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

mkopec said:

This IS the perfect opportunity, Too bad this game is like years away still. Blizzard will probably drop some new MMO or some shit and deflate this company even further. LOL

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Blizzard can't move that fast, assuming they can get this game out within a few years. I don't have much faith in Blizzard anymore, it looks patently obvious their best days are behind them.


It seems I was one of the few people who enjoyed Vanguard. Despite its bugs and unfinished state, I really loved the class design and group combat, it was the best MMO combat system I've played and was half finished.
Plus the traditional MMO qualities which seem to be gone these days, such as an immersive world and actually having the multiplayer present in MMO. Instead of just a single player RPG with other people around sometimes. Most people probably didn't get too far in VG, but there was some beautiful world art and locations.

I have hopes for Pantheon. It seems to be on the right track.

On top of actually making a quality product, the biggest issue I see is they take some series B funding to get them to launch. Then they inevitably need more time and money to finish, which they might not have and we get an unfinished, uncontented DOA mess. So the first thing to look out for appears to be what this series B funding is looking like. Finding an investor that is committed to the risk profile of making a quality product rather than monetizing trash is going to be rough.

I actually enjoyed Vanguard as well. Yeah, it was a buggy, unfinished mess, but the classes were awesome, and the world just felt, I don't know, alive, like it did when I played EQ. I enjoyed WoW for what it was, but it wasn't my cup of tea long term. I just got bored of it quickly, whereas I played EQ for 5 years. I would've probably played Vanguard just as long if it was a completed game. I'm cautiously optimistic about Pantheon. Hopeium is all us old-timers have anymore.

I played VG as well. And as much as I tried to like it, I could not get past all of the technical issues and unfinished content. Regarding classes, I recall thinking the few that I played were decent enough but I don't personal recall them being so ridiculously memorable as I see others say.

Besides, it's fairly difficult to say whether those classes were fun by way of design or because they were broken/OP, especially since lots of the content that was in place wasn't tuned all that well to begin with.

I didn't play it after it was sold off so perhaps some of that was improved, but I doubt it.

Vinjin said:

I played VG as well. And as much as I tried to like it, I could not get past all of the technical issues and unfinished content. Regarding classes, I recall thinking the few that I played were decent enough but I don't personal recall them being so ridiculously memorable as I see others say.

Besides, it's fairly difficult to say whether those classes were fun by way of design or because they were broken/OP, especially since lots of the content that was in place wasn't tuned all that well to begin with.

I didn't play it after it was sold off so perhaps some of that was improved, but I doubt it.

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To be fair, quite a few MMO's that have been shut down all have some things about them that were great. Speaking from my own experience, I enjoyed a lot about Warhammer. Wildstar was another MMO that had great things about it that I loved. Tabula Rasa, Phantasy Star, Asherons Call 1 & 2, City of Heroes, etc. etc. Point being - The games were so plagued by other major issues that if you let your judgement go first, your attitude has already been clouded by the negatives. You likely never gave the game a real shot in order to see the small gems that each had. (In Vanguards case, you had to forgive quite a lot just to see the positives - we all know that.)

I understand what you're saying in that, if they cant even get basic things right about the game - How can they balance a class correctly? But with Vanguard, classes like your Blood Mage and Disciple for example - the way the classes played were new and fresh. The idea behind the Disciple in Vanguard is clearly seen in the Discipline priest in WoW now. Not a one for one match, but the theory is the same. Blood Mage from Vanguard went on to inspire Chloromancer in Rift iirc. Those classes could definitely shine, but were no where near some of the OP unbalanced power houses that some of the classes Vanguard had. The Dread Knight was a GD monster and I soloed entire dungeons by myself on the regular with that class. Another neat attribute to a classical class was the Necromancer pet and how it was modified / made.

Truth is, the slow pace of these games with real elements of danger make the worlds seem... just.. more? They dont feel like play grounds. Mobs dont blow up. Bad strategy can fuck you on even simple shit. etc. I dont want to spend my day looking at the spell book, but Im so done with WoW's play style and games that mimic that feel.

Daidraco said:

Truth is, the slow pace of these games with real elements of danger make the worlds seem... just.. more? They dont feel like play grounds. Mobs dont blow up. Bad strategy can fuck you on even simple shit. etc. I dont want to spend my day looking at the spell book, but Im so done with WoW's play style and games that mimic that feel.

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Could not agree more with this. After 21 years of playing MMOs starting with UO, it’s just what I personally have found to give me the most enjoyment.

I love what I’m seeing with Pantheon for exactly this reason but I’m also disappointed in the timeline projections they’ve been giving too. The game definitely needs to be pretty polished at release to have any chance at meeting their expectations for success but to hear it’s still probably another two years out from release is more than concerning.

Live stream going on.

They say nice things, but I have zero faith in their ability to execute it well. We'll see.

Shadowed men are commies. I dig it.

Vinjin said:

I played VG as well. And as much as I tried to like it, I could not get past all of the technical issues and unfinished content. Regarding classes, I recall thinking the few that I played were decent enough but I don't personal recall them being so ridiculously memorable as I see others say.

Besides, it's fairly difficult to say whether those classes were fun by way of design or because they were broken/OP, especially since lots of the content that was in place wasn't tuned all that well to begin with.

