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

zzeris_sl said:

EQ really was great in it's first few years as was vanilla WoW. SoL was just like BC to me. Some good parts but the focus on different worlds and some new elements were just blah. WotLK and PoP helped me have a short revival in both games but I was very happy to kill Arthas and end my time in WoW and also very happy to see EQ2 and WoW when they released.

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I spend 2004-2005 mostly in EQ2, not WoW. Got all the way to end game, got prismatic weapons, etc. There were some high points in that game (some of the quests for classic items, Nek Castle remains one of my top 5 zones in any MMO), but my guild fell apart, plus the amount of ability bloat per character drove us away and into WoW. Have to admit, the first time I logged into WoW, you just got the feeling that 'man, this is going to change the whole genre'. Never in my wildest dreams did I think it would ever have millions of subs though.

Convo_sl said:

what does that have to do with EQ player base? Arranging WoW expansions? Why would it be more popular with EQ players? curious..I quit before those xpacs came out.. Why would EQ vets prefer BC over wrath?

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BC still had elements of vanilla WoW that EQ vets covet the most. Didn't Wrath introduce LFG?

so here we are, almost a week in, and there are still a ton of questions that haven't been answered (obviously, they won't be able to get to all of them this early on, but there are still big ones that i would like to know concretely whether or not it's a yes or a no).

1. instances- i fucking hate instances. are there going to be instanced and non instanced dungeons? or a combination of both? or (hopefully) no instances at all? one of the things that i absolutely hated about WoW were instances. i thought running instances over and over ad nauseam was actually a thousand times worse than dungeon crawling and camping certain areas. plus, giving everyone their own instance actually fragmented the game and made it feel like it wasn't a MMO at all (MMO's by their nature should require social interaction. otherwise, just play a single player RPG).

2. sub based or FTP- again, i hate the FTP model because it always turns into pay to win. i don't want to be nickel and dimed to death, nor do i want parts of the game to be restricted to whether or not i give my CC number. i'd much rather just spend the $10 or $15 or $20 a month to support the game and know that everyone else playing the game is paying the exact same amount and everyone has access to the same content equally.

3. combat- what are the plans here? i'm sick of MMO's trying to turn the genre into call of duty or DDR.

4. classes- are we going to get back to basics here, or are we going to have more GW2 abortions where everyone can do everything? as much as a lot of people hate it, the holy trinity still works better than any other system that i've seen.

5. death penalty- i know you guys said it's going in, but how brutal are are talking? exp loss (please god yes)? naked corpse runs? loss of a level? i think it has to be more than just a hit to the wallet for repairs in order to be truly effective.

i'm sure others can add a whole lot more, but those are my primary concerns at this juncture. can anyone from brad's camp answer any of the above questions with an absolute yay or nay? i think some clarity on some of these core issues would go a long way in knowing the direction this company is taking with this game.

Tuco_sl said:

That's how I feel.

WoW vanilla saw the loss of outdoor PVP with the addition of battlegrounds and the pvp honor system. TBC added flying mounts and the game got more formulaic. Wotlk was more of the same

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Aside from a few additions (LFR, Flex) we're still essentially locked into the WOTLK formula. Arena / BGs, raid (heroic or non) and LFD queues for the entirety of the game. It's not a bad formula, it's just so fucking stale.

Grim1_sl said:

Kickstarter has no rules about disclosure. Anyone who donates is doing so with little to no guarantees. If you don't like that then dont' donate.

I put in 20 as a thank you to Brad for past efforts more than anything else. If the game gets made then that's a bonus imo.

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So you essentially sent 20 dollars to a rich guy for making good products he was well compensated for in the past?

Do you also send Bill Gates a Christmas Card and check every year, too?

@etchazz

1.. There will be some instance but only in regards to when its telling a story. Most content will be in the world.

2.Sub based

3. They have a whole week of info for combat coming. It wont be twitch per Brad but it will have some reaction to it, block, reflect abilities, etc. Also the OT/DT system from VG.

4. Classes are still a myth to me even with the new info. Brad mentioned your typical roles with a 90/10 ratio. The 10% being something out of the ordinary for a class.. So I guess if you're a tradtional cleric that 10% would be some unique DPS spells. Plus he mentioned there is an outfit/situation gear system within classes.. PC gamer is dropping info tomorrow on classes.

5. There is a death penalty and it will be felt. They are still working out details tho.

Caliane_sl said:

random guy on a message board? no.

donators? yes.
Asking for donations, and not providing a clear plan of where the money is going, what its for, etc, is one of the reason kickstarter is really shady sometimes.
You don't give to charities without knowing their fiscal records. A bank won't give a loan without business plan and collateral. Any investor sure as heck would want to see business plans, etc.

So, why would you donate to kickstarter without it? Transparency will only aid a legit donation campaign.

