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

Erronius

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It's about time for Utnayan Utnayan to drop the final F16 strike on the Visionary Realms bunker and finish them off for good.
 
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Gask

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tenor.gif
 

Pharone

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The worst part about this whole thing is that the likelihood of an EverQuest-Like MMORPG being developed post WoW will likely die with Pantheon. And, don't get me wrong here. Pantheon just plain never had that good of odds of ever releasing in a state that would have saved the genre, but it had at least SOME glimpse of hope to enlightening a new generation of developers to see what the genre is missing and hopefully make something worth playing later on down the road.

With the inevitable failure of Pantheon coming, there will most likely be no further tripple A MMORPG efforts made towards an EverQuest-like game. History has proven to the people with the purse strings that micro transaction laden MMOs with no long term potential can make them billions of dollars (especially in the mobile market), and they can push those dung heap products out easily every year. On the other hand, if companies put a hundred million+ dollars in to a triple A MMORPG designed to last a decade or more with expansions, they just don't make as much profit compared to effort and money put in to the game development.

A company has to have passion to make a MMORPG for the players rather than for the profit, and that's not going to happen too often. Sad that Brad wasted two opportunities to do just that in Vanguard (funded by Microsoft) and Pantheon (funded by his fans). Nothing left to do at this point other than hope a young bed room developer passionate about RPGs spends his college years developing a game in his spare time.
 

dizzie

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Wonder how much money they've burned through to this point. It must be quite a bit. This shit's been going on years, even if Brad was taking a modest (for Brad) 50k a year that's 300k over 6 years. Pennies quickly turn into pounds when you add it all up, this must have had a couple of million invested in it already.

great-idea.gif
 
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Neranja

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Sad that Brad wasted two opportunities to do just that in Vanguard (funded by Microsoft) and Pantheon (funded by his fans).
I think Brads biggest problem is that his reality distortion field didn't work as well as Steve Jobs', and I think his "vision" was always at odds with the technical limitations. Didn't the original graphics engine developer for EverQuest quit shortly before release and his replacement quit after just two weeks?

Well, if you extrapolate a bit Brad went to develop Vanguard because he ultimately wanted to call the shots, and he felt that no one at SOE recognized the potential of his ideas. My assumption is that it led to something like the "George Lucas Effect", where he was basically surrounded with Yes Men and sycophants. Hence the godawul implementation of a seamless open world in an engine that wasn't really built for it, because they optimized the game for "you can really see far into the distance", in what I assume was a ploy to have cool screenshots for the box and marketing.

The worst part about this whole thing is that the likelihood of an EverQuest-Like MMORPG being developed post WoW will likely die with Pantheon.
It wasn't just that Blizzard killed the MMORPG genre with WoW, it was the tremendous success of WoW that led other developers to shoehorn their games into an always online, RPG-like mechanics, grind/dailies, microtransaction and season-pass heavy business model.
 
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Mat'hir Uth Gan

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The worst part about this whole thing is that the likelihood of an EverQuest-Like MMORPG being developed post WoW will likely die with Pantheon. And, don't get me wrong here. Pantheon just plain never had that good of odds of ever releasing in a state that would have saved the genre, but it had at least SOME glimpse of hope to enlightening a new generation of developers to see what the genre is missing and hopefully make something worth playing later on down the road.

With the inevitable failure of Pantheon coming, there will most likely be no further tripple A MMORPG efforts made towards an EverQuest-like game. History has proven to the people with the purse strings that micro transaction laden MMOs with no long term potential can make them billions of dollars (especially in the mobile market), and they can push those dung heap products out easily every year. On the other hand, if companies put a hundred million+ dollars in to a triple A MMORPG designed to last a decade or more with expansions, they just don't make as much profit compared to effort and money put in to the game development.

A company has to have passion to make a MMORPG for the players rather than for the profit, and that's not going to happen too often. Sad that Brad wasted two opportunities to do just that in Vanguard (funded by Microsoft) and Pantheon (funded by his fans). Nothing left to do at this point other than hope a young bed room developer passionate about RPGs spends his college years developing a game in his spare time.

Smedley apparently has something cooking with Amazon, maybe that's the new hope...?
 

Coleslaw

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Went to the kickstarter page and it looks like the pledge benefits were estimated to be delivered Jan 2017.

On the rock scale, where are we at?
 
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Noble Savage

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Went to the kickstarter page and it looks like the pledge benefits were estimated to be delivered Jan 2017.

On the rock scale, where are we at?

On the rock scale, I would say pantheon development progress is a Rock Hudson. Dead as fuck.
 
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goishen

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Kind of concerning, actually. Brad used to be a really good writer- cogent, clear, concise... Those posts are none of those things. Hope the dude is ok


Meh. Brad didn't write much of EQ. Except for maybe "Aradune is stinky", and I doubt that he wrote that. He stole it from Sojourn, just like the entire rest of the game.
 

Daidraco

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Meh. Brad didn't write much of EQ. Except for maybe "Aradune is stinky", and I doubt that he wrote that. He stole it from Sojourn, just like the entire rest of the game.

Even if that is the case - I dont know of any other MMO that actively had me wanting to play it. Just too f'n bad that after that drivel he spouted off, it confirmed that he's on some kind of medication abuse. Which I didnt know if Pantheon was Vaporware or not beforehand, but now Im squarely in the vaporware crowd. I just cant believe in a multimillion dollar company (well, may not be worth.. but has spent) would let someone with an abuse problem have anywhere close to the controls of the project.
 

goishen

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Even if that is the case - I dont know of any other MMO that actively had me wanting to play it. Just too f'n bad that after that drivel he spouted off, it confirmed that he's on some kind of medication abuse. Which I didnt know if Pantheon was Vaporware or not beforehand, but now Im squarely in the vaporware crowd. I just cant believe in a multimillion dollar company (well, may not be worth.. but has spent) would let someone with an abuse problem have anywhere close to the controls of the project.

Well, I mean, it's kind'a difficult when the "brains" behind your project are also the ones with the abuse problem. Fuck, I have ideas. I just don't try and turn and burn them, because I'm a so called game god.

From the site, for those of you who are lazy.

PC Gamer called McQuaid one of the "Next Game Gods" in its November 2000 issue, believing that he would eventually become one of the industry's most influential game developers.
 

Hateyou

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Well, I mean, it's kind'a difficult when the "brains" behind your project are also the ones with the abuse problem. Fuck, I have ideas. I just don't try and turn and burn them, because I'm a so called game god.

From the site, for those of you who are lazy.

I think the problem is he took that shit to heart. I’m assuming substance abuse is the escape from the reality of not being that God anymore? I’m not knocking the guy for it, just guessing it may have led to it. Going from being a huge fish in a small pond to a nobody is probably tough to deal with mentally. Then to have your assured return to that status be a complete cluster fucked failure, ouch. Then your next attempt amasses more fallen gifs than you’ve probably fallen in your entire life, double ouch.
 
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