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

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Utnayan

Utnayan

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mkopec said:
The thing about non instanced games like this is all about the content, quality and quantity to satisfy the 800-1000 prime time peeps per server. I cant see them providing that with a skeletin crew, if its in fact a skeleton crew like it supposedly is. I just hope they dont push this out before its fully fleshed out and finished, like vanguard.
Click to expand...

Well, kinda.

With a slow leveling curve, content consumption is rapidly decreased. You can make a zone like Unrest and folks could be in that zone for weeks rather than say, WoW, when you can blast through a questing area/zone in a matter of hours. With the crowd they are going after (Shit, I do not even think they have more than 1,000 people total even caring about this any more aside from die hards like us watching it) they could probably launch with 10 zones, not including a city for each race, and have more than enough space for people to group up and level on one server.

I think people are vastly overestimating the demand for a poop sock MMORPG.
 
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mkopec

mkopec

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LOL,if this ever comes to fruition, this will never be like EQ was back in 1999, I can guarantee it. Vanguard sure wasnt. Slower, yes, but not cripple, wheelchair or crutches, killing a snake for 10 min, up the hill slow like EQ was back in the day.

Utnayan said:
I think people are vastly overestimating the demand for a poop sock MMORPG.
Click to expand...

I think you are vastly underestimating it. Maybe it wont be wow 12 million popular, but it will definitely get a crowd if done correctly and not a POS buggy shitstain like VG was.
 
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Vinjin

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It's way too early to to tell how it will be received. Outside of the obvious (i.e., donors, registered members at the Pantheon website, etc.) one could argue that the EQ Emu community is solid proof of a playerbase that would eat this type of game up. One could also argue that the lack of a payable sub each month is the biggest reason those emu servers and communities even exist. And just how large of a community is that anyway in terms of unique individual players? Not sure that's even quantifiable.

The other reason that makes it difficult to project is the time frames. Pantheon is still probably 18-24 months away in an already dried up MMO space today. If nothing else "sticky" comes along within the next 2 years to capture people's interest, it's conceivable to think more and more players may be willing to pay a monthly sub to jump aboard when Pantheon does finally launch.

Again, a metric shit-ton of variables and "what if"s between now and then.
 
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Utnayan

Utnayan

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mkopec said:
LOL,if this ever comes to fruition, this will never be like EQ was back in 1999, I can guarantee it. Vanguard sure wasnt. Slower, yes, but not cripple, wheelchair or crutches, killing a snake for 10 min, up the hill slow like EQ was back in the day.



I think you are vastly underestimating it. Maybe it wont be wow 12 million popular, but it will definitely get a crowd if done correctly and not a POS buggy shitstain like VG was.
Click to expand...

We will see I guess. Because 1) It will probably be a shitstain regardless. 2) But if it were to come out in a decent form, I still firmly believe a lot of folks have moved past a game like this. Shit, most of us were in college/freshly out of college when EQ came out. Now we have families, work, vacations, limited game time. The new generation of gamers won't put up with anything as clunky as this is, time consuming, or anything of the sort. They want instant gratification, tons of things to do, and couldn't care less about socializing in the game. The last one being the biggest. EQ was EQ because yeah, it was a cool world to explore and one of a kind for it's day, but with a way to connect socially that wasn't available then. Now everyone is connected via about 6 devices and 5 social networks. No one will give a shit about that anymore. Which will leave the game. People are going to get sick to death of sitting in a group killing the same NPC's over and over again while slowly watching a leveling bar. I think it would be lucky to capture 10k at best. And I think that is overstating it. That's fine though if 1-2k of those always log in so you have people to group with.

What should really happen is someone make a game with this style of difficulty but also with real time combat ala Dark Souls. At least then the combat would be interesting.
 
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Vinjin

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Utnayan said:
Not many. Under 20. If that.
Click to expand...

That's kinda what I expected. And if that is true, then I think it bodes well for them to repeat that formula here for Pantheon.

