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

I'm actually more worried about the future of the game after this stream. Do they really only have one guy doing the art for all this? If so there is no chance it ever releases with sufficient content available.

I thought he was just the art lead and there were more? But I could be wrong.

Man.

I never thought a stream about making a door could be interesting, and I was right.

BoozeCube said:

I started to watch this shit and for like the first 5 minutes these inventors are talking about grass... Pass

I wish they would pick a different streamer.

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That’s the only part I liked.

Will you play a game that has almost no content?

"YES! If it takes 50 hours per level! Who cares if we have to kill the same thing over and over and over again with no diversity or change of pace!"

What else would make you happy?

"Make sure you block the limited amount of content that's actually there! Gamers love blocked content!"

So you want us to artificially block the people who have more time to invest in the game?

"Absolutely, it's what the gaming world has been sorely lacking!"

Isn't that what WoW has been doing for the last ~10 years?

"Oh... shit"

Dullahan said:

Stream was awesome.

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I'm glad the game will have the best grass in any MMO ever.

On the list of things that make my gaming experience better, this one is near the top.

Point wasn't just grass, it was respect for detail and higher quality in general, which addresses a concern and stigma with indie crowdfunded games. Seems to have gone over your head.

Cool! A game that doesn't look like Disney made it and dumbed it down!

forensic said:

The genre must be competitive with counterpart single player rpgs to be respectable. This genre is not even close anymore.

pre-wow era: 1995-2005
Final Fantasy, Baldur's Gate 1/2, System Shock 1/2, Diablo 1/2, Icewind Dale, Ocarina of Time
vs.
The Realm, EverQuest 1/2, Ultima Online, Asheron's Call 1/2, Dark Age of Camelot, Star Wars Galaxies, City of Heroes, Eve Online

Look at how much deeper EQ was than a lot of single player RPGs. It even had better graphics than many. MMOs of this time were often more complex than single player games.

post-wow era: 2005-2015
Twilight Princess, Wind Waker, Oblivion, Skyrim, BioShock 3/Infinite, Fallout 3, Witcher 1/2/3, South Park: Stick of Truth
vs.
Lord of the Rings Online, Vanguard, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, SW:TOR, GW2, Diablo 3, Firefall, Wildstar, TESO, Black Desert Online, Conan Exiles

What happened?

The starting point for mmogs should be a gripping world and fun gameplay that is at par with modern rpgs. Then you add multiplayer to juice it up.

Pantheon doesn't have the budget to compete because the genre was murdered. Pantheon looks like they're starting from pre-alpha Vanguard.

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The realm, Ultima Online, Asheron's Call, DAOC, SWG, City of Heroes are all shit games and were all shit games at release. Not sure exactly what your trying to get across here... that your objectively bad opinion is terrible when it comes to what games are "good" and which ones aren't?

Every single one of those MMOs you listed in the second part (Minus Firefall maybe... what the fuck is a Firefall?) has more content and shit to do, overall, than any game you linked in either section of the Pre-WoW part. You're stating an opinion based on... your opinion. Wildstar was a turdfest, but it was magnitudes larger than EQ up through 2005, and certainly bigger than AC, DAOC, The Realm, COH and SWG. EVE is different, I'll give you that, but the rest of your examples are dumb.

What are your metrics for competitiveness? Your opinion? Cool, I think your opinion is wrong, as does a massive chunk of the world. Doesn't do much in the way of convincing anyone if all you do is state an opinion and do zero to back it up.

Here's a Fact: Pantheon doesn't have the budget to "compete" because it had a failed kickstarter and it is targeting a niche demographic. Investors don't look for net-loss as an outcome to their investment, which is what the magnitude of investment the rose-colored glasses brigade thinks should be behind it. It's clearly a game designed for 50-100k players, and will probably end up with about that much when the majority of release purchasers stop playing it to get their enjoyment in a game that isn't being designed to remove a chunk of their enjoyment. The niche folks it is designed for will stick around, but bitch about any technological improvement that doesn't make it exactly like EQ. Please quote me when it comes out that they started "sharding" (because the idea of instancing enrages people, but shards are a-fucking-ok!) and some people question why you would do so in a modern gaming environment.

My evidence for that fact is this thread. My metric is I'm not holding up an 18 year old game as the pinnacle of a genre I clearly haven't participated in. I've played every game you mentioned (again, minus Firefall. Is this some sort of FPS PVP game or some shit?) and you're objectively insane if you think The Realm, Ultima Online, Ahseron's Call(both), DAOC or COH was even as robust as EQ, let alone all the objectively deeper and better made games in the post-WoW grouping.

