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

[Ranselknulf]

Quality is as much about the people in the game as the mechanics of a game.

That's the thing all you nostalgia manboons forget. People today are different than back then so unless you find a way to keep the modern manboons out it won't be the "same". The best you can hope for is a new twist on the old ideas that tries to keep most of the old stuff around.

 

[sirsnail]

Once they got computers in trailer-parks, ghettos, and at the border, that was it. In the days of EQ, they were out drinking. In the present day, they play MMORPGs. Do you want numbers? You got them. Nobody numbers more than the illiterate horde.

 

[sirsnail]

I have had the fortune to play many great Korean RPGs, where F2P began. In most cases, I would take a Korean RPG over a Western--and especially an American--one. F2P does not determine a game. In the past eight years, since Vanguard, the only good RPG I have seen has been TERA. Korea has paid homage to the genre dozens of times with serious, traditional RPGs. That people acknowledge Wildstar and Guild Wars 2 as games (rather than trash), in this country, is precisely why I have always inclined to the Koreans for RPGs, even in the glory days of Western ones. This is the difference between cultural solidarity and cultural diversity. American games are only good when they are made for their traditional audience. I have never seen a good American game made for the "audience" today. Koreans more or less are a homogenous audience. They had celebrities--professional gamers--before the "audience" in America today owned a computer, or had considered online games--and they were playing American games. By the time the mob in America today started online games, the industry was already in decline. And it has yet to produce anything since (with the exception of McQuaid's Vanguard, which was probably a victim of timing more than anything else. WoW was still good at the time).

 

[KevinV12000]

Has anyone heard any updates on this project at all?

 

[Ranselknulf]

I googled and got this.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/1006/feature/10005/page/2

Seems to answer a lot of questions but mainly the highlight is this.

MMORPG: Has there been any major design changes in the last 12 months?

Chris: Nothing major. Nothing fundamental or transformational. We have solidified our design stance on some things that had not been clear. Example. Are you going to be able to camp mobs versus dungeon runs? Some thought that we might be trying to get away from camps. We have decided that camping is a quintessential thing that has made those games the experiences they were. Things you need to work around. The payoff is massive. We have an opportunity to make a game that does camping well. This helps us get away from the linear content motif.

MMORPG: Will there be instances?

Chris: The only place we are willing to explore would be quest related experiences that are for a characters solo experience. No instanced dungeons or cities or hubs. We may explore content that relates to individual character pay offs.



There is supposedly something coming from the team at the end of september but it sounds like it's mostly just hype.

 

[Xenich]

I googled and got this.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/1006/feature/10005/page/2

Seems to answer a lot of questions but mainly the highlight is this.

MMORPG: Has there been any major design changes in the last 12 months?

Chris: Nothing major. Nothing fundamental or transformational. We have solidified our design stance on some things that had not been clear. Example. Are you going to be able to camp mobs versus dungeon runs? Some thought that we might be trying to get away from camps. We have decided that camping is a quintessential thing that has made those games the experiences they were. Things you need to work around. The payoff is massive. We have an opportunity to make a game that does camping well. This helps us get away from the linear content motif.

MMORPG: Will there be instances?

Chris: The only place we are willing to explore would be quest related experiences that are for a characters solo experience. No instanced dungeons or cities or hubs. We may explore content that relates to individual character pay offs.



There is supposedly something coming from the team at the end of september but it sounds like it's mostly just hype.

Their target was to have a solid working alpha of the game fleshed out for levels 1-10 by the end of this year (as a demo to show investors). Not sure if they are on target to achieve this, the word has been basically "We are working hard, things are coming along great...". The estimated release of the game is being targeted as 2018, but like with anything, take it with a grain of salt.

They did do a complete move to Unity 5 and there has been some footage and screens here and there concerning that, but nothing solid. There is a lot of discussion that goes on at the pantheon site forums. MMORPG gets tid bits of information from time to time, but the main site forums constantly have interaction between the developers and community.

