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

Fingz_sl said:

Are there any big MMOs that run on Unity? I had fun playing around with Unity, the download is free, but I don't remember seeing any big multiplayer games on their ap showcase page.

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Blizzard's Hearthstone uses Unity. It's massively multiplayer in the sense that it's multiplayer and a fuckload of people are playing it. If Blizzard committed their reputation and resources to the engine, it can't be that bad.

Edit: Rust also uses Unity. Again, not really a true MMO but it's a huge landmass with a bunch of people running around in it. It works alright.

ThunderCougarFalconBird_sl said:

I miss being a rerolledChampion

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Yeah, what was that about? I missed it
It feels so good to be a true Champion with golden letters everywhere!

zzeris_sl said:

First, that is the worst example of focused I've ever seen professionally attempted in any field. Seriously. 6+ months for this? What's the timeline? 2025? Vanguard had some really awesome ideas. Loved a couple classes and the dungeons were better than average overall. Unfortunately, the GAME was crap. And having a really cool class only helped to accentuate the massive problems. Such promise...if only Brad really knew how to make games.

There is room for a few new games right now. This team isn't the ones to give people that. They've shown that quite a lot recently.

I don't think there has been any real advancement in the industry but that's not what this thread is about. If you want to talk about advancing the genre you head over to the EQN thread and see what that's all about. This is the old school thread. SOE is the only company really trying to advance the genre.

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My point about advancement was.... the FOCUS for development in the mainstream MMO space has be Implementation of RMT and wow style gameplay. That is the only way i can sum up and describe nearly every release since vanguard. Even SOEs plans with Landmark are all about RMT... Minecraft is the perfect model for RMT becuase people now create things for you, so you don't need a huge dev staff yet, you sell the crap for real money.

Of course some of the RMT implementations were not "out of the gate" and these titles assumed they would be able to get people to stick around for more than 30 days, but most of them SUCK. I have only played more than 30 days in 1 new MMO since vanguard was released... that was RIFT. That is pretty fucking horrible in 7 years...

Maybe SOE can do something interesting with EQnext but I am not holding my breath for that one... SOE has no track record of innovation since 04 ish.

Seems to be where Brad took his plan from.

Pantheon investor meeting.


Bah, wont let me start where I wanted.. Forward to 49:30. Enjoy.

Not sure what SOE innovated in '04, certainly nothing with EQ2?

I'd say SOE turned the ship around with PS2 though, which is a good game, a very different concept of MMO from the standard rpg fare, and has had decent support (plus stellar customer service). I think they ruined all their games that ran on a sub with bad cash shops, but the way they set it up in PS2 is fine. I suppose it's easier to design a game with it in mind instead of tacking it onto an established game as an afterthought.

Mr Creed_sl said:

Not sure what SOE innovated in '04, certainly nothing with EQ2?

I'd say SOE turned the ship around with PS2 though, which is a good game, a very different concept of MMO from the standard rpg fare, and has had decent support (plus stellar customer service). I think they ruined all their games that ran on a sub with bad cash shops, but the way they set it up in PS2 is fine. I suppose it's easier to design a game with it in mind instead of tacking it onto an established game as an afterthought.

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i was thinking eq2/swg although swg was 2003 i think. Geeze its been a long time ! But ya, eq2 was not "innovative" thats for sure...

Funding update, now with asterisks. Someone with forum access needs to ask how it's possible they have more supporters than members registered on the site.

Vandyn_sl said:

Funding update, now with asterisks. Someone with forum access needs to ask how it's possible they have more supporters than members registered on the site

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Honestly... Who gives a shit at this point?

Quaid_sl said:

Honestly... Who gives a shit at this point?

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One could argue the same point for this thread, and yet here we all are.

Mahes_sl said:

One could argue the same point for this thread, and yet here we all are.

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Indeed. Pantheon discussion should remain in its home. The shaw.

Soygen_sl said:

You mention RMT quite a bit in this post. You realize that Brad is hammering the RMT's already and the game doesn't even exist even in demo form yet. I mean, you can buy all sorts of shit on their website right now.

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Ya they are using it as a funding vehicle .

My point has to do with the rest of the industry that is well funded but is not really moving the genre forward and has not because the focus had been capturing rmt dollars from a high level design perspective.

It's all they are really doing and it makes sense from a business perspective because it is low hanging fruit $$$.

Why take a risk when you know rmt will increase revenue significantly. I don't care about rmt but it would be nice to get back to making great games rather than spending most of their time finding ways to increase revenue per user.

Good point Soygen, this is looking like RMT heaven currently. Which is a slippery topic, even a game that carefully avoids any P2W can suffer from it. For example GW2 has no or at best little P2W, but since almost all new skins throughout their first year were gem store RNG items, you had very few goals to play for beyond those they launched with. They added a glove or shoulder item here and there you could play for, but entire weapon skin sets every other months for the gem store.

