Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO
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Drakurii
Golden Baron of the Realm
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Maybe this thread should be titled "Pantheon: ForumQuest" since that is the only "game" we have from them right now.
I'm still cautiously optimistic that now that the craptastic Kickstarter campaign is over they will be able to actually get their shit together and get this thing back on track. They have a lot of work to do restore people's faith at this point though; including mine.
I'm still cautiously optimistic that now that the craptastic Kickstarter campaign is over they will be able to actually get their shit together and get this thing back on track. They have a lot of work to do restore people's faith at this point though; including mine.
OK, I'll be the motivator. Everyone else get on that shit. I'll do the coffee runs.
Melvin
Blackwing Lair Raider
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There is a market for a EQ clone though, it's just really really small. If Brad & Co. learn one thing from their failed kickstarter, this should be it. I'm not at all convinced that they really understand what the word "niche" means. If they can rein their collective egos in and rightsize their plans, Pantheon could (hypothetically at least) turn out to be a successful indie game. What are the odds of that happening though?
Dr Neir
Trakanon Raider
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Why did the Star Wars fans do the same to Lucas. Wait thats right, he put in Ewoks and followed it up with Jar Jar after coming out with a sequel that is argue-mentally contested to be better than the original. In other words Brad Jar-Jar'd!
Brad and Co come off like a bad snake-oil salesman given his past works with no major support to cover the complete lack of material.
I must say I am a bit jealous of the golden 10 over there at Pantheon. They have done absolutely no work and now they are collecting paychecks. If those fanbois would just step back a minute and stop drinking their kool-aid they just might see that their money is not going into game development.
The "games" last upate was on the 18th, since then all they have done is work to get their paychecks from these fools. If you go on their site and click on races you can get to their forums without signing on. I couldn't stop laughing when I saw the post where someone who had a problem paying was thankful that Brad & Co were fast in solving the problem. Herp derp...yea if I were collecting for my paycheck I would move fast too.
That forum really makes me nauseous. It really is a circle jerk over there. They have a ranking system of how many thank you's a person gets...and that is all they do. Post some drivel then thank the crap out them. I really cannot wait until the kool-aid starts to wear off on the fanbois. Man that will be fun to watch when they realize that their money is going nowhere. Just think, they have to pay themselves for the so called 'work' they did so far, then pay themselves for current and then future 'work.' All before they can even start saving for an office. Ah man it should make for good entertainment when it all goes bust. I just hope they post it all in the public forums.
The "games" last upate was on the 18th, since then all they have done is work to get their paychecks from these fools. If you go on their site and click on races you can get to their forums without signing on. I couldn't stop laughing when I saw the post where someone who had a problem paying was thankful that Brad & Co were fast in solving the problem. Herp derp...yea if I were collecting for my paycheck I would move fast too.
That forum really makes me nauseous. It really is a circle jerk over there. They have a ranking system of how many thank you's a person gets...and that is all they do. Post some drivel then thank the crap out them. I really cannot wait until the kool-aid starts to wear off on the fanbois. Man that will be fun to watch when they realize that their money is going nowhere. Just think, they have to pay themselves for the so called 'work' they did so far, then pay themselves for current and then future 'work.' All before they can even start saving for an office. Ah man it should make for good entertainment when it all goes bust. I just hope they post it all in the public forums.
Lithose
Buzzfeed Editor
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The game raised 450k (Well 400k really) despite being nothing more than a napkin covered in a splooge of random and unrefined ideas by a team of unemployed guys with only vague and nebulous claims of "hard core" and "99" thrown in. And you're somehow looking at that huge number, despite this incoherent showing, as proofnomarket exists? Okay.
(Don't get me wrong, I agree a one for one clone of EQ would be a terrible game. But this project raised a huge backing for how shitty it was handled, I don't think that speaks to the genre being dead. I think it speaks to the market being there--whether or not it's popular enough to float the budget of a decent MMO? meh, debatable, but it's certainly there for a small project, given that's a huge amount of money they were offered for essentially nothing but the promise of "hardcore".)
It will take a while , but the slow drop off of the zealots on the closed forums as realization creeps in would be an interesting thing to watch. Slowly they will one by one drop off , anger will set in as they turn on each other. One of the true believers will begin to question Brad's motives and lack of production months from now , the others will scream at him/her to leave , but it will sow doubts in someone else, then it will happen again and again.