 

[KevinV12000]

Thanks for the assist in finding updates, guys, I appreciate it. I read the interview and I continue to be pleased and hopeful about the Vanguard-ian nature of the project, though of course the corporate and marketing-speak is off-putting. Just as there is a place for high quality in the music industry, even though it is 95% shit, I continue to believe there is a niche market for actual computer games rather than entertainment "content." Given the promise that was inherent in Vanguard, I am very hopeful for this project.

As an aside, I was watching my 13-year old son play ESO last night and with the Khajits and the desert area I saw, it seemed to me that someone at Zenimax could spin off a Vanguard-like computer game fairly easy and capture that market. They wouldn't do that, but the business opportunity is there.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Thanks for the assist in finding updates, guys, I appreciate it. I read the interview and I continue to be pleased and hopeful about the Vanguard-ian nature of the project, though of course the corporate and marketing-speak is off-putting. Just as there is a place for high quality in the music industry, even though it is 95% shit, I continue to believe there is a niche market for actual computer games rather than entertainment "content." Given the promise that was inherent in Vanguard, I am very hopeful for this project.

As an aside, I was watching my 13-year old son play ESO last night and with the Khajits and the desert area I saw, it seemed to me that someone at Zenimax could spin off a Vanguard-like computer game fairly easy and capture that market. They wouldn't do that, but the business opportunity is there.

Remember the vanguard beta boards? The promises? And then shambles the game launched in...

This guy is worse than Fargo, he tries to sell these hardcore mmos as true successors of old school everquest and then fails miserably to deliver on time, on budget, on features.

 

[Xenich]

Thanks for the assist in finding updates, guys, I appreciate it. I read the interview and I continue to be pleased and hopeful about the Vanguard-ian nature of the project, though of course the corporate and marketing-speak is off-putting. Just as there is a place for high quality in the music industry, even though it is 95% shit, I continue to believe there is a niche market for actual computer games rather than entertainment "content." Given the promise that was inherent in Vanguard, I am very hopeful for this project.

As an aside, I was watching my 13-year old son play ESO last night and with the Khajits and the desert area I saw, it seemed to me that someone at Zenimax could spin off a Vanguard-like computer game fairly easy and capture that market. They wouldn't do that, but the business opportunity is there.

Brad responded to the issue of people arguing over if a niche game of such nature is feasible on MMORPG.com

Just wanted to make a couple of points with some real data.

EQ peaked at 550k players and made over a half a billion in profit for Sony, while costing $8M to develop. And the game is still running, with the rumor that there are still at least 50,000 subscribers. Now, these numbers may not compare to WoW, they are most certainly not niche. In fact, EQ was (and probably still is) the most profitable venture Sony has ever experienced.

Vanguard we had to launch 6+ months early. So even though the game sold around 250k boxes in a very short amount of time, most people couldn't play the game because the framerate/performance was abysmal. I'm not going to re-hash all of the reasons, but I will say lessons were learned. We're not going to let something like that happen again. That said, for those players who stuck around, or returned later, after the client had been optimized, almost always credit Vanguard as one of their favorite games. Even though they had to play in underpopulated shards, making grouping and community development difficult indeed.

Also, since then, WoW (and to some extent a few other MMOs) have exposed millions and millions of people to MMOs.

My point is simply this: of the millions and millions of MMO players, we are very confident that a sizable subset of them will be attracted to the type of gameplay and world we are creating. And because we are not spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build Pantheon, we don't need millions of players. In fact, hundreds of thousands would make the game hugely successful. Could we 'survive' on sub/sales that EQ brought in? Absolutely -- in fact, we would be, from our perspective, fantastically successful. And Vanguard? If 250k players try out Pantheon, and we don't screw up and the game is actually ready to be played and playable, we would also be enormously successful.

Again, if you spend hundreds of millions of dollars to make an MMO then yes, you do also require millions and millions of players to subscribe, or buy the game, or monetize through cash shops in order to be successful. But the reality is that you don't need to spend anywhere near that kind of money. Instead, you can focus on making a game for a solid target audience and have a successful product with far fewer players. You don't have to beat WoW. You don't have to spend SWTOR development costs. You don't need to try to make a game that is all things for all people. Rather, you need to choose a viable target audience and make a really good game for them.

