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

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Noble Savage

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This is all academic until they find full funding or a publisher. My question would be how close they are to doing either of those things.

Do they need either at this point? Whatever funding source they have now seems to be moving them along at a pace where things are getting done. It would obviously help to move things along if they could quadruple their team size. Is that the goal at this point? Also the game seems to be getting some hype as of late, would they need a publisher to actually release the game? I don't know shit about what it takes to release a game in the industry so these are legit questions.
 
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Raponchi

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Lazy to search. Will there be shiny collections in Panth? I hpoe so, nice xp boost and sometimes an ok item/clicky/consumable.

P.s i know of them from EQ2, and generally a fun waste of time when nothing else to do. BUt when they added some of them to complete raid zones i thought that was a dumb mechanic just for the sake of having it. Looking at you AKHN runes in sinking sands for the raid boss skelly in the sewers.

And class shinies that could only be see by some tradecrafters. Fuck that shit. I pay the same. Let me have that content. Hated that shit. And no fuck leveling a tinker/carpenter.

I'm not talking leet loots here, that should be something to work for as a guild. Shinies, not so much. I'm talking shinies which was mostly fluff you dont needed a raid to find them and the devs lock a big part of it in epic raids and
for max level tinkerers/carpenters etc. Was lame as fuck. Was addicted to shinies
 
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yamikazo

Trakanon Raider
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Do they need either at this point? Whatever funding source they have now seems to be moving them along at a pace where things are getting done. It would obviously help to move things along if they could quadruple their team size. Is that the goal at this point? Also the game seems to be getting some hype as of late, would they need a publisher to actually release the game? I don't know shit about what it takes to release a game in the industry so these are legit questions.

We don't know because they don't tell us.

Maybe their current angel investor said, "I'm willing to bankroll $200k/mo towards payroll, plus whatever incidentals along with a team that size, for as long as you need to get this done." Maybe their deal is for a time limit (until 2019), perhaps it's leading up to a landmark (until beta).

We know nothing about their funding.

According to Zaide, they seem to have a team of at least 22 (he listed 20, plus Brad & their CEO makes 22). Maybe some of those 20 aren't getting paid, perhaps some are sub-contractors, they could all be working together in the San Diego office with full benefits, we have no clue.

For a crowd-sourced project we don't know how much cash on hand they have or how much they're spending or how much they're raising (from people spending $10,000 for a designer to listen to their ideas for a dungeon).

They may need a publisher, they may opt to self-publish. It's likely a decision they don't need to come to anytime soon.
 
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Noble Savage

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Brad shouldn't be allowed to talk, Just Joppa. Brad is the typical management layer that has no idea what he is talking about and usually ends up giving the wrong answer that Joppa needs to correct lol.
 
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Zaide

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Rofl at Brad just saying some random ass shit that has to be immediately corrected by Chris.
 
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Zaide

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According to Zaide, they seem to have a team of at least 22 (he listed 20, plus Brad & their CEO makes 22). Maybe some of those 20 aren't getting paid, perhaps some are sub-contractors, they could all be working together in the San Diego office with full benefits, we have no clue.

For a crowd-sourced project we don't know how much cash on hand they have or how much they're spending or how much they're raising (from people spending $10,000 for a designer to listen to their ideas for a dungeon).

They may need a publisher, they may opt to self-publish. It's likely a decision they don't need to come to anytime soon.

The full team is at or just over 30, I didnt count the community managers, PR, website development folks in my list earlier.
 

Khane

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Why the fuck do they have "website development folks"? They have a blurb's worth of updates once a quarter.
 
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etchazz

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Why the fuck do they have "website development folks"? They have a blurb's worth of updates once a quarter.

What part of "this is gonna rock" do you not understand? Obviously, once it's rocking, they will need an entire team to keep the website up and running.
 
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yamikazo

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Why the fuck do they have "website development folks"? They have a blurb's worth of updates once a quarter.

Presumably it's some "apprentice dev" who paid for the privilege. They aren't paying someone a full time salary with benefits to do their website.

The amount of people doing work on the game that command reasonable compensation isn't the same as the amount of people with their hands in the cookie jar. Just ask Convo Convo – what has he done to make the game?
 

Zaide

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The non-dev team is as follows:


Writers
  • Justin Gerhart - Lead Writer
Marketing & Public Relations
  • Benjamin Dean - Director of Communications
  • Elicia Basoli - Marketing Communications Consultant
  • David Schlow - Producer of Promotional Content
Community Managers
  • Ben Walters - Community and Web Manager, Lead Moderator
  • Jason Bolton - Associate Community and Web Manager
Customer Service
  • Michael Butler - Customer Service Manager
  • Jason Bolton
Web Design
  • Jacob Tyler
  • Aaron Thomas - Web Programmer
  • Jake Williams - Web Programmer
As to what many of them actually do, it's hard to say.
 

yamikazo

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Yeah, 3 web designers is suspect. At least their marketing team lists one person as a consultant, because if they're paying people real dollars to work 40 hours a week on marketing that's a gross waste of payroll. Two community people is double what EQ had. Customer service paying two people.

Also, props for hiring two guys names Jason Bolton. That's impressive.
 
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Hekotat

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Brahma Brahma

If we don't get our invites by September we storm the office with Nerf guns and light sabers.
 
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tyen

EQ in a browser wait time: ____
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You have to keep rotating free employees. Only last for so long
 
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yamikazo

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Why do they have customer service when they have no customers

Donators are people, too.

CSR for an MMO deals with a lot of playerbase issues, not just about money. A good customer support team/person could save Pantheon a lot of dev time (which is much more expensive and distracting). Think of all the bug reports they're getting in pre-alpha (or perhaps aren't getting, because people want to keep their secret info so they can be the first to level up and win the race to #1 guild) – if they have someone flagging these correctly so it goes to the desk of the correct person to fix it, checking them for reproducibility, they're productive, and this person isn't paid much compared to a dev, this helps the team get work done on time and on budget.
 
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orionTZ1998

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How do the die-hard supporters of this game - people who, from what I've seen, eschew games using "pay-to-win" mechanics and want everything to be "earned" - reconcile those beliefs with the fact that paying hundreds (thousands?) of dollars to receive early access to the game is one of the most egregious examples of pay-to-win we've seen thus far? Is your server first dragon kill still "earned" if you had to pay $500 and spend hundreds of hours in beta to develop the strategy to do it?
 
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Siliconemelons

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It's reconciled with, 500$ didn't give them a sword of dragon slaying item that one shots Naggy the Fallen, they still had to "earn" it "in game" with "normal" in game content accessible (later!) To everyone.
 
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