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KickStarter Pantheon - (Brad "EQ" McQuaid's new MMO)

Xenich

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Flying mounts is a terrible idea also. They never add any challenge to a game.

"Lets make all this hard shit on the ground then let you fly over it at your leisure"

Solution to that is to put flying mobs in the air as well. Though that means air combat and the huge amount of problems that would come with its design.

Personally, I prefer travel to be running with aid of class buffs or porting to specific areas aided by those specific classes. Being able to fast travel somewhere was always a "feature" for some classes. These days, every fucking moron thinks they should be able to click something and instantly warp from place to place, you know... because they "wurk weal hurd" flipping burgers at the local fast food restaurant.
 

J1M

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Dumb. If you are giving fast-travel as a class feature, you should at least have it available as a consumable for others.
 

Xenich

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Dumb. If you are giving fast-travel as a class feature, you should at least have it available as a consumable for others.

Why? That is the same logic as participation trophies. It was the whole point of choosing the pros/cons of a class, but apparently these day... everyone has to have their cake and eat it too, you know... because they are such narcissistic fucks that the thought of another class having a skill they don't... well... it just aint fair! *Tantrum*
 

J1M

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Dumb. If you are giving fast-travel as a class feature, you should at least have it available as a consumable for others.

Why? That is the same logic as participation trophies. It was the whole point of choosing the pros/cons of a class, but apparently these day... everyone has to have their cake and eat it too, you know... because they are such narcissistic fucks that the thought of another class having a skill they don't... well... it just aint fair! *Tantrum*
Because unless you give something equivalent, it is really fucking stupid to give people a choice between "class that performs well in combat and can teleport self+others long distances, saving hours of travel time" and "class that performs well in combat".

It doesn't need to be fast travel, but I suspect you are the kind of person who would whine on the forums about how "it is totally unfair that even though I can teleport to all the major landmarks, the rogue class loots double the currency from monsters so they don't need to grind for money".
 

Xenich

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Dumb. If you are giving fast-travel as a class feature, you should at least have it available as a consumable for others.

Why? That is the same logic as participation trophies. It was the whole point of choosing the pros/cons of a class, but apparently these day... everyone has to have their cake and eat it too, you know... because they are such narcissistic fucks that the thought of another class having a skill they don't... well... it just aint fair! *Tantrum*
Because unless you give something equivalent, it is really fucking stupid to give people a choice between "class that performs well in combat and can teleport self+others long distances, saving hours of travel time" and "class that performs well in combat".

It doesn't need to be fast travel, but I suspect you are the kind of person who would whine on the forums about how "it is totally unfair that even though I can teleport to all the major landmarks, the rogue class loots double the currency from monsters so they don't need to grind for money".

Everything isn't about combat and not every class has to be fucking tit-for-tat balanced. That came around because moronic twits couldn't stand another class having something they can't. The result of your brilliant designs? The current MMOs out are all according to your fucking retarded design. Each and every class being balanced around "combat" while having all other non-combat skills and abilities "normalized" so everyone can do them... because fucktard little Jimmy would get offended about it not being fair that he can't do everything that every other class can.
 

Ranselknulf

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I don't mind there being classes which have exclusive access to transport spells / abilities / mounts.

What inevitably happens in games with those is people level up a ton of "transportation" alt characters whose main purpose is to move people around quickly. It becomes a part of the economy too.

I have a problem with content being trivialized. There are many ways to have transportation spells / abilities / mounts in a game without trivializing content but I don't think this is the topic of the thread so I will leave it at that.
 

J1M

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Dumb. If you are giving fast-travel as a class feature, you should at least have it available as a consumable for others.

Why? That is the same logic as participation trophies. It was the whole point of choosing the pros/cons of a class, but apparently these day... everyone has to have their cake and eat it too, you know... because they are such narcissistic fucks that the thought of another class having a skill they don't... well... it just aint fair! *Tantrum*
Because unless you give something equivalent, it is really fucking stupid to give people a choice between "class that performs well in combat and can teleport self+others long distances, saving hours of travel time" and "class that performs well in combat".

It doesn't need to be fast travel, but I suspect you are the kind of person who would whine on the forums about how "it is totally unfair that even though I can teleport to all the major landmarks, the rogue class loots double the currency from monsters so they don't need to grind for money".

