Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO

Tyen said:

He was, accomplished nothing, got stock, then quit because he wasnt getting a free handout.

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Denaut said:

The SOE deal gave the game more time, not less. It might not have even come out without it.

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No "maybe" about it. Without SOE, we wouldn't have launched at all.

Korrupt said:

Look at who it is, GD Sillius. Im surprised you aren't on this dev team.

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You have me confused with someone else but have at it, I guess!

Wasn't Cylus some QA tester that was promoted to designer at Sigil? It's hard to remember 10 years ago.

Silius would never post here I don't think, the entire VG community despised him by the end.

Pantheon bringing devs to the conversation. The magic of these threads never ceases to amaze me.

Melvin said:

So you're saying that Vanguard before SOE was a god awful unfinished fucking mess, and after Microsoft scuttled it to cut their losses the people at SOE managed to polish that turd into something that kind of somewhat resembled a commercially viable game?

Again: no shit Sherlock.

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Nice revisionist history. No, dumbass, the game launched as an unfinished fucking mess. Only now it was an unfinished fucking mess with more content, that played very differently, and which 95% of the people who were looking forward to Vanguard abandoned within 3 months, if they could play it at all. That wasn't just about the game-breaking bugs, but the fact that already back in 2007, people were tired of the linear quest grind, fast travelling, ez mode bullshit. If people wanted that, they had other more polished games like WoW and EQ2 to play.

Would it have failed either way, sure. At least if they didn't compromise they could have failed with style. As it turned out, it was "just another mmo" that played like the rest, and wasn't even as interesting as the unfinished version from beta.

Skanda said:

This game will be the Mass Effect: Andromeda of MMOs, only without the tens of millions of dollars for a budget.

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This is the way I feel about it. With no Sorjourn to rip off, this game will be a dumpster fire of the highest magnitude. Complete with lore made out of fan fiction sounding like it came straight outta a thirteen year old's mouth.

If you're good with that, you're good to go. I suppose there is something on the net for everyone. I suppose that's true. Just don't expect it to be like google and soar. It'll be lucky if it flops after two feet.

Yes because we all know that lore is the biggest reason people play MMOs.

Anyway, you're saying EQ was a complete rip off of Sojourn? Okay. I didn't play Sojourn but if you did, I'll take your word for it that it was. I guess that leads me to believe that Pantheon will simply be a complete rip off of EQ then.

Only, that's just it. A re-skin of EQ with updated art and graphics is exactly what many in this thread want. Fuck dude. I'll even take some of the broken/unintended mechanics that EQ had at launch too. Because that's how some of the most innovative gameplay techniques missing from today's MMOs captured people's interest in the first place.

I don't recall anyone stating they were expecting this game to "be like Google and soar". Lol. But to stay with your analogy, there are thousands upon thousands of other companies in the world not named Google that are very successful. Knowing your target audience/market probably plays a role in their success too.

Vinjin said:

A re-skin of EQ with updated art and graphics is exactly what many in this thread want.

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You do realize that Pantheon will not be just a "reskinned EQ", right?

Skanda said:

You do realize that Pantheon will not be just a "reskinned EQ", right?

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I was waiting for someone to say this. Didn't think it would be you. You're better than that.

Pantheon is the closest thing to a reskinned EQ the world will ever see. Certainly moreso than EQ2 ever was and I maintain even moreso than Vanguard. On the heels of his success with EQ, Brad's original vision for VG was "same as EQ but bigger and better". Some continue to debate the reasons why the game failed even to this day (see posts above) but the bottom line is, we all know how that turned out.

Players have been clamoring for a reskinned EQ for years and Brad knows it. There's no money in a literal reskin of a 20 year old game but there certainly appears to be in a spiritual successor that largely adheres to the original game in design and gameplay. Use today's tech (i.e. Unity) to build and design around a specific target market, add some new twists (perception, atmospheric influence, etc) and you have your successor.

No one here (that I've seen) is projecting this to be a 1M or even a 500K subs game. Hell, it may not even hit 200K subs. I do think 50-100K is more than a realistic possibility depending on how the rest of development goes as well as advertising and a solid launch (none of which are givens at this point). Assuming a $12-13/mo sub, that translates into $650K-1M in revenue per month for the company. Given the declining costs of maintaining server infrastructure relative to what they were 10 years ago plus payroll, publishing costs, other expenses, etc, and it hardly qualifies as a "dumpster fire of the highest magnitude".

P99 has like 1500 people online when I play.

It's more than enough to always find a group.

As long as they can find enough subs to stay afloat/profit, who cares? People act like it's WoW success or bust.

Vinjin said:

I was waiting for someone to say this. Didn't think it would be you. You're better than that.

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Have you even paid attention? I fucking hate this project with every hair on my penis shaft but even I know they are talking about including a bunch of those reviled features you has-beens can't stand.

tyen said:

EQbrowser is technically the closest thing youll ever see to a reskinned EQ dawg, as the serverside(eqemu) gameplay is an exact representation to eq gameplay.

Plus its open source so anyone could do whatever they want with it

jus sayin

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What is the eta on EQ browser?

I predict ~50k users in the first month and a drop to about 10k stable as time goes on until it inevitably dies

assuming it ever finishes

Brikker said:

I predict ~50k users in the first month and a drop to about 10k stable as time goes on until it inevitably dies

assuming it ever finishes

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That's fair. But I'm curious why? Do you believe it's more about them releasing a shitty game (I.e., critical bugs, shitty launch, unfinished content like VG) or more that there isn't a large enough audience that will continue to play/support it long term regardless of how good it is?

Vinjin said:

That's fair. But I'm curious why? Do you believe it's more about them releasing a shitty game (I.e., critical bugs, shitty launch, unfinished content like VG) or more that there isn't a large enough audience that will continue to play/support it long term regardless of how good it is?

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an indie game from a developer with an infamous past and a genre that, simply put, not many people are interested in.