The need for fast travel depends on the population. If you have enough people then you can level up in a few close by areas and not need to travel every time you login. But if you dont have the people for that then you HAVE to include fast travel. No group will hold your spot for a half hour while you travel.
Its strange that people look at it so backwards today. I never reserved a spot in another zone and then traveled; I went to an area and found a group when I was nearby.
Like I said, if you have the population where you know if you go to zone X you will be able to find a group when you get there then you dont need fast travel. But you are assuming that you go to the area and find a group. If the population doesnt support that assumption then you may travel a half hour and find no group there. So what do you do, travel another half hour and hope you find a group when you get there?
And now someone will say "I always have a group because Im in a good guild and we bring our own group". Thats nice for you. But what do you do when your healer has to leave and the only replacement is a half hour away? Do you and the other 4 people all wait?
This is exactly why vanguard added portals. At first they werent needed. But without a really good population they became needed. Thats all im saying.
Vanguard was a ghost town most of its later existence, so yes, if the servers are empty this can be a problem, though it doesn't have to be. For instance, I played on EQ test server where the peak number of players before they had the great player wipe fiasco (thanks Brad *chuckle*) was around 800. The server was pretty bare more of my early time there. What you did though was make friends and then plan future events. Also, the popular leveling spots were usually always filled with people as well, so the problem of this was not an issue, even on low population servers.
If the game has so low populations that it is like Vanguard, well... they will have other issues to be concerned about.
As I mentioned before - Vanguard was still huge, even with the teleportation stones. For example housing areas rarely have been close to any such stones.
And these havent been introduced back when Vanguard deterioated to a ghost town. They made their first such network pretty quickly.
Assuming all else goes according to plan, if servers are created (or reduced) accordingly, population really shouldn't be an issue.
Pantheon, much like EQ, is also a different kind of game from those released in recent years. I believe people will find things are more challenging, more social, and that there is more worthwhile goals to achieve in the long term. Those things have been the failing of MMOs in the last decade, and the cause of their population issues.
As I mentioned before - Vanguard was still huge, even with the teleportation stones. For example housing areas rarely have been close to any such stones.
And these havent been introduced back when Vanguard deterioated to a ghost town. They made their first such network pretty quickly.
Vanguards design directions for most of its life have been SoE ones, not Brad's "Vision". So the edition of such was more of a SoE approach which many of us who played EQ had problems with (ie many left due to Smeds design direction). You can even read about Brad and Smedlys differing in opinion as it concerns design goals as well. Smedly believed in a more mainstream focus of design, attending to the wide audience and appealing to casual play influences.
There is nothing wrong with that, but it is important when we look at where Pantheon is heading and how it concerns EQ/Vanguard. That is, Brad's Vanguard design, not that of SoE's changes in design direction.
The Riftway is divided into three separate networks; these networks are
connected through riftstones located at altars all around the world. Not
all altars have active riftstones, however.
In order to use the Riftway you must have a riftway shard in your
inventory, these shards can be found on any general goods vendor and are
relatively inexpensive.
Once you have purchased a shard you must establish a link between at
least two riftstones on the same network. In order to activate a
riftstone for future use you must travel to its location and click on
it. Once you have at least two riftstones active you may travel between
them, each time you travel you lose one riftway shard.
When selecting a destination you will have a series of locations to choose from:
While you can see all network riftstone locations from this menu, you can only travel to the ones you have activated.
Connected to all networks are riftstones located in the cities of New
Targonor, Ahgram, and Tawar Galan. These riftstones only contain enough
energy for you to travel to them and can not send you to other
destinations.
The three networks that make up the Riftway are divided up by the level of the content surrounding their locations
The following is a list of the three networks and the location of the riftstones: Network I
Wildgrowth Forest
Magi Hold
Blighted Lands
Lomshir Plain
Qa Riverbank
Strand of the Ancients
Coterie Infineum Sanctuary
Renton Keep
The Deebs
Vault of Heroes
Tawar Galan*
Ahgram*
New Targonor* Network II
River Palace
Jathred’s Twist
Zossyr Hakrel
Ruins of Vol Tuniel
Frostshard Lake
Beranid Hills
Tawar Galan*
Ahgram*
New Targonor* Network III
Plains of Anguish
Flordiel
Razad
Wyrmwing Slopes
Pankor Zhi
Tawar Galan*
Ahgram*
New Targonor* * These destinations can be traveled to from any riftstone; however, you can not travel to any riftstone from them.