@shabushabu: without even any dig at Brad or VR, how could they "just get back to making great games" if they must secure funding first to even have a project to work on, and are doing it through RMT (which is a misnomer here but lets run with it, because actual RMT is next).

Fuck this, I'm going to sign up for the forums, and take payment for services and items I'll provide once the game launches too.

1k currency = $100
Powerleveling = $50/hour
Camp an item for you = $40/hour

(Note that I will never do these things...just take the money)

shabushabu_sl said:

Ya they are using it as a funding vehicle .

My point has to do with the rest of the industry that is well funded but is not really moving the genre forward and has not because the focus had been capturing rmt dollars from a high level design perspective.

It's all they are really doing and it makes sense from a business perspective because it is low hanging fruit $$$.

Why take a risk when you know rmt will increase revenue significantly. I don't care about rmt but it would be nice to get back to making great games rather than spending most of their time finding ways to increase revenue per user.

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Do you think they will stop the RMT stuff if they manage to get funded? Pretty sure you can count on them selling anything they can no matter the funding state of the game.

Mr Creed_sl said:

Good point Soygen, this is looking like RMT heaven currently. Which is a slippery topic, even a game that carefully avoids any P2W can suffer from it. For example GW2 has no or at best little P2W, but since almost all new skins throughout their first year were gem store RNG items, you had very few goals to play for beyond those they launched with. They added a glove or shoulder item here and there you could play for, but entire weapon skin sets every other months for the gem store.

@shabushabu: without even any dig at Brad or VR, how could they "just get back to making great games" if they must secure funding first to even have a project to work on, and are doing it through RMT (which is a misnomer here but lets run with it, because actual RMT is next).

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Brad and Co don't really fall under my comments on RMT although they are using it for funding purposes. My comments aim squarely at the rest of the industry that has failed to innovate game play much at all and in most cases watered it down I.e. smaller world's, 20 minute McDungeons.

And if you look at titles like all of SOE , turbine, not sure about gw2 so much but pretty much the "innovation" had been adding RMT or building games for the ground up wrapped around the rmt or f2p model.. I just hope that revenue source flattens at some point and AAA studios focus more on taking game play in new and exciting directions.

As much as I have supported brad and team through KS, I wish we didn't have to do so given the donation model of funding that has always turned me off.

But the AAA publishers are funding like Hollywood studios now and while back in 2004 and earlier new ideas were getting significant funding they are not anymore.

I will say that the user generated content stuff is encouraging however hopefully SOE does it right!

Oloh_sl said:

Even if true, when EQ came out, the entire video game industry was struggling with how to convert tried and true classics across the genres to use 3D. The Nintendo 64 is widely regarded as one of the best console systems of all time because of its contributions in this front. Miyamoto catapuled from legendary to probably the best video gamer in the history by his conversions of the Super Mario series, Zelda series and Metroid series from 2D to 3D.

To say "yeah, but he just ported it to 3D" shows complete and utter ignorance of what was going on at the time. The 3D tools used to created EverQuest were not object oriented like today's three 3 tools and didn't even have copy and paste functionality. Even if you want to believe that Brad's sole contribution to EverQuest was porting a text based MUD to 3D, that is an amazing accomplishment in its own right.

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Brad isn't a coder, programmer, or architecture kind of guy. He's a designer/thinker. He had nothing to do with the 3D aspect of Everquest. The credit for that kind of shit should go to His Blackness Milo D. Cooper and several others, not McQuaid.

shabushabu_sl said:

From a design perspective vanguard was awesome sauce I have not seen anything since with better classes and dungeons. I think brad deserves credit for that ... no? Vanguard was one hell of an experience even with its tech failings.

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Several Vanguard/Sigil devs are on record saying that McQuaid contributed almost nothing to Vanguard's design and systems, which were pretty much all created in the last 12-18 months of development. I can attest to the game being made in the last year or so, as I was in the early beta for it. The state of the game in the early beta was a joke, and there was no direction on what testers were even supposed to be doing. I still have a bitter taste in my mouth about the time I wasted on it, and a specific time where another tester and I grouped up with several devs to do a dungeon crawl, got wiped due to pathing bugs, and all the devs just fucked off without helping the other tester and I recover our corpses/gear. Teclisen stated quite emphatically that the game was pretty much designed by rookies with little or no direction from upper management, and that McQuaid himself was hardly around during the last year. I won't even get in to the pill popping accusations.

So again, no credit should go to McQuaid for Vanguard's design, although he certainly should be held responsible for the development being such a disaster. The stories of nepotism and intrigue that circled him and a couple of the other founders were numerous.