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

Chukzombi

Chukzombi

Millie's Staff Member
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as far as i know quaid is the only Brad Mquaidian follower still here, even dumar and kyndread gave up on defending him. and now that you have thoroughly squashed the only sliver of hope about his Dear Leader hopefully he will stop playing games like , "brad took all the money because the project was failing". without even considering for a second that perhaps that brad taking all the money out of the project is exactly what caused the project to fail in the first place. if they had left all the cash in the kitty and brad actually rolled up his sleeves and devoted all his time and efforts into making pantheon a success it still would have failed, but at least they would have had much more to show for it . at least much more than we got now which is a high school computer class's homework using unity and some lore that 12 year old goth girls think up between trips to the bathroom to cut their arms with razor blades.
 
Quaid

Quaid

Trump's Staff
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I'm not defending shit. I don't give a fuck if McQuaid dies in an oxycontin fueled motorcycle accident. I'm just saying I wouldn't have given the likes of Salim Grant a thin red cent.
 
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Ceder_sl

shitlord
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Frenzic_sl said:
Yea I know you didn't, but others did. Quaid I think and maybe a few others? Kind of crazy that people would doubt it with all the evidence that was out there. Hopefully this sures everything up. Also I'd like to point out that Brad's claim was that he took 45k as an advance. We still aren't entirely sure where the rest of the money went. Salim said only about 70k went to the team of 10 or 11 devs. Someone mentioned that 20k was paid to Chris, which may be true and would make sense. I just assumed anything over 75k was taken by Brad in one form or another.
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According to the email though he didnt claim he took 45k. He signed off on the statements that he took 38% of 145k, which when you tally it, its appx $55,100 bucks. That's a rather significant difference and due to the email, that is where we can at the very minimum attest to what he absconded with. If there is documentation of him explicitly saying that he only took 45k, then the discrepancy of 10k would be even more damning because he was giving conflicting information.
 
Quaid

Quaid

Trump's Staff
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Ceder_sl said:
According to the email though he didnt claim he took 45k. He signed off on the statements that he took 38% of 145k, which when you tally it, its appx $55,100 bucks. That's a rather significant difference and due to the email, that is where we can at the very minimum attest to what he absconded with. If there is documentation of him explicitly saying that he only took 45k, then the discrepancy of 10k would be even more damning because he was giving conflicting information.
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To be accurate, the email says he took '38% of what was left' of the 145k. It does not say he took 38% of 145k. If that is in fact the case, it is worded very poorly.
 
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Ceder_sl

shitlord
272
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Quaid_sl said:
To be accurate, the email says he took '38% of what was left' of the 145k. It does not say he took 38% of 145k. If that is in fact the case, it is worded very poorly.
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Correct. However, the ambiguity of what he means by "left" doesn't come out to 45k. Even in the most minimal case scenario, if you trying to play it that said 35k was also denied by the trust fund guy in addition to the 200k more, then 145k-35k=110k which 38% of that is not 45k either. However the sentence after that contextually gives the reader the impression that only the 200k was denied and not the 35k ("brad thought the rest would come in"). So most or least case scenario, it still has the numbers not adding up to the 45k marker.

And again all of which, no matter the total, is still his signing off on his misappropriation of the funds.

Also to date, there is no transparency/proof that he ever made good on the mortgage or asset liquidation plans either, that Im aware of.
 
Tauro

Tauro

Bronze Knight of the Realm
371
26
After the failed KS, there was a very small window of opportunity (1-2 weeks) to get the project back on track. Scale down to 4-5 people and really work hard on a true prototype until the end of the year. Even after various expenses (software, legal stuff, etc.) and backpay for half the team no longer needed there would have been ~100k left. If they really loved making MMOs 100k should be more than enough for 5 people until Dec 2014. After that chance was gone and Brad taking a big chunk of the money, it was over.

Everything you could do wrong, Brad did it. Its quite funny really how one man can do so much wrong, its like he was constantly thinking "what is the right way, yep, lets do it the other way"...
 
Vandyn

Vandyn

Blackwing Lair Raider
3,656
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Tauro_sl said:
After the failed KS, there was a very small window of opportunity (1-2 weeks) to get the project back on track. Scale down to 4-5 people and really work hard on a true prototype until the end of the year. Even after various expenses (software, legal stuff, etc.) and backpay for half the team no longer needed there would have been ~100k left. If they really loved making MMOs 100k should be more than enough for 5 people until Dec 2014. After that chance was gone and Brad taking a big chunk of the money, it was over.

Everything you could do wrong, Brad did it. Its quite funny really how one man can do so much wrong, its like he was constantly thinking "what is the right way, yep, lets do it the other way"...
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I thought there was zero opportunity to get the project on the right track after the KS ended because it was highly evident based on numerous comments from the team that they were going to continue on without addressing any of the faults of the KS in the first place. They considered the KS getting 400K a success and just simply assumed that people would just migrate to the website and contribute. Numerous people told them that trying to fund a prototype with another KS (that has a smaller goal) was the way to go and they simply ignored it. It all goes back to the head guy in charge (Brad). I never got the sense there was any sort of real direction in what they were doing, just random stuff and throwing it out there on the KS. Even in interviews half the stuff they said sounded like they thought it up the night before.
 