---
Well, and about this constant defense "but thats what SOE did": SOE took over a good chunk of Sigil employees, and it was these employees who have been mainly in charge. One can some of the bigger changes of course "blame" on SOE, like the fact that there was no more race class restrictions once they had their "freemium" (or however thats written) system and a shop which, among other things, allowed race (and gender and name) changes. But I dont think this defense works for every detail.
And by the way, some of these SOE employees are now working on Pantheon.
P.s.: Hmm there is no such thing as "quote" in this forum ? Oh well.
I will admit my experience with Vanguard is limited, so I will concede such experience to you. I will say though that Pantheon's focus is not to be EQ or Vanguard, but a spiritual successor that tries to take what was best of both (and many things learned over the years in other games).
One thing I know is that making travel too fast and the world loses its vast mystery. This has always been the case with every game I have played that had easy travel. Being that this game is trying to bring back what is lost in the market today, I would rather have them be overly cautious with such features and appraise the need for adjustment later, than overshoot such. Once you have destroyed a game with fast travel, there is no turning back.
EQ1 had fast travel options - druids and wizards. If Pantheon has NO fast travel options it would be a massive failure.
The chance of Pantheon not having fast travel options of some sort = zero
I think what is meant about fast travel is the instant travel hubs where any class can port around the world at will with ease. That is what they did with Planes of Power and what most mainstream games these days do with fast ports all over the world.
EQ had fast travel with classes, but it was limited. You had to have a wizard/druid and they had to be of the level to actually port other people (level 20+) and be of the level to which that spell was accessible (which varied).
I had a 2nd account that had a max level druid and a wiz for getting around.
Most multi account players had a pocket druid at least.
In the early days of EQ, most people didn't have serious alts due to the leveling requirements being so heavy. Later on, multi-boxing using multiple machines started to be done, but it was limited to specific people (mostly the "hardcore" or tech professionals or enthusiasts). I didn't start to see it be very common until maybe 4-5 years after its release if I remember right. Though after then when utils were created to allow multi-boxing on a single machine, it became a lot more common.
Even then, we are talking about someone having to put a heck of a lot of effort into boxing those toons up in level to be able to achieve such. If people want to put in such effort, fine... more power to them, though the one thing that irritated me about it was people started whining about it taking too long to level and how it got in the way of them playing an alt. Among other things, it was what I remembered as the beginning of the end for most games as people started complaining about one thing after another, pushing the demands a bit more and a bit more with each game as time went on to the point of ending up with game systems everyone claimed they wanted, but somehow they get easily bored with. /shrug
I don't know if they've announced it yet but has there been any talk or mention of a time frame for Alpha access? Once that opens up, I will be subscribing and participating in Alpha for Pantheon. I cannot wait.
As a fan of fantasy art in general, and unique sounding places to visit that appear straight on the worlds map, this map really gets me stoked to travel and adventure in this world.
Side Note: I would reccomend zooming in all the way on the image to get the detail of each tile area's.
So far my favorite places listed on the map are: "Thronefast (Avendyr's Seat)" "Tower of the Reckless Magician" "Skargol" "The Broken Maw"
What do you guys think of the new map? Anything else interesting you noticed while looking at the map?
I hate to be that guy, but it looks kind of "meh".
One of these is not even an MMO, and yet it has far more detail. The geology even looks halfway believable. PROTF's map seems more geared toward... selling the concepts, I guess? The buildings are huge, compared to the terrain. The terrain itself is very minimal, and jarring. You have a forest, right next to some islands, next to a huge waterfall (where is the watershed for that drainage feature, I wonder... north? Those mountains appear to have a lower elevation). What's that huge purple cauldron/vortex thing? I dunno... seems very "Themepark", like I'd need to buy a ticket to get in to "Tasrin's Gaze" (look how huge that building is!).
