Game started development in early-mid 2015 when Chris Perkins revived the dead project, drastically changing almost everything about it but the name in the process, and it then slowly started to form the new game on the backs of a skeleton crew for the first year. The last two years has seen the team hire legitimate talent in programming and art, and they've now secured enough investment money (Series B funding) to see them through to launch.
With the team looking to expand by roughly 10-15 people in the next month or two, mostly artists and animators, they should be able to make a huge push on world building in 2019, especially now since all twelve classes and most races (M and F) are in the game. A lot still needs to happen for this game to be a success, but since Chris took the day to day development over from Brad, the project has been on an upward trajectory.
In terms of other big western MMOs, Ashes is probably too PvP oriented, and Elyria is doing some new things, but not sure people want their character to be forced into perma-death eventually. I certainly do not. Aion 2 might be in that mix, probably not.
I think there is a big market for the game they are trying to make, even if younger gamers don't really know it yet. Everyone likes challenge and strategy, bringing that back to the genre is good. Bringing back some of the iconic EQ1 classes and the support role is a good thing as well. The negative aspects of EQ1, specifically the tediousness, they can limit or remove most of that. Now, in terms of sub numbers, we'll have to see, I don't expect anything near WoW though.
I've gone from "this game is vaporware", which it absolutely was, to "this new guy seems to know what he's doing, maybe....", to "this game might actually launch by 2025", to "not entirely sure how it happened, but this game looks legitimately promising", which is where I'm at now. I'm still not sold they can deliver on their promises, but as they hire quality and proven talent and the streams continue to show improvement, I think it's more likely than not that this thing could be decent.
When the mind behind the project is known for booming and busting vaporwares, no reason to think the result will be different from all the shit trail left as a track record.
Are you quite sure you know what Brad's history is? Or perhaps you don't realize the term vaporware doesn't mean what you think it does?
Thanks soooo much @Kyleran, But I can't just let it go with a simple "agree" in this case.
Brad's intention was to give the people a GREAT experience.
I deeply feel he is not money driven or seeking fame. He does it because he has thoughts and visions that we all have. BUT his is able to "our thoughts to reality !
Sure he may have screwed up... He is capable of this as anyone, maybe even more in that respect. But his intentions were not with ill intentions !!!!!!!
NOW his reputation is hurt. Give him GREAT credit to repair his name... This to me is honor !!!!
When the mind behind the project is known for booming and busting vaporwares, no reason to think the result will be different from all the shit trail left as a track record.
Are you quite sure you know what Brad's history is? Or perhaps you don't realize the term vaporware doesn't mean what you think it does?
Thanks soooo much @Kyleran, But I can't just let it go with a simple "agree" in this case.
Brad's intention was to give the people a GREAT experience.
I deeply feel he is not money driven or seeking fame. He does it because he has thoughts and visions that we all have. BUT his is able to "our thoughts to reality !
Sure he may have screwed up... He is capable of this as anyone, maybe even more in that respect. But his intentions were not with ill intentions !!!!!!!
NOW his reputation is hurt. Give him GREAT credit to repair his name... This to me is honor !!!!
I am a bit more pragmatic, like most of us he needs to make a living so he is chosing to do so by working on something he loves which is always the best way to work if one can make it happen.
I am a great skeptic, I remain unconvinced anyone can deliver a full featured MMORPG on a low budget without there being significant trade offs somewhere, be it graphics, features, quality and as we clearly have seen in most every case, in a very timely fashion.
As for Brad himself, being almost perfect and without fault myself......LOL, yeah right, everyone makes mistakes, me included and I'm one to believe people can redeem themselves.
That said, I'm not putting any money in until I see there is an actual game to evaluate whether it's worth buying.
There is no point however to endlessly slag on peoples hopes and dreams, it probably appears I do this at times, but my goal isn't to perpetually rain on the parade, only to try and convince folks to have more realistic expectations.
And of course, make sure they are being very "accurate" in their definition and usage of terminology
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I think more people like talking about this game than will actually play it for longer than 3 months
It's defiantly gonna be buggy as hell, more so than most, I'll put up with that.
Coding will be my issue, if it's unrepairable maybe not
Sorry, I don't understand you. You're okay with the game being buggy, but then claim that 'coding will be (your) issue'. How are bugs in a game not related to coding? I think you may have a different idea of what coding is than the normal usage of the word.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
I think the game will release. But I don't think it will be what people expect.