I didn't play it after it was sold off so perhaps some of that was improved, but I doubt it.

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At the point vanguard was at when it was shut down it was a worthwhile game. It would’ve been a successful game had people bothered to play it but no one that was burned by playing early would reconsider it and most everyone else had heard enough bad shit about it that they never bothered to try it. Despite the fact that I play mmos and prefer a more EQ style, even I never tried playing the game until shortly before it was killed off.

Warmuth said:

At the point vanguard was at when it was shut down it was a worthwhile game. It would’ve been a successful game had people bothered to play it but no one that was burned by playing early would reconsider it and most everyone else had heard enough bad shit about it that they never bothered to try it. Despite the fact that I play mmos and prefer a more EQ style, even I never tried playing the game until shortly before it was killed off.

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Thats the deal with these types of games. Social mmo's need to fucking nail the launch. Because as a player you rely on other people & a populated world to make or break the game.
You HAVE to play at launch, or hope the game be a runaway success that brings more and more people. It's a dangerous business model that has everything on the line come launch. You can't fill in the content later. It has to be there from the start and polished.

That's what Pantheon is going to come down to imo. They have to nail the launch and in order to do that, they need to be OVERfunded compared to every other MMO and they have to have the security to take the old Blizzard approach of "when it's ready".

I really hope they can do it. Because everything is going in the right direction as to what I want in a MMO. But the reality is, the success or failure of this is going to come down to $. Somehow they need an investor like Zuck who can afford and is flexible enough to take that risk.

24 man raid cap proposed, should be interesting

I'm fine with that size, but I hope it can flex and scale. If I'm at 22 or 26 we should still be able to perform without excluding anyone or hamstringing ourselves. Too often these kinds of nerds facilitate number crunching for aspies over socializing for everyone else. Fingers crossed they have some comprehension of that.

Speaking of OP, what was the sorcerer spell in VG that took some of your hit points, but was a way overpowered AE? Can't recall the name of the spell, but it made leveling up on my Sorc hella easy. They took the nerf bat to it a month or two in, but man, until they did, that spell was overpowered as hell.

I also really enjoyed playing a Blood Mage, and even a bard (although, by the time I started to level up my bard, most of my friends had quit playing, which lead to me quitting as well). Fuck, if that game was even 70% finished at launch, it could've been really successful. Too bad almost everything in the game was broken.

And these last few posts have really nailed what is riding on this game. No matter how much fun or crap we give them for taking too long to make the game, they have to just take however long it takes to make sure the launch is superb. They have no publisher pushing them to force the game out. They have investors and they have enough money to get the game to launch, or at least they think so. Progress is slow, but it is fairly steady.

You could see enough in the Druid stream, even though the guy was tinkering with his Twitch stuff too much, to see that the class is going to be good and feasible as a primary healer. It's mostly the Fury from EQ2 with the normal heals and regens, but also with some OP wards tossed in. I thought the Paladin was cheating with God Mode because he'd get to zero health and keep on ticking, but that's just the Chrysallis Druid ward kicking in. Was bummed the tree and fox didn't make it in yet, but between the stream and the class design page, I can see this class is headed in a good direction. Overall, I feel good about their class design on the whole.

Thought the halfling looked pretty good. They are designing them clearly to be Kender from Dragon Lance mixed with Wood Elves from EQ1.

Biggest news from that stream was that Crafting will be implemented for Pre-Alpha #5. And that Druids will get a Rez spell, but not by level 30. Clerics and Paladins will have their rez abilities prior to that.

rinthea said:

Thats the deal with these types of games. Social mmo's need to fucking nail the launch. Because as a player you rely on other people & a populated world to make or break the game.
You HAVE to play at launch, or hope the game be a runaway success that brings more and more people. It's a dangerous business model that has everything on the line come launch. You can't fill in the content later. It has to be there from the start and polished.

That's what Pantheon is going to come down to imo. They have to nail the launch and in order to do that, they need to be OVERfunded compared to every other MMO and they have to have the security to take the old Blizzard approach of "when it's ready".

I really hope they can do it. Because everything is going in the right direction as to what I want in a MMO. But the reality is, the success or failure of this is going to come down to $. Somehow they need an investor like Zuck who can afford and is flexible enough to take that risk.

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Agree. Sony fixed FFXIV after a horrible launch but that was the exception. They have DEEP pockets and losing face wasn't an option for them.

For every other mmo, if you have a bad launch then the fans will turn on you. They never let you forget it, and never give you a second chance. Vanguard is a great example of that.

So first off and most important, Pantheon has to have the tech tight from the get go, no "chunking" like issues, etc that can't be fixed with a simple, timely patch. Combat has to be fluid, the animations decent and the game can't hitch every other second on a medium power PC.

Then the game itself has to be fun and engaging without too many "wtf?" systems that piss players off. No easy exploits that let hackers, etc fuck over the economy and loot balance. Class balance should be decent, although even the saltiest players understand that is a moving target.

Mmo players don't have the patience for messed up launches anymore.

Did anyone else enjoy Diplomacy...? I didnt even mess with it at launch, but came back a bit after they released the noobie island and started playing with it then. I liked it as a whole and Im curious if they are going to do something similar. I know they have the Perception system, but I can only find half baked answers about how that works.