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delirium_sl

shitlord
217
0
Ceythos_sl said:
I can't speak for the rest, but for myself it wasn't about the money drying up - it was the manner in which it dried up that caused me to walk away. There should have been zero advances for anyone - and certainly in a world where that was acceptable, it should have been openly discussed with the team beforehand (which didn't happen). I never expected to be earning a living wage for at least a year, assuming we weren't fully funded beforehand - and I expected the funds that were coming in would be held in reserve to a point to cover software purchases, licensing, etc so we could keep moving along for the long haul.

Also the notion of backpay is semantics; in the wordage for my first month's contract it included the assistance that I provided leading up to the kickstarter, but I did not receive 'industry standard' pay, nor did I receive additional money for any involvement in the months leading up to the kickstarter (and rightly so; I had no expectation of pay for that time or anything else for that matter unless we fully funded much later down the road).

Could I have been more visible? Absolutely. Since we went into the KS largely on the team's pedigree and Brad's name though I wouldn't have had much to add that would have been of public interest for a few months further into the project. Many folks out there, this community included, had valid concerns and feedback that should have been better listened to. You can throw virtual rocks at me or whatever if I've personally let you guys and gals down.
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First off, to everyone else, how the heck did a post from former dev Ceythos get over looked on here?

Anyway good to hear from ya Ceythos! I am sorry for the way things went down. I hope things are going better for you though. And I totally understand your stance. Money and financial problems can drive wedges in all kinds of places. Sucks that this is what resulted. Thanks for posting your input here and thanks for what you did on VG! Sad that VG will be no more in about a month :-( FWIW, many of the former VG players who were following this game would have liked to hear more from you so don't sell yourself short because of Brad's name and all which doesn't seem to be worth much anymore.
 
Convo

Convo

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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delirium_sl said:
First off, to everyone else, how the heck did a post from former dev Ceythos get over looked on here?

Anyway good to hear from ya Ceythos! I am sorry for the way things went down. I hope things are going better for you though. And I totally understand your stance. Money and financial problems can drive wedges in all kinds of places. Sucks that this is what resulted. Thanks for posting your input here and thanks for what you did on VG! Sad that VG will be no more in about a month :-( FWIW, many of the former VG players who were following this game would have liked to hear more from you so don't sell yourself short because of Brad's name and all which doesn't seem to be worth much anymore.
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Corey is a good dude, he hasnt come out and said, but I know he's kicking around the idea of starting his own studio. If he does, I hope he uses this community for feedback like Brad should have from the beginning. We can be dicks but there are some really good ideas and insight that come from this site.
 
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Requiem_sl

shitlord
48
0
Just circled back to this. Looks like I still have one "smoking gun" to debunk.

Dyvim_sl said:
PS: Also as someone who got downvoted by Tyen and his bots on mere seconds on some random posting i know for sure he ran an army for -+netz the shit outta people.
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Warning: ~2400 lines of text

Looks entirely organic to me. If there's any evidence of anybody botting nets to any noteworthy extent here, I don't see it.

Also, on the topic of the guests from the images, note that when a client requests an attachment directly, the google analytics js doesn't get sent, so none of those requests would have shown up on any page statistics that ever got thrown around. They did drive organic traffic to some extent though, in that the more links from other sites that your site has, the more likely it is to show up on a search result.
 
Jimbolini

Jimbolini

Semi-pro Monopoly player
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xmod2_sl said:
Looks like we have a dev for our Rerolled Western Jesus MMO.
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rrr_img_70052.jpg
 
Tuco

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
<Gold Donor>
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Requiem_sl said:
Just circled back to this. Looks like I still have one "smoking gun" to debunk.

Looks entirely organic to me. If there's any evidence of anybody botting nets to any noteworthy extent here, I don't see it.

Also, on the topic of the guests from the images, note that when a client requests an attachment directly, the google analytics js doesn't get sent, so none of those requests would have shown up on any page statistics that ever got thrown around. They did drive organic traffic to some extent though, in that the more links from other sites that your site has, the more likely it is to show up on a search result.
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wow, smackage was the most contributing lurker I've seen!
 
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Malice_sl

shitlord
171
2
So if the Pantheon website is being hosted for free by Requiem, why are all donations accepted going to "maintaining the website?" Is updating a website that's being hosted for free really that expensive?
 
Adebisi

Adebisi

Clump of Cells
<Silver Donator>
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I think the donations are now going back to paying for development (at least according to the re-re-re launch). But there was a month or so where it was donations for website maintenance on an apparently free website.
 
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