I think more accurately it will be released and be exactly what the developers said it would be but "people" will have already created some sort of thing in their mind that the developers never had intended or never could do.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
I think the game will release. But I don't think it will be what people expect.
I think more accurately it will be released and be exactly what the developers said it would be but "people" will have already created some sort of thing in their mind that the developers never had intended or never could do.
That is a failure to manage customer expectations. I hope it doesn't bite them too harshly.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
I think the game will release. But I don't think it will be what people expect.
I think more accurately it will be released and be exactly what the developers said it would be but "people" will have already created some sort of thing in their mind that the developers never had intended or never could do.
This is a true statement that I think about in the back of my mind too. With only pug videos it's all just a game left to ALL OUR imagination's.
We need to see cities, npc's, crafting, auctions even a little solo play.
People talk about, will this game be released ! I'm 100% convinced, but to be honest I could understand why people could think that ! From what were seeing, it could be only 5% done.
I think the game will release. But I don't think it will be what people expect.
I think more accurately it will be released and be exactly what the developers said it would be but "people" will have already created some sort of thing in their mind that the developers never had intended or never could do.
That is a failure to manage customer expectations. I hope it doesn't bite them too harshly.
nah, players are their own worst enemies.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
I’m pretty sure the game will release but what state will it
be in is a whole another matter. I guess
it depends on how much money Brad snorted up his nose ;D!
It is a crowd funded Indie game,what serious expectations do people have? People often mentioned EQ1?How much did that game actually cost to make,i would bet VERY little.
That was a THOUGHT...idea in 1996 and was already in BETA testing the next year ROFLMAO.
IS this really what ANYONE wants,another indie game,1 year of effort or lack of? Now obviously this team is likely smaller,had to get their own money and is taking longer.Well a lot of EQ1 was very low end work so obviously Visionary has to step it up a bit visually and wil take more time.
With size of team what can we expect for actual game design with a smaller team?Well after 3-5 years,imo that would be like 1-3 years.Well it was a kickstarter in 2014 so not likely any serious development started until 2015.So it has been 3 years,that is as i stated about 1 year...maybe of a serious team,like those 150-300 man teams the big guys like Square Enix have.
So on the notion of HOW MUCH is done or in a good state,MAYBE 33%.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
This game has been in production forever. Brad is great at setting high expectations and then not hitting any of them. He is a sell out to the MMO community. Look at what he has done in the past. He sold out Everquest, Sold out Vanguard (firing the whole team in a parking lot and not even man enough to show up) saying SOE would not be involved and then selling out to SOE again, this game has been in production for what 5 years or so now with a release date of 2020? Seriously? It's vaporware. If it is released it will be crap and unfinished. They will get their money from those stupid enough to buy it and they will dump it to SOE most likely (if not before hand).
There is the saying "Don't Hold Your Breath" that applies here. SOE, Brad and Smedly are the worst things to ever happen to MMO's.
You are so wrong in every way word you typed in this post. You dont know anything of the his history or what happened during his time at Verant/sony or with Vanguard.
Brad is actually pretty intelligent. This time he and his founders are in charge of the decision being made. The only thing slowing them down will be money.
Brad has proven NOT being anything near a vaporware in the gaming industry. What happened to Vanguard was out of his hands. Microsoft had a change in management those people wanted to release Vanguard early and as a frigging shooter. Eventually Sony Online said yes to fund the production but ONLY for 6 month and at thatt time the game needed a year to get in a good playable state, there were NO OPTIMIZATION due to funding cut short from SoE at that time. Brad wasnt unhappy with this but thankfulll that Smedley from SoE gave Vanguard a chance, but as all know it wasnt enough, and this wasnt Smedley's fault either but the money bag that they could afford use on that project.
Vanguard was a good game though with issues, one of the better still eventhough its closed. It was unfinished and when released the dev team was too small to cope with it. The Raiding part was very good something I enjoyed quite a bit. I quit not due to the state of the game but the officers in my guild who was blindsided by Everquest 1 tactics and thinking instead of seeing the mechanics in the raid content. They wasted peoples time and did not want to listen at all and they had issues with /telling players to controle agro eventhough the agro mechanics was somewhat problematic (hence no player could be at fault at that time)
My point is that Brad can make games and good games but as with every other games funding needs to be there and this time I think he has played it smart and its working.