Without an angel investor dropping a few million this thing blows up in about 6-8 months then fails completely inside a year. The circle jerk cannot fund them past 6-8 months.
With an angel investor/idiot who does drop a few million it drags out for longer , but still same result in the end.
Best case I see for this with some angel investor is a half-assed, barely past alpha, game getting released to try and grab a few more bucks as the coffers run completely dry , and Vanguard meltdown part Deux occurs.
I don't see in any fashion how a stable game gets produced by Brad ever again regardless of funds. He's shown just how fucking insane he really is by wanting a closed forum of nothing but personal sycophants telling him how much they love him.
He really is a disturbed individual , and I think EQ happened in spite of him , not because of him. Stupid decision after stupid decision throughout the Kickstarter gives me no reason to believe otherwise.
Without an angel investor dropping a few million this thing blows up in about 6-8 months then fails completely inside a year. The circle jerk cannot fund them past 6-8 months.
With an angel investor/idiot who does drop a few million it drags out for longer , but still same result in the end.
Best case I see for this with some angel investor is a half-assed, barely past alpha, game getting released to try and grab a few more bucks as the coffers run completely dry , and Vanguard meltdown part Deux occurs.
I don't see in any fashion how a stable game gets produced by Brad ever again regardless of funds. He's shown just how fucking insane he really is by wanting a closed forum of nothing but personal sycophants telling him how much they love him.
He really is a disturbed individual , and I think EQ happened in spite of him , not because of him. Stupid decision after stupid decision throughout the Kickstarter gives me no reason to believe otherwise.
Don't underestimate the crazy dude. Some of those guys will fund him until this thing completely falls apart. They will then thank him for taking their money and at least "trying" to make the game.
Vandyn
Blackwing Lair Raider
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No it was not a huge backing . Fanboys and devs keep making this argument. Stop looking at the dollars, look at the number of backers . 3100 is not a huge backing. It's not even an average backing. There are 700 odd members registered on the site right now, half of which probably have no intention of paying for this. That's not a huge backing. What you do have is a very small but vocal minority that's willing to spend money on an idea. What it doesn't prove is there is a huge amount of interest. At least in what Brad is selling.
Lithose
Buzzfeed Editor
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You're comparing these numbers to things like SC, or KC or other succesful large KS; that's not really a fair comparison for judging how much this raised. Those were huge aberrations.
The fact is, the VAST majority of KS campaigns raise less than 10k. Only1.7%of ALL KS campaigns break 100k (Look up the stats page), it's an EXTREMELY small amount (Heck, only about 300 "game" KS's have ever broke 100k, out of 8 thousand attempts, and a HUGE amount of those attempts had tech demos, and far more fleshed out documentation than Pantheon, rise of the turd.) Most,the vast majority, of social media campaigns with no discernible add budget? Willnotget more than 500 backers, because the amount of backers is VERY small compared to the amount of population a project has interested in it, even if they have absolutely amazing work behind their campaign.
So, yes, it's a HUGE backing. It's fuckingastronomicalwhen you compare it to ALL of KS, and not just huge wins like Star Citizen or Camelot (Which both, btw, had great social media campaigns run by professionals.) This project was absolutely an aberration in terms of size. The fact that so much money was raised, on such a THIN premise, is astounding to me: you should be astounded to, all you have to do is compare it to other projects that didn't have a marketing campaign to launch with it, or were small scale ideas with no technology demos or other usually required mechanics. 3k backers for the amount of work that went into this (IE none.)? Was huge.
Edit: And just to specify why I say it's "huge" considering how bad it was displayed? There was a paper about the statistics behind KS campaigns in a business journal I read (Dynamics of Crowd Funding); one of the elements on a campaign being successful was called "Signals of quality". This element had a massive effect on community members within the market backing the campaign (So you could have a huge market, and if you didn't get these signals down, you're campaign would still have a 50+% failure rate, despite again, the market being huge). Getting these "signals" correct was as simple as a display of your possible "outcome" (So a tech demo), a pitch video, and steady releases without spelling or grammar errors and a "fluid" release of rewards. Brad failed in 3 out of 4 of these, and yet still managed to capture a large population in his "community": and achieve 50% funding (Most failed KS's fail before the 30% mark.)...This is VERY abnormal, and I believe it speaks to the market being pretty large--the fact that 3000 people were "die hard" enough to fundDESPITEsuch low signals of "quality"? Most likely means the total market out there is significantly larger.