Everything isn't about combat and not every class has to be fucking tit-for-tat balanced. That came around because moronic twits couldn't stand another class having something they can't. The result of your brilliant designs? The current MMOs out are all according to your fucking retarded design. Each and every class being balanced around "combat" while having all other non-combat skills and abilities "normalized" so everyone can do them... because fucktard little Jimmy would get offended about it not being fair that he can't do everything that every other class can.
Wrong. The current state of mmos and class homogenization is due to the democratization of DPS. There are many ways to make characters equally useful, but different, in combat.

It doesn't matter how many unique dance animations or trite perks you give them. If someone finds out that after investing 100 hours into their character that they are playing a class that never gets to do group activities because "warriors are the same as dragoons in a group but do 30% more damage" they are going to quit the game.
 
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Dumb. If you are giving fast-travel as a class feature, you should at least have it available as a consumable for others.

Why? That is the same logic as participation trophies. It was the whole point of choosing the pros/cons of a class, but apparently these day... everyone has to have their cake and eat it too, you know... because they are such narcissistic fucks that the thought of another class having a skill they don't... well... it just aint fair! *Tantrum*

Except that if you treat is as a class-unique skill that's to be balanced against other classes, you're forced to make the fast-travelling class weaker in combat (unless you have a range of non-combat activities as part of the core game, but none of these games have that other than crafting, and they're loathe to lock classes out of crafting for the same reason that they're loathe to lower their combat (and hence raiding) utility).
 

Xenich

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Dumb. If you are giving fast-travel as a class feature, you should at least have it available as a consumable for others.

Why? That is the same logic as participation trophies. It was the whole point of choosing the pros/cons of a class, but apparently these day... everyone has to have their cake and eat it too, you know... because they are such narcissistic fucks that the thought of another class having a skill they don't... well... it just aint fair! *Tantrum*
Because unless you give something equivalent, it is really fucking stupid to give people a choice between "class that performs well in combat and can teleport self+others long distances, saving hours of travel time" and "class that performs well in combat".

It doesn't need to be fast travel, but I suspect you are the kind of person who would whine on the forums about how "it is totally unfair that even though I can teleport to all the major landmarks, the rogue class loots double the currency from monsters so they don't need to grind for money".

Everything isn't about combat and not every class has to be fucking tit-for-tat balanced. That came around because moronic twits couldn't stand another class having something they can't. The result of your brilliant designs? The current MMOs out are all according to your fucking retarded design. Each and every class being balanced around "combat" while having all other non-combat skills and abilities "normalized" so everyone can do them... because fucktard little Jimmy would get offended about it not being fair that he can't do everything that every other class can.
Wrong. The current state of mmos and class homogenization is due to the democratization of DPS. There are many ways to make characters equally useful, but different, in combat.

It doesn't matter how many unique dance animations or trite perks you give them. If someone finds out that after investing 100 hours into their character that they are playing a class that never gets to do group activities because "warriors are the same as dragoons in a group but do 30% more damage" they are going to quit the game.


Wrong. The current state of MMOs is due to homogenization of classes for the sole purpose of class balance. All previous class abilities, functions, and features that once gave a class flavor or advantage outside of combat was removed to appeal to the tantrums of the mainstream gamer and the PvP gamer. That is, you dumb down your system in order to reduce class whinging envy and to insure that all classes can combat equally.
 

Xenich

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Dumb. If you are giving fast-travel as a class feature, you should at least have it available as a consumable for others.

Why? That is the same logic as participation trophies. It was the whole point of choosing the pros/cons of a class, but apparently these day... everyone has to have their cake and eat it too, you know... because they are such narcissistic fucks that the thought of another class having a skill they don't... well... it just aint fair! *Tantrum*

Except that if you treat is as a class-unique skill that's to be balanced against other classes, you're forced to make the fast-travelling class weaker in combat (unless you have a range of non-combat activities as part of the core game, but none of these games have that other than crafting, and they're loathe to lock classes out of crafting for the same reason that they're loathe to lower their combat (and hence raiding) utility).