Again, let's compare this to a master of mapwork, Tolkien. Notice how everything flows? There is clear geological continuity, and the cultures that cover the landscape emerge as a result. Pantheon's map appears pock-marked by comparison.
/shrug
That's my critic's five minutes for the day.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Authored 139 missions in VendettaOnline and 6 tracks in Distance
As a fan of fantasy art in general, and unique sounding places to visit that appear straight on the worlds map, this map really gets me stoked to travel and adventure in this world.
Side Note: I would reccomend zooming in all the way on the image to get the detail of each tile area's.
So far my favorite places listed on the map are: "Thronefast (Avendyr's Seat)" "Tower of the Reckless Magician" "Skargol" "The Broken Maw"
What do you guys think of the new map? Anything else interesting you noticed while looking at the map?
I hate to be that guy, but it looks kind of "meh".
One of these is not even an MMO, and yet it has far more detail. The geology even looks halfway believable. PROTF's map seems more geared toward... selling the concepts, I guess? The buildings are huge, compared to the terrain. The terrain itself is very minimal, and jarring. You have a forest, right next to some islands, next to a huge waterfall (where is the watershed for that drainage feature, I wonder... north? Those mountains appear to have a lower elevation). What's that huge purple cauldron/vortex thing? I dunno... seems very "Themepark", like I'd need to buy a ticket to get in to "Tasrin's Gaze" (look how huge that building is!).
Again, let's compare this to a master of mapwork, Tolkien. Notice how everything flows? There is clear geological continuity, and the cultures that cover the landscape emerge as a result. Pantheon's map appears pock-marked by comparison.
/shrug
That's my critic's five minutes for the day.
I would have to say that this is very constructive criticism. When compared to the two maps you mentioned, it's obvious the Pantheon map could use some tweaking to say the least.
Is Pantheon even seamless ? AFAICS it was said it will be levelbased. Is that still true ?
No, it is zone based, like EQ was. The difference between doing it now and doing it then is that machines are much more powerful than they were back then and there are many new techniques that can be used to shorten load times to the point where it should not be an issue.
Yes some landmarks are disproportionate to the scale, but I think they're meant to be rough points-of-interest rather than literal. As an example, The Grazelands in the Morrowind map may be comparable to The Silent Plains in the Pantheon map, which could be comparable to The Commonlands in EQ1. It's too early to tell.
As for the comparison to Tolkien, he is clearly a master who set the gold-standard. Not only that but writing a narrative that you have full control of is very different than creating a sandbox. If the Pantheon team puts something on the map, there's a reasonable expectation that players will get to go there. The map may not make as much realistic, geological sense as Tolkein's but it may be more practical from a game perspective. And finally, the pock-marked style actually fits with the Pantheon lore. The races are returning to Terminus at somewhat random intervals, sometimes only within a year of each other. The places they land seemed to determine how their culture resurfaced. Here's a quote: "What a great mercy that each fell where they did, for the Halflings on Reignfall or the Skar in Whitethaw might’ve yielded a regional bouquet of bloodshed."
I'm intrigued by what we've seen so far and look forward to exploring it in person.
Yes some landmarks are disproportionate to the scale, but I think they're meant to be rough points-of-interest rather than literal. As an example, The Grazelands in the Morrowind map may be comparable to The Silent Plains in the Pantheon map, which could be comparable to The Commonlands in EQ1. It's too early to tell.
As for the comparison to Tolkien, he is clearly a master who set the gold-standard. Not only that but writing a narrative that you have full control of is very different than creating a sandbox. If the Pantheon team puts something on the map, there's a reasonable expectation that players will get to go there. The map may not make as much realistic, geological sense as Tolkein's but it may be more practical from a game perspective. And finally, the pock-marked style actually fits with the Pantheon lore. The races are returning to Terminus at somewhat random intervals, sometimes only within a year of each other. The places they land seemed to determine how their culture resurfaced. Here's a quote: "What a great mercy that each fell where they did, for the Halflings on Reignfall or the Skar in Whitethaw might’ve yielded a regional bouquet of bloodshed."
I'm intrigued by what we've seen so far and look forward to exploring it in person.