I think we get it; you haven't liked an MMO since EQ. Great. And your opinion is that every game released since EQ was a "big deal" is terrible. Also great. Personally, I think your opinion is crap and steeped heavily in nostalgia fueled by resistance to improvements. I don't have that as a fact, but I will point to your previous posts as evidence. You sound like you've read about WoW on a dating website and think you know a ton about it, or any of the other games you listed sans EQ. You might have played UO or the Realm, but your second list and how you look at them clearly shows you put the blinders on in 1999 and haven't taken them off yet. AOC alone was 3x the budget of any single player game you listed, and sold as much/more in its opening week than all those one-and-done games.

Really, I just don't get your point. If it's "I like EQ" then hey, everyone has gotten it. But don't even try to pretend to be looking at this objectively, because you are most definitely not.

Rezz said:

The realm, Ultima Online, Asheron's Call, DAOC, SWG, City of Heroes are all shit games and were all shit games at release.

Every single one of those MMOs you listed in the second part (Minus Firefall maybe... what the fuck is a Firefall?) has more content and shit to do, overall, than any game you linked in either section of the Pre-WoW part.

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wow pretty aggro. You missed my point cause you just assume I'm another Pantheon dupe.

I'm arguing that you have to compare games to their contemporaries, not to the past. The Realm has to be compared to 1996 games like Super Mario RPG or Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall. The Realm is a pretty good game when you compare it with Super Mario RPG!

I agree that EQ was bad compared to WoW. To me, this is obvious, and it's annoying I have to say this. They are different generations.

Wow was so successful that it redefined the genre and split the history of mmorpgs into two eras. The First Era begins with M59, NWN, and The Realm. These were good games FOR THEIR TIME. UO followed them with an exceptional game for its time. EQ came out in the same year as System Shock 2 and blew people away. System Shock 2 was one of the best games of the 90s and EQ actually compares favorably with it. That is a huge achievement for its time. EQ had a ton of content for a 1999 game. It innovated well beyond UO and was far deeper than AC.

Now look at the post-wow-era. In the post-wow era, for single player games you now have stuff like Oblivion (terrific) competing with LOTRO (terrible). Fallout 3 (awesome) competing with Age of Conan (awful). Skyrim (stunning) vs. Guild Wars 2 (shit).

LOTRO had an infinite budget, the best IP money can buy, a bottomless pit of death marching MIT grads, with a geolocked devteam more experienced than Blizzard. Turbine had better writers, better management, better musicians, celeb voices, and a better art style. They were even riding the recent release of the LOTR movies.

But this game sucked! It is shocking how unfun LOTRO was. Terrible gameplay and underwhelming graphics compared to Oblivion. It also sucked compared to The Burning Crusade which came out at the same time and was way more fun. Embarrassing.

Why was LOTRO so bad? Because they were ordered from the top to copy vanilla wow down to the smallest details. Execs thought wow had secret sauce that should be cargo culted. The designers did an exact clone except for one mechanic: Fellowship Maneuvers. These were inconsequential and most players never used them before logging out forever.

Considering their setup, LOTRO has to be one of the most disappointing games of all time.

Burning Crusade was an improvement on vanilla. But it was still wow. Lucky for Blizzard, they had no competition. Subsequently, no greenfield MMO would come close to competing with contemporaneous wow expansions and they would all ape wow combat, grouping, questing, progression, crafting, raiding, classes, gear, inventory, instancing, harvesting, death, talents, mounts, banking, travel, hearthstone, auction house, downtime, consumables, spell effects, monster design, zone design, UI, radar, worldmap, etc. They've all been inferior ripoffs of wow.

Blizzard expansions were excellent as far as expansion packs go. I raided 100% of the content in TBC and WOTLK before switching to casual in Cata. But the wow formula has a weakness and the more you play wow the more you miss some of those original things that pre-wow mmos had.

I watched the Pantheon stream and it makes me feel that this genre is even deader than I thought. All we have left is vaporware from indie-kickstarter studios. Pantheon looks like it will struggle even to reach the level of Vanguard.

Meanwhile we have Breath of the Wild (superb) and Horizon Zero Dawn (significant). We have South Park: Buthole which is an instant classic that has come so far since its ancestors Super Mario RPG, The Realm, and Final Fantasy Tactics. What a huge triumph of RPG game development South Park is. MMORPGs are dead and they were killed by wow.

forensic said:

Skyrim (stunning) vs. Guild Wars 2 (shit).

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While i agree with some stuff you've posted, you are talking mostly feels and not backing your shit. You sound like you've not even played half of the games you're scrutinizing.

Personally, I love the detail they are adding to the game. I think it looks amazing and truly brings the game up to par with other games in terms of graphics. Even the animations look improved.