That is the point though, they used to. It wasn't perfect, but there used to be a range of non-combat/combat features in games. You had race pros/cons, class pros/cons, etc... Also, this need to balance 1:1 is the problem. In early EQ, hybrids didn't compete with true focus classes. Now if you "just" evaluate dps as a factor, then you can scream about the injustice all day and some people did whine about this (usually they were the same morons who were crying in EC about how nobody would group with them). Thing is, those who knew the power in a hybrid were doing fine. Each hybrid had a balance of abilities that were powerful when used in conjunction with each other, but this is hard to get through to tardsoler whose understanding of character development was that of hp bar and power ups. Rogues in EQ weren't supposed to be a DPS class, or heavy combat focus, rather they were supposed to be more like the D&D rogue. Now you can blame Brad for not finishing the implementation of Rogues and building the content to better facilitate that need, but the point is, there were many attempts at providing features for classes that weren't all about active combat. These pros/cons concerned everything from travel (run speed buffs, port spells), Stealth and invisibility, Mob bypass (harmony, lull, FD, etc...) and the list goes on. Some things were melee abilities, others were casters. A lot of it was caster focused, but there was a balance to it as well. For instance, a caster was a 1 shot wonder, very fragile, but... they were limited back then by not only mana pools, but also spell slots.

Now let me say that I jumped the gun a bit with JM1 in that various abilities as these should be provided to "all", but in the form of rare abilities on various forums of gear. While a caster could breathe under water early on with a spell, a melee had to either rely on that caster in certain areas or... they had to obtain an item giving them the ability to achieve that (fishbone earring off Hadden in EQ). My objection to him was that all of these forms of non-combat advantages "MUST" be provided to everyone in the form of a potion. They should be available eventually (some, not all) through various means, but not guaranteed. These are the things that gave games depth, and made classes more than just a model change. Problem is, the non-gaming generation and the various whiners and lazy console players threw tantrums constantly about not being able to do everything. Heck, you can see in EQ where they started catering to that mentality. We saw DK/Paladins able to compete on every level from DPS, to Tanking, to support, etc... Druids could become massive damage nukers and still heal, CC, etc... Primary classes who were already limited because their focus was specific became pointless leading to the need to "up" their specific focus ability only to have the hybrids throw more tantrums to get brought up in line again.

The result? Dumbed down games designed for FPS PvP players and non-gamers where all classes are the same and combat is the only real focus of the game aside from grinding pointless crafting. We could have games like this again (we do, but they are aging and being dropped/changed as we see with Vanguard, EQ, EQ2), but they won't be mainstream. They will be limited in their numbers, but... there are enough out there who enjoy a complex system with pros/cons and the prospect that their class may not be the best at everything or may have a flaws due to some useful general abilities. For that to happen though, it needs a developer that is willing to tell the whiners to fuck off. One thing Iliked about Brad was that he wasn't afraid to tell those who threw tantrums to move along to another game if they didn't share his "vision" or direction. He didn't have that need to please everyone that MMOs have today.
 

Infinitron

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Epic fail: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/04/16/fallen-falling-pantheon-development-on-hold/

Fallen Falling: Pantheon Development On Hold

By now we surely all understand that Kickstarting a game is a bit of a gamble: we rarely have a clear idea of how it’ll turn out, and sometimes if it’ll even be finished. At least Kickstarters have a clear goal to work towards, though, and will only take your money if they hit the sum devs figure will let them finish it. Open-ended crowdfunding is even riskier, as they’ll take your money but may never get enough to finish the game. Which is what has happened to Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen.

The MMORPG headed by former EverQuest lead designer Brad McQuaid has been shaking its own crowdfunding bucket after a Kickstarter campaign fell short, and has now run out of money. It’s hoping it’ll land an investor but the game’s not really going anywhere until hypothetical saviours come along.

Pantheon was shooting for $800,000 (£476,000-ish in real money) on Kickstarter in January but ended short at £274,000, which meant it got nothing. Still, 1,576 people believed in the game enough to pledge money directly when developers Visionary Realms started their own open-ended crowdfunding, tossing in about £95,000. McQuaid told ‘boogie2988′ this week that they had hoped more people would carry their pledges over.

Looking on the bright side, Visionary Realms said in a statement on Sunday that the money people did re-pledge has carried them to a point where they can start wooing investors.

That is, we’ve shown there is interest in a game like Pantheon, we’ve built the term sheets and business plan, and now have a prototype we can show to potential investors.

The downside now is that our initial resources have depleted, which regrettably means that development is going to slow down until finances can be secured. It’s not something we want to do by any means, but as we cannot guarantee paychecks to the team, they each need to be able to spend time on other things to pay the bills.

Once we’re able to get that level of funding we can then secure much-needed studio space and be able to pick up the pace of production dramatically.

I can’t imagine investors are falling over themselves to pay for a subscription-based MMORPG at this point, though, especially one which played heavily on nostalgia for The Good Old Days. The niche market it’s targeting, grizzled MMO veterans, have demonstrated they aren’t especially interested by not backing it. Publishers are still pretty interested in F2P MMORPGs, but the model seems a little antithetical to Pantheon’s goals.