Tolkien's map had to be more specific, between that and what little was described through their journeys, you had to put it all together yourself.
In an MMO such as EQ and Pantheon, the map can and should be much more general because they expect you to explore everything yourself. I believe its also eluding to the fact that not everything is known, so its up to you to discover what might be out there.
Yes. But, as mentioned already - Pantheon is zone based. So you're probably seeing the "real" map, thus the zones you can go to. Comparing this to a game like Vanguard or Morrowind that is seamless is, well, not possible.
Yes. But, as mentioned already - Pantheon is zone based. So you're probably seeing the "real" map, thus the zones you can go to. Comparing this to a game like Vanguard or Morrowind that is seamless is, well, not possible.
The Original EQ maps were very similar. They gave very loose and general land marks in relation to each other, but do not specify any more detail as that is up for the player to find out. These maps often do not show the various zones that would be required to be traversed to get to that next general area.
This isn't set in stone, but I thought Brad said that the game at release would have roughly 50 zones. EQ had roughly 60-70 zones at release including cities. The point is, I don't think maps from them are going to give all the details. I would expect them to not give out that information and leave such detailed maps to player run sites who want to provide that info.
I know for myself, I don't use any of those maps until I have learned the zones on my own, they take away the mystery of play.
Oh and BTW everyone, that type of style of map is like EQ in its feel and look. All the maps that came with the early EQ releases were generalized and of that similar style.
As a fan of fantasy art in general, and unique sounding places to visit that appear straight on the worlds map, this map really gets me stoked to travel and adventure in this world.
Side Note: I would reccomend zooming in all the way on the image to get the detail of each tile area's.
So far my favorite places listed on the map are: "Thronefast (Avendyr's Seat)" "Tower of the Reckless Magician" "Skargol" "The Broken Maw"
What do you guys think of the new map? Anything else interesting you noticed while looking at the map?
I hate to be that guy, but it looks kind of "meh".
One of these is not even an MMO, and yet it has far more detail. snip
Naturally a single player game would have more detail. Why would you expect different? Single player games generally do have better maps and graphics. Note that Im not claiming the map couldnt be better, but just pointing out that expecting an mmo to have superior maps than a single player is a faulty expectation.
Morrowind is literally my favorite game of all time, but comparing the map from an alpha MMO in production for barely two years to a fully released game that took 8+ years to make is rediculous.
Morrowind is literally my favorite game of all time, but comparing the map from an alpha MMO in production for barely two years to a fully released game that took 8+ years to make is rediculous.
You asked for opinions, I gave mine. Perhaps you were only looking for opinions that agreed with your own?
There's nothing in your original post indicating that this is a "work in progress" or anything other than the final 'world map' they are going with, hence I was comparing it to what I would consider to be the gold standard in computer game and fantasy lore.
Asking "what do you guys think" and then berating a critical opinion as "rediculous" [sic] makes it look like you are unwilling to accept it as anything other than the best ever, which means that whatever they put out will be perfect. The bar is already met.
You said you were into "fantasy art in general", so I thought my references would have been fair game.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Authored 139 missions in VendettaOnline and 6 tracks in Distance
Naturally a single player game would have more detail. Why would you expect different? Single player games generally do have better maps and graphics. Note that Im not claiming the map couldnt be better, but just pointing out that expecting an mmo to have superior maps than a single player is a faulty expectation.
I don't think this should necessarily be the case. A single player game often has a primary storyline, from which the protagonist may not stray too far (others pointed out that Tolkien's map was somewhat dependent on Bilbo's and Frodo's respective journeys). A MMORPG is a place where thousands of players roam across the world living out virtual existences, hence I would expect it to have more detail, not less.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Authored 139 missions in VendettaOnline and 6 tracks in Distance
Morrowind is literally my favorite game of all time, but comparing the map from an alpha MMO in production for barely two years to a fully released game that took 8+ years to make is rediculous.
You asked for opinions, I gave mine. Perhaps you were only looking for opinions that agreed with your own?
There's nothing in your original post indicating that this is a "work in progress" or anything other than the final 'world map' they are going with, hence I was comparing it to what I would consider to be the gold standard in computer game and fantasy lore.
