Honestly.. and Ill probably get flamed by its fan base for saying this. But I bought Alpha 1, and have Alpha 2 for AOC.. and Pantheon is WAYyyyy further along than AOC. I mean, AOC looks, cosmetically, better - but functionality wise? Pantheon has a much stronger code base and thats surprising af to me.
Silly take, comparing AoC to pantheon in their current state.
Pantheon simply has bare bone gameplay functions compared to AoC; AoC is more fleshed out in every respect. Combat is smoother and has far more depth in both group and solo play, and there is easily more than 10x of content available with only two of 12 regions available. You could fit all of Pantheon into the Miraleth node - which is one of 8 nodes currently available (3-5 nodes per region) - and Miraleth alone would have 2x the content. Honestly. one 'dungeon' in the Miraleth node (carphin and the wreckage of carphin) has more mid to late game content just by itself. Granted, carphin is one of the most well done dungeon areas ive seen in any mmo so this may not be fair to compare...but thats the point.
The PVE is actually closer to EQ than pantheon somehow as well - in the sense of the amount of named mob camps scattered about, people sitting and waiting for respawns (potential dps races for them as well), the layout of the 'dungeons' (Sol B vibes from befallen forge for example), the scarcity of items and the difficulty of obtaining them, the group functionality and pulling to camp spots, the trains and mob density, the having to deal with other groups and working out camp spots, everyone being in the same world without WoW style layering or server splitting. Lets not even talk about crafting, gathering, and professions in general...
Not trying to flame here, but what level did you get in AoC / how far along did you get or play? I will say the initial leveling in AoC is rough start compared to much simpler Pantheon start, and also the sheer amount of people on AoC the first week of alpha 2 did cause quite some lag in the noob areas...120,000 people spread across 3 servers, i think 20k concurrently on the servers at some points...with no server instancing or splitting.
AoC also has much much more funding and a much larger team. Pantheon is great for what it is, but lets not get ahead of ourselves here. I had fun on Pantheon and enjoy it, and will continue playing and supporting it - but comparing the two just doesnt make much sense right now. I hope Pantheon team continues developing and perhaps we will see AoC and Pantheon visions diverge once AoC starts focusing on its PVP elements, with Pantheon staying truer to the old EQ design we all miss. At this moment currently though, tables are flipped and AoC is almost entirely a PVE 'game' with incidental PVP (very harsh punishments for unwanted PVP currently).
Also....AoC is apparently putting a "snake people" temple dungeon in the desert area soon. Probably have Bill Trost to thank for that. just saying.
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