 

[Xenich]

Remember the vanguard beta boards? The promises? And then shambles the game launched in...

This guy is worse than Fargo, he tries to sell these hardcore mmos as true successors of old school everquest and then fails miserably to deliver on time, on budget, on features.

Brad made some mistakes, no argument there, but there is more to the story than simply them putting out some failed game. MS dropped them mid project because they switched teams and the new team wanted to start dictating content creation (a promise MS said that would not happen). Brad refused, MS pulled funding. SoE picked it up, then rushed the release early. If you listen to Brad talk about how they approached the development with Vanguard, they spent all their time on content and features with the intent to go back and optimize right before release. Release was pushed out the door, no time for optimization and bug squashing. While some rumors are true, there was a lot of BS with some family members of the developers going around trash talking Brad (which was bullshit). Is Brad at fault for many things, sure... it was his game, his responsibility, but don't act like this was all his evil doing.

Vanguard turned out to be a very cool game. It had its limitations, but most people moved on and didn't get the chance to play it when it was later optimized.

Besides, I don't see why the mainstream crowd would give a crap. Game isn't made for them, they can move along. /shrug

 

[Hobo Elf]

Vanguard was a great modern adaptation of EverQuest. It did many things well and I'm sad that it never got the support that it deserved. In the end Sony killed the game on purpose because it was too much like EQ and they didn't want it competing with their more established MMOs. RIP my Vulmane Necromancer.

 

[KevinV12000]

I agree with Xenich. The only thing I would add is that one factor from the forums before Vanguard released that I remember well, but have not seen addressed anywhere, was the late decision due to PvP player pressure to add PvP to the game. This was entirely unnecessary and at odds with the ethos of the game and its target audience, but you know how PvPers are: they screamed until they got what they wanted. Much dev time went to adding that, at a time when, in retrospect, Vanguard was running out of time and didn't know it.

 

[Xenich]

I agree with Xenich. The only thing I would add is that one factor from the forums before Vanguard released that I remember well, but have not seen addressed anywhere, was the late decision due to PvP player pressure to add PvP to the game. This was entirely unnecessary and at odds with the ethos of the game and its target audience, but you know how PvPers are: they screamed until they got what they wanted. Much dev time went to adding that, at a time when, in retrospect, Vanguard was running out of time and didn't know it.

Yep, that demand for PvP always annoyed me. Seen that crowd destroy game after game. They come in, claim the game will fail if it isn't catered to, the development then is split to provide it, the PvP crowd calls it crap and then moves on anyway leaving a game with divided focus.

From what I have read though, this isn't going to happen with Pantheon. It has already been adamantly stated they aren't catering to PvP play. They said if there is enough interest, they may open up a PvP FFA server, but it won't have a development focus to it.

 

[Azazel]

Every time I come in this thread I see a couple of posters who act as if this is in any way a serious product which will ever exist, rather than a Unity demo thrown together by a crazed drug addict, and honestly this might be more amusing than the project itself at this point.

 

[KevinV12000]

Every time I come in this thread I see a couple of posters who act as if this is in any way a serious product which will ever exist, rather than a Unity demo thrown together by a crazed drug addict, and honestly this might be more amusing than the project itself at this point.

Oh, it's worse than that mate, believe me. Perhaps one day, when you're older and everything you love and value has been shit on and destroyed, you too will grasp at straws, vague signs that perhaps there are others out there who value what you value, love what you love, respect what you respect. I'll grab a straw made out of vapor and smoke if there was a chance it may be real.

 

[Azazel]

There's a greater chance of the USSR making a comeback than Pantheon ever being more than slapped together shit that Brad bought off the unity store in between his dealers visits.

 

[Xenich]

Every time I come in this thread I see a couple of posters who act as if this is in any way a serious product which will ever exist, rather than a Unity demo thrown together by a crazed drug addict, and honestly this might be more amusing than the project itself at this point.

It may, it may not. You on the other hand are making an absolute prediction by pulling it out of your ass.