Asking "what do you guys think" and then berating a critical opinion as "rediculous" [sic] makes it look like you are unwilling to accept it as anything other than the best ever, which means that whatever they put out will be perfect. The bar is already met.
You said you were into "fantasy art in general", so I thought my references would have been fair game.
I think your comparison was a level headed opinion and presented some constructive criticism. I also think it was presented well and didn't do anything besides state a few facts. I would agree that the two maps you posted were much better lol. However it's not a deal breaker for me personally.
Morrowind is literally my favorite game of all time, but comparing the map from an alpha MMO in production for barely two years to a fully released game that took 8+ years to make is rediculous.
You asked for opinions, I gave mine. Perhaps you were only looking for opinions that agreed with your own?
There's nothing in your original post indicating that this is a "work in progress" or anything other than the final 'world map' they are going with, hence I was comparing it to what I would consider to be the gold standard in computer game and fantasy lore.
Asking "what do you guys think" and then berating a critical opinion as "rediculous" [sic] makes it look like you are unwilling to accept it as anything other than the best ever, which means that whatever they put out will be perfect. The bar is already met.
You said you were into "fantasy art in general", so I thought my references would have been fair game.
Your jumping to far too many conclusions my man. I 100% respect your opinion, if you think it's "Meh" that's completely understandable, it is underwhelming in the sense that there's not alot "Going on" in the map. It doesnt have those thousands of sprawling sub-cities and rivers and what-not to show.
At the same time, its general knoweldge that Pantheon is in a pre-alpha, its safe to assume anything you read or see about Pantheon for the next couple of years will be a work in progress.
So yeah no reason to get so easily offended, its fine to dislike something, its another thing to compare a team of 8 people's work to a AAA company or one of the greatest literary authors of our time though haha.
I just would like to point out that Morrowind was actually pretty barren and repetitive and that most of these cities only repeated the same graphic elements over and over again, with only a few exceptions. Same for the dungeons. There was like over a hundred of them, but graphically these have been three different types, and these all had the same graphic elements repeated over and over.
By simply having an own set of graphic elements and an own look for each of the locations mentioned on that map Pantheon would already be far superior to Morrowind.
I really dont get why people here refer to Morrowind as a kind of reference. It had a really bad rulesystem, maybe the worst of all games I've ever played. Most importantly it monitored everything you did. And it didnt even attempted for any sort of balance. The only thing that was really somewhat fun was the main quest and the guild quests. Otherwise the game felt gray, boring and empty.
A MMORPG is a place where thousands of players roam across the world living out virtual existences, hence I would expect it to have more detail, not less.
Why? The entire point of this game is for you to explore and find out the world on your own. I think it would be counter productive to create a detailed map outlining all the areas that you can go, etc... That would be essentially cheating people of the need to play the game to find these things out.
A general map, vague, but giving some basic direction is sufficient to give the impression of the world, but retain the mystery to which the player must explore.
This idea isn't a single player vs multiplayer game concept. Many single player games use nearly identical maps to the Pantheon one above. Might and magic games used the such maps, Ultima, and many other single player games as well as MMO's have used iconic maps which did not detail the world.
Comments
If the game has so low populations that it is like Vanguard, well... they will have other issues to be concerned about.
And these havent been introduced back when Vanguard deterioated to a ghost town. They made their first such network pretty quickly.
Pantheon, much like EQ, is also a different kind of game from those released in recent years. I believe people will find things are more challenging, more social, and that there is more worthwhile goals to achieve in the long term. Those things have been the failing of MMOs in the last decade, and the cause of their population issues.
Vanguards design directions for most of its life have been SoE ones, not Brad's "Vision". So the edition of such was more of a SoE approach which many of us who played EQ had problems with (ie many left due to Smeds design direction). You can even read about Brad and Smedlys differing in opinion as it concerns design goals as well. Smedly believed in a more mainstream focus of design, attending to the wide audience and appealing to casual play influences.
There is nothing wrong with that, but it is important when we look at where Pantheon is heading and how it concerns EQ/Vanguard. That is, Brad's Vanguard design, not that of SoE's changes in design direction.