Any money given at this point will simply go to keeping the website online, rather than development. Probably don’t, unless you have money to burn or are really, really, really into the idea of Pantheon and just happy to feel like you’re helping.
 

Kem0sabe

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Brad McQuaid did a terrible job with Vanguard, especially the community he promoted on its beta forums and the PR he did outside those. Everything WoW did was deemed "carebear", EQ was the epitome of hardcome mmo gaming, blah, blah, blah.

Game ended up launching in terrible shape, players were misled into buying it, it was shit for years before becoming even remotely entertaining.

McQuaid is a genre dinosaur who failed to adapt to the market and foresee that the playerbase he appeals to is a niche that has mostly outgrown this type of hardcore mmo, and actually has lives now instead of playing EQ in college.
 

Ranselknulf

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https://www.pantheonrotf.com/

PANTHEON UPDATE 6/3/14!

Building up the team continues to be a very successful endeavor. We have more talented people willing to help out and dedicate themselves to the project than I would have ever imagined. We continue to be a bit overwhelmed, but this is a good problem to have. As you can see from the team roster (below), critical positions are being filled.

We are back in full development mode. The programmers have assimilated the project and are both cleaning things up and beginning work on the client/server network code. Laurene & I are getting daily (and even more frequently) builds. The Lore team is meeting tomorrow to work on the initial continent and to begin laying out where the various zones, outdoors, cities, and dungeons are going to be. The big challenge right now is ‘how big should a zone be?’ Unity is allowing us to create absolutely huge zones right now, but we need to scale that back a little bit. We need to make sure the servers can handle all of the mobs in a zone as well as a bunch of players who decide to meet in one area.

The Programmer’s efforts with the new network code are essential. Within 1-2 weeks we will be able to (internally) create accounts, create characters, and then log into one of the game’s zones. This requires the client to be able to connect to the servers, and the server code to be able to talk to the database. The good news is that we had some of this working before, so we can reference that.

We also want to make a commitment to all of you in the Pantheon community. We will be doing weekly updates to www.pantheonrotf.com and Pantheon’s Facebook page. It will likely be mostly small updates, but we feel we owe it to you all to keep you up to date and able to watch our progress. One week it may just be a few new screenshots, where other weeks we may be able to share something more significant. The important thing, I think, is consistently updating you so you can see measurable forward progress, even if the update isn’t a huge deal each and every time.

Ok, here comes the plug: crowd-funding has predictably died down since a few weeks after we launched www.pantheonrotf.com. This was expected, but we still do need your help, especially with full development underway again. With the weekly updates so you can monitor our progress, our hope is that some of you will be able to send some more money our way. In addition to paying the volunteer team as much as possible, we are at a point now where we need to buy hardware & software. One of our team members has fiber to their house, so we won’t need to rent out server racks for quite a while during pre-alpha. But that does mean we need to purchase a couple of computer servers. We also have licensing costs, like Unity. We are also interviewing character artists, and once they are brought on board they will need licenses to Photoshop, Maya, and other art programs, as well as drawing tablets (likely Wacom Cintiqs or similar). The programmers also have some software they need (thank you BizSpark!), and we continue to download assets and packages from the Unity store to save us time and make sure nobody on the team is gated.

Regardless of whether you can help out financially, we deeply appreciate your interest in Pantheon and your desire to be part of our growing community. You can help the project grow by sharing the screenshots we post and talking about our progress to your friends and posting about Pantheon in social media. We are also making some changes to the website and opening up at least one forum that will be accessible to all, not just subscribers. Becoming an Apprentice Developer still has a monthly fee associated with it, but we’re going to try out an open forum and see how that goes.

If you can help out, please head to www.pantheonrotf.com and make a donation or add to an existing donation. Doing so will help us get this project to the next stage we are calling pre-alpha. The idea behind pre-alpha is to be able to show the community and potential investors the progress we’ve made with this new team. It’s important to everyone that there is measurable forward progress and that the team is working hard and producing some exciting results. Once we can internally create accounts and log into a server that is always up, we can then also return to combat and start refining and tuning it. Then comes inventory, grouping, etc.

Also, if you somehow missed it, we posted a metric ton of screenshots and a quickie movie a few weeks back at https://www.facebook.com/pantheonrotf . This was long over due and is meant to show all of you the progress we made since October or so of last year. We’re still working on 1-2 more movies (these ones a little more professional) that we’ll post soon. The great news is that now, going forward, we have a foundation the developers can build upon, and we have more people involved in the project. This should mean some exciting progress depicted in our weekly updates!