 

[Xenich]

There's a greater chance of the USSR making a comeback than Pantheon ever being more than slapped together shit that Brad bought off the unity store in between his dealers visits.

Notice how he changed his position a bit so even if it does come out, he can say it is "slapped together shit".

We get it, you don't think it will come out, you don't like the game, blah blah blah. Run off and play your kiddie retarded mainstream game.

 

[Xenich]

Oh, it's worse than that mate, believe me. Perhaps one day, when you're older and everything you love and value has been shit on and destroyed, you too will grasp at straws, vague signs that perhaps there are others out there who value what you value, love what you love, respect what you respect. I'll grab a straw made out of vapor and smoke if there was a chance it may be real.

I don't think that will ever happen because everything they like is shit anyway, not like you can lower expectations any more than that. /shrug

 

[Kem0sabe]

Notice how he changed his position a bit so even if it does come out, he can say it is "slapped together shit".

We get it, you don't think it will come out, you don't like the game, blah blah blah. Run off and play your kiddie retarded mainstream game.

That's the type of attitude that permeated the vanguard beta forums, and turned the community into toxic shit before it even launched.

Any suggestion and criticism back then got you labeled as a kid, as a wow player, as less of a hardcore player because EQ rose tinted glasses.

Launching an mmorpg and maintaining it are two very different beasts, as a lot of developers have found out... Not having the numbers and the money coming in to maintain content creation and support is what kills off most of these niche mmos with little to few players running around and paying for the privilege.

 

[Xenich]

That's the type of attitude that permeated the vanguard beta forums, and turned the community into toxic shit before it even launched.

Any suggestion and criticism back then got you labeled as a kid, as a wow player, as less of a hardcore player because EQ rose tinted glasses.

That is because people were sick of what was happening to the game industry and didn't want suggestions from people who were only arguing for an easy mainstream game. They still exist, heck... you can go to Pantheons forums right now and there is a person arguing in the death penalty thread making a mainstream gamer argument. That is, when asked about death penalty by the staff, they said any sort of time based penalty (ie exp, corpse run, etc...) is a failed mechanic. That is a 100% mainstream (aka WoW argument). To demand something as that is to not know anything about what EQ and Vanguard was. Nothing wrong with people who have such opinions, but they need to run off back to their mainstream games and leave people to have their niche game.

I remember reading the forums btw. What I noticed was the "toxic WoW forum personality" who came in and made a bunch of claims the game would fail unless it catered to mainstream concepts. They basically were demanding the game be PvP, no death penalty, no exp loss, instanced, etc.... they wanted another "WoW", not an EQ continuation. A lot of that toxic response was deserved because they were in the wrong place asking for the wrong things.

Launching an mmorpg and maintaining it are two very different beasts, as a lot of developers have found out... Not having the numbers and the money coming in to maintain content creation and support is what kills off most of these niche mmos with little to few players running around and paying for the privilege.

It is, but... keep in mind what Brad is saying. They aren't spending enormous amounts of money on the game. They aren't like major studios who are tens and hundreds of millions of dollars in the hole at release, so they won't have lines of investors sitting in the shadows waiting with bats if the game isn't the next mainstream sensation. The game doesn't have to meet mainstream standards. It just has to be successful within the constraints of their budget and focus and that is a pretty obtainable goal when you consider all things.

This is anecdotal, but I have numerous friends from my old EQ guilds who do not play any MMOs. They don't play because they think they are kiddie gimmick crap marketed to mainstream ADD rejects. When shown that there is a possibility that Brad is making another EQ, they were VERY interested and said they would play in a heartbeat providing Brad held to his promise to keep the game old school. EQ Next wasn't hyped because it going to be a mainstream game. It was hyped because people believed it was going to be the "next" EQ, not a mainstream reject like EQ2, but an actual attempt to make a real EQ continuation. The game died (or is dying) because people found out it would be nothing more than a WoW clone marketed to mainstream.

Look at Daybreaks success with their old school EQ progression servers? Look at how Project 1999 has over 10k people playing. Old school interest exists and in enough numbers to easily fund a game that is designed with a modest budget and team size.