The first version looked like this: http://www.silkyvenom.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19801
--
Labyrrinth "Using the Vanguard Riftway aka Riftstones Explained" 04-25-2007, 04:27 PM
The Riftway is divided into three separate networks; these networks are connected through riftstones located at altars all around the world. Not all altars have active riftstones, however.
In order to use the Riftway you must have a riftway shard in your inventory, these shards can be found on any general goods vendor and are relatively inexpensive.
Once you have purchased a shard you must establish a link between at least two riftstones on the same network. In order to activate a riftstone for future use you must travel to its location and click on it. Once you have at least two riftstones active you may travel between them, each time you travel you lose one riftway shard.
When selecting a destination you will have a series of locations to choose from:
While you can see all network riftstone locations from this menu, you can only travel to the ones you have activated.
Connected to all networks are riftstones located in the cities of New Targonor, Ahgram, and Tawar Galan. These riftstones only contain enough energy for you to travel to them and can not send you to other destinations.
The three networks that make up the Riftway are divided up by the level of the content surrounding their locations
The following is a list of the three networks and the location of the riftstones:
Network I
Wildgrowth Forest
Magi Hold
Blighted Lands
Lomshir Plain
Qa Riverbank
Strand of the Ancients
Coterie Infineum Sanctuary
Renton Keep
The Deebs
Vault of Heroes
Tawar Galan*
Ahgram*
New Targonor*
Network II
River Palace
Jathred’s Twist
Zossyr Hakrel
Ruins of Vol Tuniel
Frostshard Lake
Beranid Hills
Tawar Galan*
Ahgram*
New Targonor*
Network III
Plains of Anguish
Flordiel
Razad
Wyrmwing Slopes
Pankor Zhi
Tawar Galan*
Ahgram*
New Targonor*
* These destinations can be traveled to from any riftstone; however, you can not travel to any riftstone from them.
---
Well, and about this constant defense "but thats what SOE did": SOE took over a good chunk of Sigil employees, and it was these employees who have been mainly in charge. One can some of the bigger changes of course "blame" on SOE, like the fact that there was no more race class restrictions once they had their "freemium" (or however thats written) system and a shop which, among other things, allowed race (and gender and name) changes. But I dont think this defense works for every detail.
And by the way, some of these SOE employees are now working on Pantheon.
P.s.: Hmm there is no such thing as "quote" in this forum ? Oh well.
One thing I know is that making travel too fast and the world loses its vast mystery. This has always been the case with every game I have played that had easy travel. Being that this game is trying to bring back what is lost in the market today, I would rather have them be overly cautious with such features and appraise the need for adjustment later, than overshoot such. Once you have destroyed a game with fast travel, there is no turning back.
Even then, we are talking about someone having to put a heck of a lot of effort into boxing those toons up in level to be able to achieve such. If people want to put in such effort, fine... more power to them, though the one thing that irritated me about it was people started whining about it taking too long to level and how it got in the way of them playing an alt. Among other things, it was what I remembered as the beginning of the end for most games as people started complaining about one thing after another, pushing the demands a bit more and a bit more with each game as time went on to the point of ending up with game systems everyone claimed they wanted, but somehow they get easily bored with. /shrug
I don't know if they've announced it yet but has there been any talk or mention of a time frame for Alpha access? Once that opens up, I will be subscribing and participating in Alpha for Pantheon. I cannot wait.
Compare to Morrowind, Game of the Year Edition's map (2003).
One of these is not even an MMO, and yet it has far more detail. The geology even looks halfway believable. PROTF's map seems more geared toward... selling the concepts, I guess? The buildings are huge, compared to the terrain. The terrain itself is very minimal, and jarring. You have a forest, right next to some islands, next to a huge waterfall (where is the watershed for that drainage feature, I wonder... north? Those mountains appear to have a lower elevation). What's that huge purple cauldron/vortex thing? I dunno... seems very "Themepark", like I'd need to buy a ticket to get in to "Tasrin's Gaze" (look how huge that building is!).
Again, let's compare this to a master of mapwork, Tolkien. Notice how everything flows? There is clear geological continuity, and the cultures that cover the landscape emerge as a result. Pantheon's map appears pock-marked by comparison.