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Vandyn_sl said:

Other KS projects do this though (Repopulation), they provide a nice graph/layout of exactly how they thing the money is going to be allocated. Nothing like that here. Since everyone who pledged is essentially an 'investor' and not simply a random message board fanboy, you would that something like that would be important.

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That post was referring to people asking him to essentially name names with where is he getting the more funding that will be needed past an 800k kickstarter. I'm all for details and transparency and progress reports to a reasonable level. What I was referring to are the questions about Brad's statement of Kickstarter is the beginning of the funding.

He's obviously talked with someone/some group and has some ideas. Whether it's Ut's SOE already owns it theory to just some random group of buddies with large amounts of cash who knows. My point is asking him to give specific details about that aspect is useless. He's not going to suddenly spill the beans on backroom conversations nor confirm/deny them.

Again ,he's said KS is only the beginning , knows 800k isn't enough to make it, and we basically have to take that at face value atm. I'm all for being upfront as possible , but I also am realistic and know if business group A says , show us you can get X and have some interest and we will talk , is a conversation you don't go blathering about because someone asked on a message board who it is.

Gecko_sl said:

So you essentially sent 20 dollars to a rich guy for makingone good producthe was well compensated for in the past?

Do you also send Bill Gates a Christmas Card and check every year, too?

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Fixed that for you.

Tuco_sl said:

false equivalence.

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I see they lost the 3rd 10k and still haven't added the tester + lifetime sub 400 tier. -_-

@Vandyn some of us enjoyed Vanguard.

Quaid_sl said:

Think it's more likely that the sense of scarcity/urgency was gone, so someone who was kinda waffling with pledging that much backed out

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Or it was a fake pledge to began with. Hell I can pledge $10k. Doesn't mean I can actually pay for that pledge, but I can pledge it.

tad10_sl said:

I see they lost the 3rd 10k and still haven't added the tester + lifetime sub 400 tier. -_-

@Vandyn some of us enjoyed Vanguard.

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Brad said somewhere yesterday (Maybe in chat) they would roll out tiers tomorrow...I assume they are going over them a bit longer today, so they do not make the same mistakes.

Drunken Sat night pledging of 10k ?

Orsenfelt_sl said:

That'd be me.

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thanks for the invite to the group. The page looks great so far!

As this is the first KS I've really followed and pitched in on , asking those of you who've followed others , doesn't 18 tiers seem a bit too many as is or is it fairly the norm ?

I know it's a catch 22 for Brad now as he's got to add some other more well organized/thought out ones , and can't change/delete any currently funded ones , but it's going to get a bit ridiculous if too many tiers are there. Seems that way to me anyway.

One suggestions I'd say to do, immediately , is yank both the guild tiers. They have zero on both so you can. Combine them into one that is in the 900-1100 (take your time planning it out also )instead of two separate 750/1500 ones. Anything to clean it up where you still can.

tad10_sl said:

I see they lost the 3rd 10k and still haven't added the tester + lifetime sub 400 tier. -_-

@Vandyn some of us enjoyed Vanguard.

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Some like other crap games as well, doesn't make it a good product.

Vandyn_sl said:

It's ironic that WoW has mostly followed the same path, with the 3rd expansion (Wrath) being the best, although I'd put vanilla over BC. I agree that Luclin started the downward trend, PoP merely stemmed the tide for awhile. In the grand scheme of things, the pinnacle of EQ probably only lasted 3 years (1999-2002).

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Vanilla WoW was pretty much a polished EQ copy with some new ideas (quests as progression and easier soloing - EQ at that point was already instancing anything meaningful so that part isnt new). So they went and copied Kunark (entire new continent with very different flair -> TBC) and Velious (ice continent -> WotLK) and PoP (planar progression to stop the big bad from destroying the world -> Cataclysm) and GoD (another new continent that's very different from the existing world -> MoP)... I quit EQ at GoD but for all I know the next expansion was revisiting one of the previous new settings (Mutawhatevers Legion stuff again) and it looks like WoW is doing that too with the next expansion.

Pantheon on the other hand seems to skip the boring mundane and jump right into planar shit

Convo_sl said:

what does that have to do with EQ player base? Arranging WoW expansions? Why would it be more popular with EQ players? curious..I quit before those xpacs came out.. Why would EQ vets prefer BC over wrath?

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Vanilla and to an extent TBC were basically EQ, while you leveled with quests you could pick and choose where and what to do.

WotLK onwards switched to single player storytelling mode where you couldnt do alot of quests unless you followed the intended line from A to B to C (still bearable but it clearly started there). That became much worse with the next expansions to the point where you cant do shit in some of the zones without starting with a very specific quests and going through those lines as dictated by Furor (? I think that was his job).

Vandyn_sl said:

Some like other crap games as well, doesn't make it a good product.

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Fair enough, we can agree VG was a terrible release.