They got waaay overzealous and arrogant at Sigil with Vanguard and it blew up in their face. Yet despite all of that, they still did release a playable game that many enjoyed. A buggy, incomplete game with huge engine issues, but a game nonetheless, which is more than a lot of other games that have passed through this space. Unity should solve a decent amount of the engine troubles they had before. As for the rest, they should follow a similar development plan they took with 989 for EQ and tweak it for today's gamer's expectations (i.e., a solid launch of a largely bug free game with decent content).
 
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Itlan

Itlan

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Vanguard, despite all its flaws, gave me some of the most EQ-like memories.

Mainly the fucking isle where the mobs hit for 25% health no matter what, proceeded to wipe with my group, and then spawned in the middle of the fucking ocean and had to swim for 45 minutes to get back to my corpse.

Good times!

In reality, Vanguard was probably TOO big. I loved the variety of the content and the world itself, but plenty of places were either underpopulated with no loot, or not populated at all. The quests (the few implemented in) were pretty fucking lame.

I'd love to get in an emulator and even just explore the untouched content. There's got to be ideas and shit they can still use most of us haven't seen, though I suppose that's a legal IP issue lol.
 
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Fordrynn

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I liked the parlay card game in VG. I liked the vast open world with 3-6 dot creatures walking around in it. I liked that each race had a unique starter area. VG was great but just poorly pieced together. Id love to play a new VG with updated animations, graphics, and engine.
 
Itlan

Itlan

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Guys, three or four well designed classes does not mean it's the best game to ever design a class structure.
 
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Big_w_powah

Big_w_powah

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It had Blood Mages, Disc, Druid, Psion, DK, Paladin, Cleric, Shaman, Necro that I played. ALL had a unique and fun flavor. ALL were at least well designed.
 
Itlan

Itlan

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Blood Mages, Disc, and Psion were very well designed, but all three were very much broken. DKs were poorly designed AND broken at the same time. Paladin and Cleric bled into each other way too much, although the Castigator stance was pretty awesome.

Druids were not unique, it was the same shit we had from every Druid class ever. Same for Necros.

Shamans were also fucking broken. I could cast an immediate LoH on a tanky bear pet for almost no mana on a 30? second timer. I was soloing 6 dot bosses at level 45-50. That's not good design, that's broken gameplay. Much like a DK running around in circles, grabbing 60 mobs, and spamming an aoe lifetap.

I think you're conflating the two ideas. Did they have some good ideas? Absolutely. I loved the class trees, like the three ways to play a Shaman, or the four affinities available for Clerics. But a lot of that shit needed to be worked out still. I mean Psions were literally unbeatable in PvP if they mezzed you once.
 
Jarek

Jarek

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I tried Vanguard years after it launched, when the servers had already dwindled down to 2 I think. Maybe only 1 but it was fairly late in the game's life that I gave it a go. I played a Disciple and it was a very fun and interesting class. Very very OP though, which is of course fun, especially in a dead game with low playebase.

The Isle of Dawn was a fun place to start when I played, since the starting cities were dead I guess, but it was a fun little adventure area, and I really liked the dual targeting system as a Melee Healer. I could always get a small group going too, and it was, in my opinion, a really interesting world. Like visiting the desert continent for the first time and hearing that "Lawrence of Arabia" style soundtrack was really neat. That Diplomacy card game was also pretty cool too, and tracking down the uber cards as loot provided me with hours of fun content. Self made content too, no quest giver, just my own initiative.

If Pantheon turned out like VG I'd be pretty happy. Totally surprised, but happy.
 
Identikit

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vanguard classes were awesome conceptually, but provided little balance among classes/archetypes. When they worked they were all pretty fun to play.
 
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BoozeCube

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I love how there is so fucking little about this game most of the conversation steers back to EQ memories or talking about how Vangaurd wasn't just a pile of shit.
 
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Vinjin

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Agreed about the classes being designed well conceptually. I think they just ran out of time to focus on tuning and balancing them correctly before they eventually just said " fuck it".

Probably not too long before the parking lot massacre.
 
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