Ultimately, the most important thing from a community standpoint is that we consistently reveal this weekly progress and give you all increased confidence that Pantheon is alive and well and moving forward!

Thanks,

-Brad “Aradune” McQuaid

p.s. We are looking for several positions that will be revealed soon. One of those positions is a CEO. I want to focus on being Chief Creative Officer, involved with design and the overall Vision of the game. I don’t want to run the company day by day if at all possible, bogged down by the business side of things. We have sent out a few emails to people we are interested in recruiting for this role, but are also interested in opening the door to other applicants until the right person for this very sensitive and important role is found. If you have anybody you know who might be both qualified and interested, please email me at brad@pantheonrotf.com. Thanks!


He could ask Curt Schilling to be CEO.
 

Alchemist

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I'm amazed that this thing is still alive and kicking even after all the money drama. I guess some people really have a lot of faith in Brad.

Well good luck to them, I guess - would be cool if this game really becomes a reality.
 

Ranselknulf

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There are two ways I can see this playing out.

The project eventually folds after years of low funding or.....

The project gets financed by a company like SoE (it's happened in the past with Brad) and the company investing pushes the game development along but also counter to the games stated goals. There'd probably be some fierce microtransaction monetization of the game as well, which is 100% to be expected in online games funded by large companies.


Either way the I don't see this game being released or, if by some chance it is released, the game will not be released in the advertised state.
 
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There's no way today's SoE would fall for Brad LolQuaid. Dude's a mess, and his history precedes him.
 

Old Hans

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The whole situation is hilarious from what I've read on the Rerolled forums. Brad is a such a washed up relic of the 90s
 

Ranselknulf

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It looks like Brad roped in enough people to work for free and they are making some kind of progress.

A lot of screenshots in this one:

https://www.pantheonrotf.com/blogs/355/134/update-07-21-2014


I'm highlighting this paragraph as the TL/DR for the entire wall of text

Pantheon is gonna be real time Magic the Gathering:

Ok, then what? Well, we continue to look for more world builders. We need an army and we need world builders now, as volunteers, and then we will need more once funding comes in at which point 1. Our volunteers can become employees and 2. We can hire world builders that need a salary before they can climb in board. Ok, back to coding. In a couple of weeks, as mentioned, we should have NPCs spawning in zones. Now comes the fun part: turn combat back on. If you looked at the movies I put together back in April to show you all what the original team had accomplished, you'll remember that primitive combat was working. In fact it was set up so you could choose different classes (ability sets) dynamically. This was classic combat prototyping which enabled us to get a good feel for how our action/reaction combat system would function. We've talked about this in interviews and on the games web site, but I'll do a quick recap here: it's sort of like real-time Magic: the Gathering. You have a set of spells and abilities you've learned and earned. When you are prepping for the next fight, you memorize a subset of your spells and abilities. Some are use once until you mem them again, while others might have re-use timers where you can keep casting the spell or triggering the ability until you run out of the appropriate mana type. And, like in M:TG, you don't just mem spells and abilities you want to use against the mobs, but you also mem Answers. You mem counter spells, deflections, etc. In fact, if you don't bother yourself with answers and focus only on the cool things you want to do, you're a noob and you're probably going to die hard.

and a wall of text about how good unity is:

https://www.pantheonrotf.com/#

(this came from a post on another site where I was addressing an assertion being made, but ended up making a segue into the state of the game and the plan over the next 8+ months. My plan was to post that part here as a blog, so here it is).


My goal has been to keep Pantheon alive no matter what and to ride the storm out. Instead of joining the debate and argument, especially when it got ugly, I focused on building a new team. It so happened that I had a friend who had been working on a religious niche MMO for years using a volunteer only team. I tapped into her knowledge of volunteer and remote team building and much to my amazement was able to start reassembling a team far more rapidly than I thought possible. She knew people who knew people and we now have a larger team than before, full of people with energy and a strong desire to be part of an MMO team and to do so with little to no compensation and to do so remotely. I was skeptical at first, being accustomed to funded projects and a job site where we all met every morning and worked together and in person.


