This is from a thread -- I thought it was worth putting here too:
One member said, in regards to the screenshots:
Looking at some of the uber cartoony look it made me wonder. Why not beat Blizzard at their own game? Make a great MMO but graphically go with that cartoony look. Everyone is going for hyper realism and Pantheon is looking like just another copy. There could new ground going counter to what everyone else is doing. Even EQNext looks more Warcraft ish in their graphics and not going with they hyper realism.
Just a thought.
--------------
First, we all want our MMOs to look good. That's a given. That said, this is my read on the future: it's all about gameplay. What will set Pantheon apart are not the latest and greatest graphics (Unity is great, but we could have used Unreal 4 or something, spent a year making it MMO compatible, and then probably used the latest and greatest tech. Thing is, we did that with Vanguard and it bit us in the ass). What's going to set MMOs apart in the future is HOW THEY PLAY. Pantheon's focus is on adventure, exploration, and combat. If the world is compelling to explore, then we will have achieved one part of the puzzle. If the combat and adventure is more involved, more fun, more advanced, etc. than other MMOs, then we will have achieved the other part of the puzzle. I really don't care if the game right now (pre-pre-alpha) is looking like ESO. The UI? This is pre-pre-alpha. The UI will change CONSIDERABLY. The end result, the style of the game, you are seeing just the beginning of. But what it will be truly judged on is gameplay. Players don't want eye candy and then find out the game sucks. This happens too often (especially with console games). They want a game that grabs hold of them, that becomes a home, that they find themselves playing year after year. That's what we're going after.
Revealing these screenshots and movie is a risk. Some who are looking for eye candy and the latest tech will be disappointed. But those people, espeically those who helped fund this prototype/demo, deserve to see the work we accomplished. Well, now it's out there (although I want to do a more polished movie #2). It's plainly obvious that we were making a game, not a graphics demo. While you can see the art get better and better with newer builds, and also with less unity store assets, the important thing to notice is the gameplay, specifically the combat system. The first iteration of it was in right away -- you can see that in the earliest builds. You can see it evolve. You can see it become more robust. Pantheon is a game in-progress, not vaporware, and not a graphics demo.
-Brad
