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

Haus said:

OK, To avoid reading 2100 pages of whatever the hell you talk about on an unreleased game for 2100 pages... And knowing that there are tight ties between some folks on here and this game I have a few basic questions. These come from a standpoint of the wife and I looking at something entertaining to play MMO-wise, she's been playing MMO's since EARLY EQ, got me in when we started dating with Shadowbane, some others, then WoW. So my questions:

• Is there a vague concept of when this will be a real thing ready to play? Looks like "Pre-Alpha 3"?!? what the hell is Pre-Alpha 3. Have an alpha of don't for Christ's sake.
• PvP? She's not a PvP person, I am somewhat....
• I see crafting.. meh... more importantly will there be an AH I can mercilessly conquer with my evil capitalism?

In essence what is the elevator pitch for this game? As it looks like one has to pledge an insane amount of cash for an alpha invite, and I'm a cheap old bastard....

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Ignore the salty bitches. We have seen enough to be reasonably confident it will actually launch, the question is: do they have the cash to keep going until it is right, and what the timeline for that is. The general consensus floating around the Reddit and their forums is they are shooting for alpha the end of the year, beta next year so you are looking at likely 2020 and that assumes, again, that they have the funding to keep going that long.

They have mentioned that pvp is being considered, but on special rules servers (ala EQ) and the general surveys around Reddit support that most people following the game are PVE so it likely it would only be a server or two type implementation.

There hasn't been much talk about the proposed economy, I know the notion of localized AH's has been mentioned but given the direction of heavy focus on social interaction it is very likely that there will either be none, or they are available only from a few central 'hubs' so people congregate.

Nice update. I'm actually looking forward to the caster reveals now. Hopefully there is something awesome in store for Wizard, otherwise the Dire Lord is looking very tempting.

I also find the idea of a 'Reference Zone' interesting. Focus all your tech and systems in one spot to see how it works together and performs. I don't know anything making MMO's, but this seems like a pretty good idea? Is this a normal process?

Brahma becoming one of the fallen whilst I divy up the phat lootz.

kudos said:

The more I think about it, the more pathetic the development for this game is.

I understand MMO's take a while. However, nothing these people are doing is ground breaking and they aren't really building much from the ground up. Why is their progress so fucking slow? It's starting to seem more and more like old Brad with stringing people along just enough to fulfill his shitty lifestyle choices.

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They have four programmers.

Those four dudes may not have any experience in game development, they may be doing this in their spare time for free, and they're doing this in an engine that every other company has said is so terrible for MMO's they'd rather make their own from scratch than use free Unity world and free Unity assets.

It was only a few months ago the game was being run and created by a fanatical alt-religious family making fuzzy trolls and other memes. These four programmers with an unknown history, unknown skillset, and unknown compensation can't create an entire game overnight.

Well when you put it that way maybe I really should change my mind about how great this game will be.

tyen

kudos said:

Why is their progress so fucking slow?

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kudos said:

I understand MMO's take a while.

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kudos said:

The more I think about it, the more pathetic the development for this game is.

I understand MMO's take a while. However, nothing these people are doing is ground breaking and they aren't really building much from the ground up. Why is their progress so fucking slow? It's starting to seem more and more like old Brad with stringing people along just enough to fulfill his shitty lifestyle choices.

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I don't think they should be in any hurry to release anything when there's people out there who are more than happy to throw $1k at them for doing fuck all. It's probably a much better return on investment than what they'll receive if they actually launch something.

yamikazo said:

They have four programmers.

Those four dudes may not have any experience in game development, they may be doing this in their spare time for free, and they're doing this in an engine that every other company has said is so terrible for MMO's they'd rather make their own from scratch than use free Unity world and free Unity assets.

It was only a few months ago the game was being run and created by a fanatical alt-religious family making fuzzy trolls and other memes. These four programmers with an unknown history, unknown skillset, and unknown compensation can't create an entire game overnight.

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Pretty sure the fuzzy troll thing is almost two years ago at this point, not a few months.

Unity isn't going to terrible for an MMO if said MMO is going to have zones, which Pantheon does.

Four programmers is a valid criticism, though. Even if they're extremely skilled, that's a lot of work to undertake and in situations where a lot of business work is required that usually means testing and security fall to the wayside. But, this game is still years away at best, so a lot could change.

How much does licensing Unity help with security and anti-cheat concepts? Does Unity handle that backend stuff so that VR doesn't need to focus on that themselves? Will be a shame if they actually get this launched and it gets hacked Day 1, Second 1.

Account and billing info is probably going to sit on a MySQL database on the game server. It's gunna rock.

Seriously though, how does a game on a shoestring budget handle account management?

Mat'hir Uth Gan said:

How much does licensing Unity help with security and anti-cheat concepts? Does Unity handle that backend stuff so that VR doesn't need to focus on that themselves? Will be a shame if they actually get this launched and it gets hacked Day 1, Second 1.

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Unity liscensing only offers the full codebase of the engine to do what you want to do with it.

& as a side note, not defending the game but the tech - no devs say unity is terrible to work on or make an MMO in, people that think "muh free game engine" are the ones saying that. The real issue with Unity, or the issue that existed for a while, is their monetization options can't compete with other engines or just making your own and owning 100% of the profit.