Will Pantheon be released, yes I am pretty sure it will be unless funding becomes an issue (but this goes for all games in production). Will it be for everyone, no I do not think so. What I do hope is that it gets enough support from players so they can keep on building the game with cool features , expansions, fixing the ongoing bugs that all games has etc.
We hear all the time that people want to go back to old school, group based gaming, but will these same people support this with their wallets is the question?...Let's not forget most EQ1 players that started in 99 are probably in their 40s with families now....The current group to impress if you want to make money are the younger ones.
I think the game will release. But I don't think it will be what people expect.
I think more accurately it will be released and be exactly what the developers said it would be but "people" will have already created some sort of thing in their mind that the developers never had intended or never could do.
That is a failure to manage customer expectations. I hope it doesn't bite them too harshly.
nah, players are their own worst enemies.
I wish this site had agree X 1000. I have felt like that since I started on this site.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
We hear all the time that people want to go back to old school, group based gaming, but will these same people support this with their wallets is the question?...Let's not forget most EQ1 players that started in 99 are probably in their 40s with families now....The current group to impress if you want to make money are the younger ones.
They'll all flock to it just like all them "hard core raiders" flocked to Wildstar after it was built around their wishes. Oh, wait.
It's a bit more complex than that.
Did hard core raiders "not" flock to the game or was it that there weren't really enough hardcore raiders to support the game? Isn't hardcore raiding just done by 10% or less of a community?
Could it also be the setting and general game play of wildstar? I mean, I'm for open world exploration games. If Wildstar was that type of game (yes I know it had exploratory elements but not what I'm looking for) I still wouldn't play it because I just didn't like the setting.
So saying a game is for "hardcore raiders" means nothing if they just don't like the game/setting/game play.
Another example, Fallout 3 + 4 should be exactly my type of game but I find post apocalyptic anything just dull.
A lot of things go into capturing a player.
I don't think there will be any issues with Pantheon capturing players' imaginations but will there be enough players who find it interesting? That is the real question.
Pantheon is not going to capture a lot of younger players just because it seems a lot of younger players just won't have the attention span and patience. It will capture "some" younger players, the outliers.
Also, per Theocritus' post, not everyone the age to play Everquest at launch has families.
It's the players who don't have such things or the players who have retired who might find the game interesting if Pantheon does have large time sink elements.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Wildstar failed because it in no way was designed for its apparent audience: Same meaningless, tedious lvling experience and questhubs that all casual mmos have. Very tedious attunement cycle to access raids.
Neither of those things are high on raiders lists - even most your die hard vanilla WoW fans will tell you the access quests to raids were the sucky part of vanilla - because large raids means big guilds and likely a frequent turnover of members, this means constantly having to run trivial content to attune the next wave of replacements - gearing new players is time consuming enough, rerunning non raid crap constantly is an unwanted extra hoop.
So, Wildstars failure came from failing miserably to understand the audience it claimed to target, not from deciding to target a specific audience. As it happens Pantheon could suffer a similar fate - picking too much of the crap that EQ1 had in its attempt to capture the essence of old school, inadvertently taking the worst aspects instead of leaving them behind. Only time will tell (it doesn't help that even the fanbase cannot agree what aspects should be left behind)
So many Oracles in this post..think they have figured it all out.. Cant wait for the game to be released- just so I can invite you over for tea and a good piece of humble pie!
We hear all the time that people want to go back to old school, group based gaming, but will these same people support this with their wallets is the question?...Let's not forget most EQ1 players that started in 99 are probably in their 40s with families now....The current group to impress if you want to make money are the younger ones.
You should also consider the overall appeal. Human nature doesn't change. What did EQ1 offer that appealed to players in 1999 that's currently not available in 2018? There is a whole new and younger demographic almost 20 years later who have never "been there, done that". The real question is......can Brad re-capture that missing element?
See the thing about nostalgia is, it's always better as a memory not practice. Folks don't want the actual thing, they want the time and setting to return. Those types of feels are meant to be temporary in the present. Some of those features we remember were actually symptoms of technological limitation.
Good luck though.
"As far as the forum code of conduct, I would think it's a bit outdated and in need of a refre *CLOSED*"
Comments
With the team looking to expand by roughly 10-15 people in the next month or two, mostly artists and animators, they should be able to make a huge push on world building in 2019, especially now since all twelve classes and most races (M and F) are in the game. A lot still needs to happen for this game to be a success, but since Chris took the day to day development over from Brad, the project has been on an upward trajectory.