My friend and now co-lead and Pantheon Producer, Laurene, has done the amazing and we have a very solid team of lore writers, world builders, artists, programmers, IT people, etc., who have joined the new team. I purposely avoided the debate and arguing and focused instead on team building and starting a real development process again. Some of the dust has settled and some has not. I've now made this post and the one before it to address some flat out misinformation (that I never paid the team) and I do so at the risk this re-ignites the negativity and bad feelings and the character assassinations. But my gut told me to go for it. To test the waters, so to speak.


Regardless, though, I am not returning to be the Pantheon evangelist at this time (which is the wrong time). I am far too busy and involved both managing and working on the Pantheon project. Here's what's really important that you may not know if you haven't been following the game, maybe because you thought it was dead or something:


Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen is indeed fully back in development mode. We are focusing on the MMO foundation that needs to be in place upon which you build the world, implement game logic, create content, etc. The game is now truly client-server. When you run the game you log in or create an account, select a character, and then enter the world in a zone called Halnir's Pass. Your game client is connected to a world server and a zone server on a server box we control. You can move around, see other players, and chat. Your movement and status are controlled by the server; in other words, the server is authoritative. You can then exit Halnir's Pass and zone into a labyrinths of caves deep underground. This is actual zoning and you leave the control of one zone server's process and are transferred to another. Your persistent data is being kept track of by the world server, your actual data being saved to an MS SQL database.


We have been revising and extending the lore and story behind the game. We should have a world map in the next couple of weeks. We've settled on the races and classes we want to have at launch. We've decided that there will be nine playable races to start out with and three starting cities on three separate continents. We want players to be able to find their friends quickly in Pantheon because this MMO is all about grouping and working together and playing your role effectively as a team player. You'll be able to teleport between the three starting cities with ease, again to facilitate grouping, guilds, and the player community in general. That said, the game is also about exploration and adventure, so don't assume there will be teleports out in the rest of the world. Keeping your group together and replacing one group member with another when the first has to leave will be very doable. Teleporting around the open world so you can avoid danger, not so much.


Recently we've been growing our world building team and we currently have four on that team. We will need more, but so far so good. They are using World Machine along with other tools that work well with our engine, which is Unity 3D. Using this tech and tools has rapidly accelerated development in many ways. Ultimately what it allows us to do is to build the game in the sequence and order that makes sense from an MMO development standpoint. In 1996 when we started work on EverQuest, this was not possible. In 2002 when we began work on Vanguard, this was not possible. In the past much of the team was gated much of the time. MMO projects would begin with lots of discussion and documentation, usually far more than what was truly beneficial, because the designers and artists we're waiting for and gated by programming. You had to wait for a display, even a simple one. You had to wait for the engine to exist to the point where you could actually build a zone and run through it. You had to wait on even a simple UI because it really wasn't that simple. You had to wait for real character models to at least be initially designed before you could enter a zone and run around.


Bottom line, the tech of the day forced you to implement your game NOT in the order that made sense. What is really the stuff you want working first? It should be the aspects of the game that are game defining and what sets your game apart, what's unique or key to the vision behind the game. With Pantheon, that's adventure and combat, followed by item acquisition, with important features like character customization and presentation coming just about last. Note I said it was important. Just because it doesn't make sense to implement something until much later by no means makes that feature or tech or mechanic less important.


But you do need to identify the features and mechanics of the game that are fundamental to the games success. With Pantheon, much like EQ1, Vanguard, etc,, as mentioned, it's all about adventure and combat. If exploring the world is boring and if fighting a group of mobs mundane, then the game has failed regardless of how good it looks or how realistically your avatar is rendered. The problem in the past was that you couldn't really log in, explore, and do battle until, say, 3 or more years into a 5 year development cycle. Sure, you could write up detailed low level design documents. Sure, you could create an intricate and detailed world in Campaign Cartographer. But you couldn't play it In-game. You had to wait and wait on tech and tools before you had the opportunity to really play the game and make changes and tweaks.


Today, in 2014, that's all changed. With Unity and all of the plug-ins and tools and tech you can rapidly get to the point where you are really working on the true game itself. That's why, if you have been watching announcements and screen shots and movies since April, you are seeing a pre-alpha game that seems to be missing things you might have expected to be there. Again, with Pantheon, the core of the game is adventure and combat. So the plan to get from point A (starting real development) to point B (adventure and combat) is to implement only what we MUST to get there. The game must be client-server. The game's servers must be authoritative (so hacking is difficult). You must be able to log into the server and then choose a character and enter the game. You need to be able to travel from one zone to another (adventure and exploration). You need to be able to see other players, communicate with them, and then group with them. You've got to be able to create mobs, assign them characteristics, put them into an encounter, place that encounter in the world, and then have the zone server keep track of them, tell your client to display them, etc. And then you need to be able to fight them. You need to be able to create abilities and spells, and assign them to player characters and NPCs. And, finally, you need tuning knobs, allowing you to adjust abilities, levels, defense and offensive values, preferably in real time.