/shrug
That's my critic's five minutes for the day.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
Yes some landmarks are disproportionate to the scale, but I think they're meant to be rough points-of-interest rather than literal. As an example, The Grazelands in the Morrowind map may be comparable to The Silent Plains in the Pantheon map, which could be comparable to The Commonlands in EQ1. It's too early to tell.
As for the comparison to Tolkien, he is clearly a master who set the gold-standard. Not only that but writing a narrative that you have full control of is very different than creating a sandbox. If the Pantheon team puts something on the map, there's a reasonable expectation that players will get to go there. The map may not make as much realistic, geological sense as Tolkein's but it may be more practical from a game perspective.
And finally, the pock-marked style actually fits with the Pantheon lore. The races are returning to Terminus at somewhat random intervals, sometimes only within a year of each other. The places they land seemed to determine how their culture resurfaced. Here's a quote: "What a great mercy that each fell where they did, for the Halflings on Reignfall or the Skar in Whitethaw might’ve yielded a regional bouquet of bloodshed."
I'm intrigued by what we've seen so far and look forward to exploring it in person.
In an MMO such as EQ and Pantheon, the map can and should be much more general because they expect you to explore everything yourself. I believe its also eluding to the fact that not everything is known, so its up to you to discover what might be out there.
This isn't set in stone, but I thought Brad said that the game at release would have roughly 50 zones. EQ had roughly 60-70 zones at release including cities. The point is, I don't think maps from them are going to give all the details. I would expect them to not give out that information and leave such detailed maps to player run sites who want to provide that info.
I know for myself, I don't use any of those maps until I have learned the zones on my own, they take away the mystery of play.
Oh and BTW everyone, that type of style of map is like EQ in its feel and look. All the maps that came with the early EQ releases were generalized and of that similar style.
Naturally a single player game would have more detail. Why would you expect different? Single player games generally do have better maps and graphics. Note that Im not claiming the map couldnt be better, but just pointing out that expecting an mmo to have superior maps than a single player is a faulty expectation.
There's nothing in your original post indicating that this is a "work in progress" or anything other than the final 'world map' they are going with, hence I was comparing it to what I would consider to be the gold standard in computer game and fantasy lore.
Asking "what do you guys think" and then berating a critical opinion as "rediculous" [sic] makes it look like you are unwilling to accept it as anything other than the best ever, which means that whatever they put out will be perfect. The bar is already met.
You said you were into "fantasy art in general", so I thought my references would have been fair game.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
I don't think this should necessarily be the case. A single player game often has a primary storyline, from which the protagonist may not stray too far (others pointed out that Tolkien's map was somewhat dependent on Bilbo's and Frodo's respective journeys). A MMORPG is a place where thousands of players roam across the world living out virtual existences, hence I would expect it to have more detail, not less.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
At the same time, its general knoweldge that Pantheon is in a pre-alpha, its safe to assume anything you read or see about Pantheon for the next couple of years will be a work in progress.
So yeah no reason to get so easily offended, its fine to dislike something, its another thing to compare a team of 8 people's work to a AAA company or one of the greatest literary authors of our time though haha.
By simply having an own set of graphic elements and an own look for each of the locations mentioned on that map Pantheon would already be far superior to Morrowind.
I really dont get why people here refer to Morrowind as a kind of reference. It had a really bad rulesystem, maybe the worst of all games I've ever played. Most importantly it monitored everything you did. And it didnt even attempted for any sort of balance. The only thing that was really somewhat fun was the main quest and the guild quests. Otherwise the game felt gray, boring and empty.
Why? The entire point of this game is for you to explore and find out the world on your own. I think it would be counter productive to create a detailed map outlining all the areas that you can go, etc... That would be essentially cheating people of the need to play the game to find these things out.
A general map, vague, but giving some basic direction is sufficient to give the impression of the world, but retain the mystery to which the player must explore.
This idea isn't a single player vs multiplayer game concept. Many single player games use nearly identical maps to the Pantheon one above. Might and magic games used the such maps, Ultima, and many other single player games as well as MMO's have used iconic maps which did not detail the world.