I love the M&M team and have enjoyed sharing the sickness from my brain that has formed from decades of EQing. They are everything but blood brothers to me in these regards. They're true EQ fans, the equivalent of some old sports team fan who knows all the stats of the greatest players in history and a basement full of memorabilia to use that analogy.
Most of them have the full hindsight and deep dive, having been fully immersed in an "overly solved" extra late end game of the original 3 EQ expansions. I think this is essential for making something that will stick today and not fall victim to the same old problems. Some of those problems like people demanding instant gratification should be expected and not catered to, but for the rest of us enthusiasts we can be sure they have the right minds deciding things.
That being said, they're taking a more realistic approach to make something we will appreciate while Pantheon seems deadset to reach for that impossible dream they've set forth in true Brad fashion. EQ wasn't even close to finished as I've begun to realize, Brad just had too many damned ideas and his eyes were always bigger than what was humanly possible. But maybe that's what it takes and the kind of push/drive you need to get things to become real like hand held computer phones or an MMO like EQ that was ahead of it's time.
I think both teams are making an immense amount of progress on the fuel tanks of code warriors and artists our age without billions backing them.
You're hoping for the day Pantheon shuts down without launching, hopefully only for the sake of a doubled down forum argument, and I can't say that's a good thing to hope for but I'll be here to say I was sure it would launch but didn't.
All that being considered, I see a functioning client and server. I predict a launch day that is overwhelmed with logins, as apparently even Amazon for all their serverless architects and load balancing geniuses couldn't even nail. This will be mocked too, pretended to be a unique issue and an I told u so.
Look no further than the positive responses and well wishes for the game in the comments following Asmoncucks corporate hit piece on P:RotF to see the true state of things.