Having said that, there is a huge concern that they may be spending too much time in the weeds (literally) and not enough on building out enough content quickly enough. I mean it's awesome to see this level of detail (hopefully for everyone to enjoy too, not just the 1% with top line rigs either) but I can't help but wonder how many players out there will truly take the time to appreciate it. Besides, there are major systems, classes, mechanics, etc that we still know very little about and have not seen in these streams. Are these being neglected or have they just not shown them yet?

I go back to VG. Huge world that released with quite a few major systems broken and a ton of missing content. Don't do that shit again. Make Pantheon smaller to launch if you have to. Just make sure the content is there and that it works.

Origin said:

While i agree with some stuff you've posted, you are talking mostly feels and not backing your shit. You sound like you've not even played half of the games you're scrutinizing.

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Video games are about feels.

I played GW2 briefly when it came out... it seemed like a marginal improvement on wow for being 8 years later. In the 8 years between 1996 and 2004 we went from Duke Nukem 3D all the way to GTA: San Andreas. Am I expecting too much?

The revolutionary MMORPGs are BDO, EQ:Next, Star Citizen, Chronicles of Elyria, Life is Feudal... and only BDO isn't vaporware. Maybe BDO refutes my thesis and is sufficiently revolutionary to consider the genre resurrected.

forensic said:

wow pretty aggro. You missed my point cause you just assume I'm another Pantheon dupe.

I'm arguing that you have to compare games to their contemporaries, not to the past. The Realm has to be compared to 1996 games like Super Mario RPG or Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall. The Realm is a pretty good game when you compare it with Super Mario RPG!

I agree that EQ was bad compared to WoW. To me, this is obvious, and it's annoying I have to say this. They are different generations.

Wow was so successful that it redefined the genre and split the history of mmorpgs into two eras. The First Era begins with M59, NWN, and The Realm. These were good games FOR THEIR TIME. UO followed them with an exceptional game for its time. EQ came out in the same year as System Shock 2 and blew people away. System Shock 2 was one of the best games of the 90s and EQ actually compares favorably with it. That is a huge achievement for its time. EQ had a ton of content for a 1999 game. It innovated well beyond UO and was far deeper than AC.

Now look at the post-wow-era. In the post-wow era, for single player games you now have stuff like Oblivion (terrific) competing with LOTRO (terrible). Fallout 3 (awesome) competing with Age of Conan (awful). Skyrim (stunning) vs. Guild Wars 2 (shit).

LOTRO had an infinite budget, the best IP money can buy, a bottomless pit of death marching MIT grads, with a geolocked devteam more experienced than Blizzard. Turbine had better writers, better management, better musicians, celeb voices, and a better art style. They were even riding the recent release of the LOTR movies.

But this game sucked! It is shocking how unfun LOTRO was. Terrible gameplay and underwhelming graphics compared to Oblivion. It also sucked compared to The Burning Crusade which came out at the same time and was way more fun. Embarrassing.

Why was LOTRO so bad? Because they were ordered from the top to copy vanilla wow down to the smallest details. Execs thought wow had secret sauce that should be cargo culted. The designers did an exact clone except for one mechanic: Fellowship Maneuvers. These were inconsequential and most players never used them before logging out forever.

Considering their setup, LOTRO has to be one of the most disappointing games of all time.

Burning Crusade was an improvement on vanilla. But it was still wow. Lucky for Blizzard, they had no competition. Subsequently, no greenfield MMO would come close to competing with contemporaneous wow expansions and they would all ape wow combat, grouping, questing, progression, crafting, raiding, classes, gear, inventory, instancing, harvesting, death, talents, mounts, banking, travel, hearthstone, auction house, downtime, consumables, monster design, zone design, UI, radar, worldmap, etc. They've all been inferior ripoffs of wow.

Blizzard expansions were excellent as far as expansion packs go. I raided 100% of the content in TBC and WOTLK before switching to casual in Cata. But the wow formula has a weakness and the more you play wow the more you miss some of those original things that pre-wow mmos had.

I watched the Pantheon stream and it makes me feel that this genre is even deader than I thought. All we have left is vaporware from indie-kickstarter studios. Pantheon looks like it will struggle even to reach the level of Vanguard.

Meanwhile we have Breath of the Wild (superb) and Horizon Zero Dawn (significant). We have South Park: Buthole which is an instant classic that has come so far since its ancestors Super Mario RPG, The Realm, and Final Fantasy Tactics. What a huge triumph of RPG game development South Park is. MMORPGs are dead and they were killed by wow.

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Funny, I thought LOTRO was great but it was just too small at launch. The combat was a bit wonky but some fun grouping and dungeons at release. I played a burglar and had a blast while it lasted.