until sometime in 2005, so for about 6 years and I really loved the classic game and the first two expansions, however after that the game took a different turn for me. I wasn't a fan of going to the moon or the porting around the world using book.

All that said I would love to play Pantheon. I'm an old school MMORPG fan and I can't stand all these supper hero single player mmorpg's of today. I can't stand easy mode, I never have. Which is also why I never owned a game genie, but that is another story.

A lot of you are right in that a lot of people will not like this game. Shoot I have five kids who love playing WoW, GW2, and some other easy fun kiddie mmorpgs, but they will not like Pantheon, while old Dad will love it. Its all about what you like, some people like hard physical work while other want to sit behind a desk and not get their hands dirty. All I am say is that there are different kinds of people who like and enjoy different things.

Long story short this is a game for " Me " :-)

[Lazuli]

This game isn't trying to be popular, or a WoW killer. Like Tonden said this is a game for people who are bored of the faceroll single player games disguised as MMOs.

In that alone it will be successful, maybe not very popular but it already has a TON of backing and we fully understand what kind of game it will be.

A true successor of the MMO's of old before everything went ez mode, not some Wildstar wannabe mix of GW2 and WoW.

This is a team game where you depend on your fellow players.

[Elim Garak]

This game isn't trying to be popular, or a WoW killer. Like Tonden said this is a game for people who are bored of the faceroll single player games disguised as MMOs.

Ah yeah, an even more hardcore MMO than Wildstar tried to be, and even less marketing. GOOD LUCK.

[Lazuli]

Ah yeah, an even more hardcore MMO than Wildstar tried to be, and even less marketing. GOOD LUCK.

It's almost like you completely ignored the post you quoted. *mind blown*

Here, I'll help you.

This game isn't trying to be popular, or a WoW killer.

PS: it's already successful, if you did even minor research instead of being yet another typical uninformed hater you would already know that.

It's literally being designed to cater to a niche crowd, Wildstar was garbage because it TRIED to be the next WoW.

And no, it's not even more hardcore than Wildstar, in fact it's completely different, it's much more similar to Everquest.

I love how idiots instantly deem a game a fail if it doesn't have WoW-level sub numbers or whatever ridiculous metric they can cook up in their little brains.

[Elim Garak]

It's almost like you completely ignored the post you quoted. *mind blown*

Here, I'll help you.

This game isn't trying to be popular, or a WoW killer.

It looks like you completely ignored the post you quoted *mind exploded*

Wildstar was not trying to be popular or WoW killer either. But they had way better graphics though and an interesting setting. Didn't help them a tiny bit.

- - - Updated - - -

I love how idiots instantly deem a game a fail if it doesn't have WoW-level sub numbers or whatever ridiculous metric they can cook up in their little brains.

If you define success as "some small amount of people will play it and developers will be ok with such turn of events" then yes it will be a success! lol.

[Ickz]

I appreciate any MMO that is trying to do something different these days. We are definitely in need of a game that is challenging and rewarding. However, from what I've read and seen during some of the livestreams for Pantheon, I don't think it'll succeed. I appreciate they're trying to go back in time to the early MMO/EQ 1999 days, but they're going far too hardcore with it. I believe the only players that will end up sticking around with the game will pretty much be the fairly small population of people playing EQ1999 and whatnot. The problem with being a super niche game, especially in a content-driven genre such a PvE MMO, is that the developers need money to pay their employees to make said content. If there is a super small playerbase, this becomes an issue and updates will take longer and longer to make, and be fewer and far between - if the game is even sustainable at that point.

It's an extremely odd decision to only cater to a few certain oldschool gameplay types - ie: camp and world dungeon grinding. Like I said, there's a huge opportunity right now to make a game that is challenging, but still a little more "casual"-friendly - you know, letting you actually be able to solo and not have to sit around looking for groups to go out and camp mob spawns for hours to level, or having some other form of content you can do to level up such as dynamic events or something. I'm not saying this should be the preferred method - it's fine if grouping/socializing is the best form of leveling - but to actually make other forms of gameplay not even feasible to do is just stupid. I see fans of the game defending the developers and saying things like "Well, it sounds like it's not a game for you!", "Go back to WoW!", "You don't need a lot of players to be successful!" - this is fine and all, but I'm not sure if they realize this type of attitude is what will eventually kill their game and then they'll have nothing.

I played EQ, DAoC, and Anarchy Online back in the day - all "oldschool" MMOs. I enjoyed them at the time and they were challenging and rewarding. DAoC remains my favorite game of all time. A popular private server recently launched for it that offered a true "oldschool, classic" experience, just like how it was back in it's glory days. Me and thousands of other fans were excited to play it and relive our favorite game. I quit after two weeks - so did thousands of others. The server is dead now. It had nothing to do with the server's operation or anything, it's just that the game was way too time-consuming and casual-unfriendly for our current tastes/lives now. The "hardcore" people that remain playing are now stuck with a dead game with very little people to play with. This is exactly what I see happening with Pantheon with their current design direction.

[Tonden]

WoW had what over 12 million subs at one point or something like that. Which is why a lot of companies feel that WoW was very successful.

That said EverQuest 1 never reached one million, at its peek it only had around 550,000 (it may have had as high as 700,000 max). The point is until WoW came along companies felt that EQ1 was very successful which is why Blizzard made an MMORPG (WoW) to get in on the market.

Still to this very day people are paying to play EQ1, a lot of them are paying to play on servers that have taken the game back to the old days.

Then you have Project 1999 which is a private server that has around 1200 player on it daily, there are more people then that who play it , this is just what is online at one given time. I believe at one point it had around 2000, all for a server that has an end, because they aren't going past the 2nd expansion. Plus they are always kicking people off the server for braking the rules.

The point is that there are a lot of people who want a game like this. No it may not be in the millions, but then again it doesn't have to be in the millions in order to still make money. They just won't be making the kind of money WoW is making, but then again one other MMORPG is?

[Tonden]

Yes WoW has had over 12 million accounts at one time. But this is not the norm for MMORPGs and you don't have to have those kinds of numbers to make money.

EQ1 was around before WoW and blizzard seen that you could make money with an MMORPG because they seen how well EQ1 was doing. That said at EQ1 peek it only had some where over 500,000 accounts at one time. So it was no where near what WoW went on to be. However most people felt that EQ1 was an successful game.

Oh and there was also DAoC MMORPG that was doing well but didn't have as may people playing as EQ1 did. That said they were still successful and made money.

DAoC was more for your PVPers while EQ1 was more for your PVE Raiders.

Now there are people who are still paying to play EQ1 to this very day. That said there are even a few servers that they are paying to play on that has taken the game back to more like it was in the old days.

Then there are private servers like Project1999 that thousands of people play on to get that old school MMORPG feel that they are looking for.

Long story short there are a lot of people out there looking for this kind of game. Now is there millions?, Probably not, but I do feel there is enough people out there that would pay to play a game like this that it could be successful on a much lower scale.

This game doesn't need to make more money then WoW to be successful.

[stellvia]

There is certainly some level of development cost where the game can be successful even if it only had say, 50-100k subs. Especially if their goal is group-oriented dungeoneering. Even then, EQ1 continues to push out expansion packs with group and raid content. (Believe they're on the 24th expansion) No idea if they'll manage to hit that sweetspot, but the game could be profitable. Not everything has to shoot for 3rd graders thru brosefs as the target demo.

DAOC peaked at about half the subs of EQ1 afaik. 250k vs 550k.

[Anon56]

There is definitely a niche for this kind of game but McQuaid is not the guy who will be able to deliver it.