Why do you care though? I mean, its an old school developer making an old school game for the old school niche crowd. Why do you care at all? I mean, we get it... you don't think it will succeed, you hate old school games, etc... we understand, so why do you care? I think the game Neverwinter is a travesty of gaming. It is an affront to D&D and nothing more than an arcade PTW hack and slash gimmick. I however don't care what happens to it and if it fails tomorrow, I won't care or be concerned.

So why so interested in this?

 

[Kem0sabe]

That is because people were sick of what was happening to the game industry and didn't want suggestions from people who were only arguing for an easy mainstream game. They still exist, heck... you can go to Pantheons forums right now and there is a person arguing in the death penalty thread making a mainstream gamer argument. That is, when asked about death penalty by the staff, they said any sort of time based penalty (ie exp, corpse run, etc...) is a failed mechanic. That is a 100% mainstream (aka WoW argument). To demand something as that is to not know anything about what EQ and Vanguard was. Nothing wrong with people who have such opinions, but they need to run off back to their mainstream games and leave people to have their niche game.

I remember reading the forums btw. What I noticed was the "toxic WoW forum personality" who came in and made a bunch of claims the game would fail unless it catered to mainstream concepts. They basically were demanding the game be PvP, no death penalty, no exp loss, instanced, etc.... they wanted another "WoW", not an EQ continuation. A lot of that toxic response was deserved because they were in the wrong place asking for the wrong things.



It is, but... keep in mind what Brad is saying. They aren't spending enormous amounts of money on the game. They aren't like major studios who are tens and hundreds of millions of dollars in the hole at release, so they won't have lines of investors sitting in the shadows waiting with bats if the game isn't the next mainstream sensation. The game doesn't have to meet mainstream standards. It just has to be successful within the constraints of their budget and focus and that is a pretty obtainable goal when you consider all things.

This is anecdotal, but I have numerous friends from my old EQ guilds who do not play any MMOs. They don't play because they think they are kiddie gimmick crap marketed to mainstream ADD rejects. When shown that there is a possibility that Brad is making another EQ, they were VERY interested and said they would play in a heartbeat providing Brad held to his promise to keep the game old school. EQ Next wasn't hyped because it going to be a mainstream game. It was hyped because people believed it was going to be the "next" EQ, not a mainstream reject like EQ2, but an actual attempt to make a real EQ continuation. The game died (or is dying) because people found out it would be nothing more than a WoW clone marketed to mainstream.

Look at Daybreaks success with their old school EQ progression servers? Look at how Project 1999 has over 10k people playing. Old school interest exists and in enough numbers to easily fund a game that is designed with a modest budget and team size.

Why do you care though? I mean, its an old school developer making an old school game for the old school niche crowd. Why do you care at all? I mean, we get it... you don't think it will succeed, you hate old school games, etc... we understand, so why do you care? I think the game Neverwinter is a travesty of gaming. It is an affront to D&D and nothing more than an arcade PTW hack and slash gimmick. I however don't care what happens to it and if it fails tomorrow, I won't care or be concerned.

So why so interested in this?

I don't care, but this being the codex... im just arguing for the sake of a good discussion.

 

[Xenich]

I don't care, but this being the codex... im just arguing for the sake of a good discussion.

Fair enough, but there are many who seem to be obsessed about a new game being niche specific and spend a lot of effort trying to denounce and derail its focus (MMORPG.com and other forums)

Who knows if this game will come out, I have no idea. So far, having read a lot in their forums, watched the developer diaries and round tables, it looks promising and they do seem to be moving forward. Time will tell, the whole thing could go to piss as well. That said, it is the only game out there that has a chance of being a game over that of an entertainment simulator for the inept and bored.

 

[Old Hans]

brad needs to give it up. Maybe he should make a MUD

 

[Hobo Elf]

I'm fine with a corpse run death penalty if there are spells that can help me make it easier to get it back in case I died in a very cutthroat area, but stupid shit death penalties like nerfed stats for X amount of minutes need to fucking go and never come back. All it does is waste your time by forcing you to alt + tab until it has run its course. That was one of the things that I will never miss while playing a modern MMO.