That's pretty much it, although I'm sure I forgot a detail here and there. Are there other aspects of the game that are also important, and maybe even essential? Of course. How about items and looting? How about different modes of travel? How about how exactly you level and progress? GUI? Inventory? Character creation? Character appearance and customization? All of those are super important and they need to be worked on and made impressive and polished. But we don't need them now. Our goal is to make adventure, exploration, and combat working pre-alpha. That gives us pre-alpha, alpha, and beta to make what's fundamental to Pantheon is polished, balanced, configurable, tweak able, and, wait for it: FUN.


And that is why I'm so crazy excited about this game and this development process. We're going to be grouping up, exploring, and killing mobs in a matter of months, not years. Let me segue back to what we've accomplished and do a quick recap. We have real client-server, so I can log in, choose a character, and enter the world. I can interact with other players, albeit primitively. I can see them and chat, but not group up. I can travel from a zone to another. The tools, plug-ins, and tech needed to create an outdoor or indoor zone have been chosen and implemented (thanks Monty!). So what's next? Well, we have to get two separate paths in production and not gated by someone or something. First, if adventure and exploration are fundamental, then we need a detailed world map with cities, dungeons, points of interest, climates, etc. laid out using a vector based app (Campaign Cartographer) so we can zoom in, add more detail, and then zoom some more. Then we need to break that world up into zones and decide what zone connects to what other zone and where. Then we need small design docs describing the zone with text and pictures if possible. Finally the world builder has his map and design doc and he or she can start actually creating the zone using the documented procedures and plug-ins and tools and tech. And if you want a huge world, then you want an army of world builders working in parallel, hopefully not gating each other. What about the art assets that go into the zone? Well, here's where we have a huge advantage again that didn't exist in 1996 or 2002:


We have the unity store where we can purchase already made art assets. Are we going to ship the game full of purchased assets? Of course not. But, and this is key, the world builder is not gated by the art team, waiting on assets to be created in Maya so he or she can then plug them into their zone. In fact, even though the funding is not there to hire those artists yet, the world builders can proceed and make measurable forward progress. Again, where are we at? We have identified the plug-ins, tools, and tech that work with Unity and built one outdoor zone and one indoor dungeon zone. This process has been documented as well. And we have 4-5 world builders who have begun their first zone. And the map and zone write-ups have begun, but they're not where they should be. Hey, just keeping it real.


Back to the game. We've logged in and we are exploring and zoning. Next we need to be able to create mobs, define zones, and then create encounters. Encounters are defined by one or more mobs and have various attributes. Once you've made the mobs, zone definition, and encounter, you need to place those encounters into the actual zone. Then when the zone is run, it has the data it needs to show those mobs in-game. Where are we at? The windows app that talks with the database was started by yours truly about 2 weeks ago. You can create mobs, zone definitions, and encounters. Next we need to be able to place the encounters and then the zone server needs to get all of that data from the database when the zone is loaded up. Then we will start seeing mobs when we enter the game and start exploring. How close are we to this point? A couple weeks max, hopefully sooner.


So that's where we are at. And we've made it to this point building on what was there in April plus stuff that we had to re-write or add. Add in the time it took to build this team and I think we've achieved something extraordinary in a little over two months. I want to pause here and let you know one reason I've written all of this up to this point. Because we are a crowd funded game at least up until we find that first round of funding (likely an accredited angel investor) I feel we owe it to everyone whose donated to us their hard earned money examples and proof of measurable forward progress. This is why we recently committed to the community that we would show examples of this measurable forward progress at least every 1-2 weeks. And I hope it also convinces many of you who may still be sitting on the fence to pledge money to us sooner as opposed to later. We need money to buy tools and plug-ins and servers and Unity licenses. And then, even though the team is technically volunteers at this point, I do like to paypal them some $$ when I can. Every little bit helps, trust me.


