General: Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen Incrementally Revealed

SBFord

In a pair of locations across the 'Net, Brad McQuaid is revealing information about his recently named MMO, Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen. On McQuaid's Twitter and on his personal website, he lets loose a few details about what players can expect. We can only hope that a full revelation of what Pantheon is will be coming in the very near future.

Brad left SOE in August 2013 as part of a huge RIF.  With so many jobless developers in the area and so many exciting game design ideas in his head, Brad formed a new company in September 2013.  They immediately began development of a new, classic, challenging, group-focused MMO called Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen.  The new company will launch a Kickstarter site in January 2014 which will reveal all sorts of details about both the company and the game, including videos, concept art, and even actual in-game screenshots and short clips of the game itself.  Brad has assumed the role of Chief Creative Officer and one of the Producers of Pantheon.

What we know:

• 
  The game is being developed using Unity
• 
  Pantheon is a minimum of three years down the road
• 
  There will be a long beta
• 
  Open world with "stuff"/quests to do but players don't have to do them all
• 
  The plan is to bring players back to the "good old days" of MMOs

Salimus78

Can't wait for this. This guy just gets my friends and I and the games we like to play. His work hits home with a large group of old school mmo players. It might fail, but it also could be the game a lot of us are looking for.

Wingeye

not going into the specifics being a child of ultima online myself,

the good old days had their issues and gimmicks including nostalgia

i just hope they dont go as far as taking a step back from the progress we have made with the genre

 

Slapshot1188

Good to se his role is CCO and not CEO...  He is much more suitable for this role.

 

xAPOCx

Originally posted by Wingeye

not going into the specifics being a child of ultima online myself,

the good old days had their issues and gimmicks including nostalgia

i just hope they dont go as far as taking a step back from the progress we have made with the genre

 

What is this "progress" you speak of?

Loktofeit

"The plan is to bring players back to the "good old days" of MMOs"

When talking about the "good old days", I wonder if he means EQ or Vanilla WOW. I ask that because for most MMO gamers, Vanilla WOW - back when WOW was "hard" - is the good old days. 

JeroKane

Originally posted by Loktofeit

"The plan is to bring players back to the "good old days" of MMOs"

When talking about the "good old days", I wonder if he means EQ or Vanilla WOW. I ask that because for most MMO gamers, Vanilla WOW - back when WOW was "hard" - is the good old days. 

It just gets a bit of a tiresome sales line these days.

Vanilla WoW back in 2004/2005 wasn´t bad at all. WoW was a very good game back then. Very polished and lots of Challenge.

That it has been watered Down over the years. That´s another thing.

Same for EverQuest 2. It was a very challenging (and very unforgiving) game back in 2004.

Lobotomist

I am bit worried about using Unity.

Its engine that one uses if they want to make cross platform games. So obviously the game will be on mobile devices.

Other thing is that its not made for MMOs, especially not open world ones.

So we can probably rule out anything of large scope like Vanguard....

azarhal

Originally posted by Loktofeit

"The plan is to bring players back to the "good old days" of MMOs"

When talking about the "good old days", I wonder if he means EQ or Vanilla WOW. I ask that because for most MMO gamers, Vanilla WOW - back when WOW was "hard" - is the good old days. 

I had the same reaction.

 

Maybe he should have put some timeframe there. Like pre-2000 or pre-2005.

Big_Data

I had a conversation with McQuaid about a month back about this very question: "what's old school".  In his mind, it's similar to the early design decisions of EverQuest and Vanguard:

1. Greater benefit to grouping, perhaps most content is hard/ impossible to solo

2. Less reliance on convenience that makes the world smaller (fast travel, teleporting, etc.)

3. Less to no reliance on quest hubs/ breadcrumbs.

4. Steeper challenge with steeper penalties for failure, to increase risk/ reward.

Obviously all of the above have fallen out of favor in the MMO genre. Even EverQuest and Vanguard eventually eased on all of the above as well by adding teleports stones, solo content, quest hubs, etc.

JeroKane

Originally posted by Big_Data

I had a conversation with McQuaid about a month back about this very question: "what's old school".  In his mind, it's similar to the early design decisions of EverQuest and Vanguard:

1. Greater benefit to grouping, perhaps most content is hard/ impossible to solo

2. Less reliance on convenience that makes the world smaller (fast travel, teleporting, etc.)

3. Less to no reliance on quest hubs/ breadcrumbs.

4. Steeper challenge with steeper penalties for failure, to increase risk/ reward.

Obviously all of the above have fallen out of favor in the MMO genre. Even EverQuest and Vanguard eventually eased on all of the above as well by adding teleports stones, solo content, quest hubs, etc.

Because the vast majority of gamers doesn´t want that kind of Extreme time consuming, restricting and unforgiving gameplay anymore. Except for the hardcore few.

If that kind of gameplay would have been popular by the general gaming population, then both WoW and EverQuest 2 wouldn´t have been "streamlined" over the years (read dumbed down).

It´s just the harsh reality in todays gaming climate and why no serious Developer will touch any of the Things mentioned above. Unless they want to create a small Budget, low Income, niche game.

Lyrian

Here is what has me concerned. He wants us to go back to the 'good old days' type game, which is great. I would love to have meaningful content both group and solo. More classes, more races, more options. Bring it on, I have a raging ePeen thinking about it. However his tweet or something somewhere that he's expecting at least three years in development (which is understandable, but of course the baby child in my brain wants it NOW.)

Now what we need to know, is how is he going to make us to 'want' to play this game. He is going to have to innovate his way past the blackboxes that is EQN, Project Titan and all the other MMOs in the wings. I'm not saying those games are going to be smash hits but they (EQN at least) are bringing nifty features with them, and on top of this all the 'good old days' is likely to cater to a smaller niche.

Going back to the 'good old days' is great if he was releasing his game within the next 3-6 months. He's not. We have a minimum of three years, probably longer to work with. We know that between EQ and Vanguard he's going to deliver the old school feel, Brad has a track record between those two games of being consistent with that mark.

What he needs to show us, is how he is going to kick ass. Wow us, take the old school and make it better. Take it to where it should have been if there had been 10 (by then 13-14) years of refinement on the genre. Player housing, political system, self generating content, multiple (Dozens of dozens) major story arcs, horizontal and vertical progression, Alternate Advancement, player ownership, rewarding a hardcore play style while still including an average play style. I can go on forever.

Wow our socks off and deliver. Because come 2017, looking back at 'just an old school game' just isn't going to cut it. Show us how you're taking the old school genre by the balls and tell us how you're planning on evolving it 14 years over the next three years.

Anything short of that, and this might not even make it out of kickstarter.