In terms of other big western MMOs, Ashes is probably too PvP oriented, and Elyria is doing some new things, but not sure people want their character to be forced into perma-death eventually. I certainly do not. Aion 2 might be in that mix, probably not.
I think there is a big market for the game they are trying to make, even if younger gamers don't really know it yet. Everyone likes challenge and strategy, bringing that back to the genre is good. Bringing back some of the iconic EQ1 classes and the support role is a good thing as well. The negative aspects of EQ1, specifically the tediousness, they can limit or remove most of that. Now, in terms of sub numbers, we'll have to see, I don't expect anything near WoW though.
I've gone from "this game is vaporware", which it absolutely was, to "this new guy seems to know what he's doing, maybe....", to "this game might actually launch by 2025", to "not entirely sure how it happened, but this game looks legitimately promising", which is where I'm at now. I'm still not sold they can deliver on their promises, but as they hire quality and proven talent and the streams continue to show improvement, I think it's more likely than not that this thing could be decent.
But I can't just let it go with a simple "agree" in this case.
Brad's intention was to give the people a GREAT experience.
I deeply feel he is not money driven or seeking fame. He does it because he has thoughts and visions that we all have. BUT his is able to "our thoughts to reality !
Sure he may have screwed up... He is capable of this as anyone, maybe even more in that respect. But his intentions were not with ill intentions !!!!!!!
NOW his reputation is hurt. Give him GREAT credit to repair his name... This to me is honor !!!!
I am a great skeptic, I remain unconvinced anyone can deliver a full featured MMORPG on a low budget without there being significant trade offs somewhere, be it graphics, features, quality and as we clearly have seen in most every case, in a very timely fashion.
As for Brad himself, being almost perfect and without fault myself......LOL, yeah right, everyone makes mistakes, me included and I'm one to believe people can redeem themselves.
That said, I'm not putting any money in until I see there is an actual game to evaluate whether it's worth buying.
There is no point however to endlessly slag on peoples hopes and dreams, it probably appears I do this at times, but my goal isn't to perpetually rain on the parade, only to try and convince folks to have more realistic expectations.
And of course, make sure they are being very "accurate" in their definition and usage of terminology
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
Coding will be my issue, if it's unrepairable maybe not
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
We need to see cities, npc's, crafting, auctions even a little solo play.
People talk about, will this game be released !
I'm 100% convinced, but to be honest I could understand why people could think that !
From what were seeing, it could be only 5% done.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I’m pretty sure the game will release but what state will it be in is a whole another matter. I guess it depends on how much money Brad snorted up his nose ;D!
People often mentioned EQ1?How much did that game actually cost to make,i would bet VERY little.
That was a THOUGHT...idea in 1996 and was already in BETA testing the next year ROFLMAO.
IS this really what ANYONE wants,another indie game,1 year of effort or lack of?
Now obviously this team is likely smaller,had to get their own money and is taking longer.Well a lot of EQ1 was very low end work so obviously Visionary has to step it up a bit visually and wil take more time.
With size of team what can we expect for actual game design with a smaller team?Well after 3-5 years,imo that would be like 1-3 years.Well it was a kickstarter in 2014 so not likely any serious development started until 2015.So it has been 3 years,that is as i stated about 1 year...maybe of a serious team,like those 150-300 man teams the big guys like Square Enix have.
So on the notion of HOW MUCH is done or in a good state,MAYBE 33%.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Proud MMORPG.com member since March 2004! Make PvE GREAT Again!
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Same meaningless, tedious lvling experience and questhubs that all casual mmos have.
Very tedious attunement cycle to access raids.
Neither of those things are high on raiders lists - even most your die hard vanilla WoW fans will tell you the access quests to raids were the sucky part of vanilla - because large raids means big guilds and likely a frequent turnover of members, this means constantly having to run trivial content to attune the next wave of replacements - gearing new players is time consuming enough, rerunning non raid crap constantly is an unwanted extra hoop.
So, Wildstars failure came from failing miserably to understand the audience it claimed to target, not from deciding to target a specific audience.
As it happens Pantheon could suffer a similar fate - picking too much of the crap that EQ1 had in its attempt to capture the essence of old school, inadvertently taking the worst aspects instead of leaving them behind. Only time will tell (it doesn't help that even the fanbase cannot agree what aspects should be left behind)
mmorpg junkie since 1999
Good luck though.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