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No angel investor, venture capitalist, seed funding, or bank loan is going to fund this I wish people would get that thought out of their heads. Investors in most cases aren't complete idiots, they want some sort of ROI for their money. This team doesn't even have the basics down they want to fund a studio but I can bet that they don't even know who their target audience is.
Just plain simple shit like
Back when this project started and Brad was still posting here I asked for these very things on this board. (I was told by the retard monkeys here that "We aren't investors we don't need this information" even though kickstarter is little more than a crowd investing tool.
For anyone to sink real money in this thing they would want a project manager who could keep things on track, they would want deadlines, accountability, weekly to quarterly updates, depending on who it is they might want a controlling interest in VR Inc., or they might even want to get involved with the project directly. All things they Brad whines about SoE doing to him, they want crowd funding specifically so they don't have to deal with those things. Unfortunately, for them in the real world that's how shit gets done.
The first thing a real investor would do if they were even slightly interested in Brad's idea would be to insert a real manager and fire all of Brad's designer friends and hire for the actual positions needed to make a game.
Just plain simple shit like
- a real potential for return on their money
- a solid management team
- a solid business plan
- analytic data
- market forecast
Back when this project started and Brad was still posting here I asked for these very things on this board. (I was told by the retard monkeys here that "We aren't investors we don't need this information" even though kickstarter is little more than a crowd investing tool.
For anyone to sink real money in this thing they would want a project manager who could keep things on track, they would want deadlines, accountability, weekly to quarterly updates, depending on who it is they might want a controlling interest in VR Inc., or they might even want to get involved with the project directly. All things they Brad whines about SoE doing to him, they want crowd funding specifically so they don't have to deal with those things. Unfortunately, for them in the real world that's how shit gets done.
The first thing a real investor would do if they were even slightly interested in Brad's idea would be to insert a real manager and fire all of Brad's designer friends and hire for the actual positions needed to make a game.
Lithose
Buzzfeed Editor
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Heck, most investors wouldn't even touch games with all that. Games just aren't good investments for equity rights in the producing the game, the risk is too high to offset the very small chance at possible gains. This is why publishers essentially require studios to sell their souls for any investment.
I was surprised the Kingdom Come team had an investor outside the industry, it's just such a poor investment choice.
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This argument is tired on both sides, there is no solid evidence to support either claim. What I can guarantee is if VR Inc. actually had a solid kickstarter that inspired confidence that they could accomplish something they would have at least 1 more backer (myself) and I am guessing that I am not the only one who feels that way. The kickstarter was so bad with such a low bar that the people who actually pledged money could only be a small minority of people.
The things the people here and even Brad McQuaid can't grasp is that they did a shitty job getting the word out to anyone except a few gamer websites, and a few gamer forums. Knowing that this was a Niche title they of course should of utilized those resources but also should of taken a chance and hit up a larger audience. That's why I suggested they reach out to other large name Youtubers, as the boggie2988 idea wasn't bad he doesn't have the largest audience. They didn't even try Curse gaming as far as I am aware and a blurb on MMO champ could of only helped. I am sure they know some PR people from the dates at Sony, they didn't try and viral interest, there was really nothing to get anyone excited about this game other than word of mouth. And Word of Mouth carried pretty well for the first few days, but after they shit the bed word of mouth went away. It's hard to talk your friends into giving money to a cause you yourself don't believe in.
Furious
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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First thing I thought when I saw the r?sum? of the ten. Why all devs?
On you're brads bud, ahh it's all good
Sal ,as the creative director ,not having a clue what the Dark Knight was in an interview is the best example of the overall KS and Brad's team.
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Which only further goes to show how out of touch they are, I've never tried to start up a game company but I have been involved with a few different start ups and investors can be a tough audience, and they should be. The other thing here is there is no exit strategy with Pantheon, once you start investing in this team you are stuck in Microsoft's situation where the only options are either keep funneling money hoping for completion or cut your loses and walk away, there are no assets that can be sold to recoup loss here. You have to put all of it on the line with no way out.
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I think it speaks more to how easily consumers are parted with their money, especially nowadays. 3k backers tells the real story of this mess. Now, evenifthere is enough potential interest, after Vanguard and this debacle, there is no plausible scenario in which Brad McQuaid is the person who brings it to realization.