Ok, then what? Well, we continue to look for more world builders. We need an army and we need world builders now, as volunteers, and then we will need more once funding comes in at which point 1. Our volunteers can become employees and 2. We can hire world builders that need a salary before they can climb in board. Ok, back to coding. In a couple of weeks, as mentioned, we should have NPCs spawning in zones. Now comes the fun part: turn combat back on. If you looked at the movies I put together back in April to show you all what the original team had accomplished, you'll remember that primitive combat was working. In fact it was set up so you could choose different classes (ability sets) dynamically. This was classic combat prototyping which enabled us to get a good feel for how our action/reaction combat system would function. We've talked about this in interviews and on the games web site, but I'll do a quick recap here: it's sort of like real-time Magic: the Gathering. You have a set of spells and abilities you've learned and earned. When you are prepping for the next fight, you memorize a subset of your spells and abilities. Some are use once until you mem them again, while others might have re-use timers where you can keep casting the spell or triggering the ability until you run out of the appropriate mana type. And, like in M:TG, you don't just mem spells and abilities you want to use against the mobs, but you also mem Answers. You mem counter spells, deflections, etc. In fact, if you don't bother yourself with answers and focus only on the cool things you want to do, you're a noob and you're probably going to die hard.


Ok. So a lot of this was in the game pre-April and it was great being able to mess with how combat was going to look and feel. Now, in our new client-server set up, using MMO centric networking tech, we need to integrate that old code into that future current build. That's going to take some time and we want to do it right. We also need to revise and extend the functionality. Essentially you need to be able to in-game set your level, race, and class in real time. Same with the mob(s). Their initial values will be loaded in from the database, but then we want to be able to tune them in-game in real time. Then it's time to implement grouping. And then it's time to start playing this game, at its core, initially a bit primitive, but it will be for real. It won't be a demo or even a prototype. Yes, all of this so we can make adventure, exploration, combat, and grouping actually in-game and real within the first year of development.


So that's the road map for at least the next 4-8 months. What about everything else? Like I mentioned earlier, there's still a lot of important features, assets, and mechanics that need to be implemented before beta, which ideally will last a year or so, and also ideally the game is at least close to feature complete. A lot of the timing also depends on when our first round of funding comes in. But here's a perfect place to address an 'issue' that comes up sometimes when we post a movie or screenshots. Under this plan and with this tech I have hopefully explained why using Unity and the Unity Store is so key to our development plan and the sequence and order within that plan. To be clear, you are going to see a lot of store bought assets in the movies and screenshots probably up until the last year or so of development. This allows the world builders to lay out intricate and challenging dungeons without having to create art assets themselves or wait for a 3d modeler to create them in Maya. Character creation and customization? Can't ship without it, but we can also have that be one of the Last big technical hurdles as opposed to it being one of the first like it was in EQ or Vanguard. We can choose our character tech towards the end of the development cycle. This means, amongst other things, that we don't choose one now, put a lot of time and resources into it, but then much better tech appears during the last year of development and we either keep the old stuff or we painfully transition to the new tech (and this happened several times both during EQs and Vanguards dev cycles). So, in summary re: character models, you're going to see store bought models likely for quite some time. And yes, there's a method to all of this madness.


Items, climates, vehicles, customizable user interfaces, etc, etc. All of that happens in a sequence and order I can talk about another time. The main points here were to talk about the team, what we've accomplished, why you see store bought assets, the road to combat and adventure, etc.


-Brad "Aradune" McQuaid
 
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Dr Tomo

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There's no way today's SoE would fall for Brad LolQuaid. Dude's a mess, and his history precedes him.

I think SOE would take him. On the Rift alpha/beta forums there were a lot of people that came from the EQ & EQ 2 mmo's and a lot of interesting stories popped up on regarding EQ. McCaid actually made bank for selling EQ to SOE and then he lost that money in the stock market hence why you see him trying to make another mmo instead of retiring. Another thing, most people didn't know was how SOE was also responsible for the Vanguard mmo launch fuck up as the team wasn't ready for launch, but SOE refused to wait any longer because of EQ 2. It turned out that guy that started Trion was the lead guy that ran EQ 2 and people lamented on the Rift forums how this guy credentials put the mmo in doubt. EQ 2 was not wildly successful as SOE has hoped with EQ 1 and so they launched it and it turned out to be a failure.

I honestly believe that he can easily get an publisher, but he would never stick with the publishers timeline and they will have to force him to release the game early. I never played any of the EQ games or Vanguard, but I read of peoples respect for him as he tried to deliver something new. Like you said his history precedes him EQ 1 > Vangaurd unlike the guy that owns Trion EQ 2 > Rift.

* quick edit: guy bragged about his credentials of making EQ 2 great and how he was highly optimistic over Rift being just as successful as EQ 2 was.
 

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