we all know it takes time and the fact is they had 5 years now if they keep this paces wl they will have to update graphics do to all the change in stuff... Look Nvidia and there new shadying system that just came out no biggie right now it just came out . But in 3 years it will be whats expect. So really they need to push this hard.. and maybe that's why the radio silence at least I hope. Do I want the game yes .. will it come out yes but they may not give us a full game will see.
What I would like to see from VR is list of zibe they expect to have for launch not name a number so xx at launch we we have xx 70% or more done.
Races the same we have 9 races we have xx mods done we have racial traits xx done
A number will not give anything away but at least give us an idea of how stuffs moving.
And non of that would be set is stone so xx zones to launch could. Change at any time
Janus said:OGTomkins said:They flat out stated for YEARS and YEARS they simply weren't going to do a Classic WoW. Thats been on forums as long as I can remember. So it's not really about them having a leg to stand on in terms of time x money = production more over the big exects finally saying ok fine we'll do a Classic WoW. No different then when EQ decided to do progression servers.
W/e made blizzard decide to change their mind is only going to be known to them. But they are pretty firm on decisions they make when it comes to a yes or no to the public generally
What I meant was how long it took once it was sanctioned by Blizzard/Activision. Especially after Nostalrius. It took them more than two years (development began 4 months prior to the November 2017 announcement) to develop a game that already existed in their 1.12.1 port that they did have on record.
Personally, I don't care about this issue as I know the process takes time, but it's important to be consistent on this issue, especially if people are to criticize a much smaller developer for creating entirely new content as a contrast.
I can respect and understand that. The way it was worded I read that differently. =)
Humperding said:Funny, People are posting the exact same thing about Camelot.....I am a very early supporter of pantheon,
Now it could be that behind the scenes a lot more is already there in an unfinished state. That a lot of other starter zones and other zones are developed in parallel. the problem here is: We just don't know. What we know is that alpha was supposed to be end of last year (of course it wasn't promised, but hinted at). And now, 10 months later, even in the september newsletter, there isn't even a *hint* of a new alpha date. What happened? I am simply worried. Did they promise too much? Should pantheon shrink down for the start in order to have a working game faster?
I am not proposing that it's all a scam, i don't believe that. But as an early supporter (alpha) i feel i am left too much in the dark. Is pantheon in trouble? I understand (being a dev myself) that committing to a time is hard. But non committing to any time can lead to feature creep and not enough pressure to actually release. I think you should give us a ballpark time for alpha at least and *really* try to stick to it.
I am worried.
LeeLoo said:Humperding said:Funny, People are posting the exact same thing about Camelot.....I am a very early supporter of pantheon,
Now it could be that behind the scenes a lot more is already there in an unfinished state. That a lot of other starter zones and other zones are developed in parallel. the problem here is: We just don't know. What we know is that alpha was supposed to be end of last year (of course it wasn't promised, but hinted at). And now, 10 months later, even in the september newsletter, there isn't even a *hint* of a new alpha date. What happened? I am simply worried. Did they promise too much? Should pantheon shrink down for the start in order to have a working game faster?
I am not proposing that it's all a scam, i don't believe that. But as an early supporter (alpha) i feel i am left too much in the dark. Is pantheon in trouble? I understand (being a dev myself) that committing to a time is hard. But non committing to any time can lead to feature creep and not enough pressure to actually release. I think you should give us a ballpark time for alpha at least and *really* try to stick to it.
I am worried.
How about we all agree that on the official Pantheon forums we’ll show the devs respect(this goes for Camelot devs as well) and we shall not go there...
All I gotta smay is some real good nature(arguably historic) competition is in action, and as consumer‘s of the medium we got nothing to lose. Even blizzard respects what’s happening right now, they’re looking for some new material to hack and refine.
So what I only backed BRAD, someones gonna win my monthly subscription in the end.
Grime said:Lock the board Kilsin before this ends up as an X vs X.
I agree this is a very counter productive way of spreading disception about a game that is not even released. The vast majority havent even experienced loading into the client.
The opinions based on a folk lore report of a game, that may have shown a concept work in progress video. Much of which is work in progress.
The entire question is how much progress til completion ... Also the fact that this thread was acknowledged and there are crickets days later speaks volumes.
I am simple when it comes to this and im not going to point fingers or say x game did it in y amount of time.
I simply want a hay , we ran into some issues we are fixing or working on and this pa and it is 80 % done , we are expecting another pa or a alpha after that.
I think the request is straight forward and not even being critical.
Xxar said:The entire question is how much progress til completion ... Also the fact that this thread was acknowledged and there are crickets days later speaks volumes.
I am simple when it comes to this and im not going to point fingers or say x game did it in y amount of time.
I simply want a hay , we ran into some issues we are fixing or working on and this pa and it is 80 % done , we are expecting another pa or a alpha after that.
I think the request is straight forward and not even being critical.
Yep nothing wrong with coming on and saying we estimate this (as you said) x% done and we hope to get people into a PA by X date, but please keep in mind that is always subject to change and we appreciate the patience. Not sure why so many other people view that as being such a wrong thing to ask.
Kilsin you've stated you read everything and commented in the thread, why don't you put this to rest and just make a quick statement man. Funding is much easier when you are open with your pledgers and would probably silence a lot of these threads while you guys finish up PF...just saying man.
Vjek already showed you guys why there is no point in the Pantheon devs giving us anything but the most vague of progress updates. The devs have no clue themselves when things will be finished. I definitely expect the game to come out but I no longer have any hope of it being properly completed by launch, even with launch being years away. Even the long awaited website/forum revamp never happened and it won't be happening anytime soon.
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/11072/losing-hope/view/post_id/214740
vjek said:Fragile said: I want to know why VR just can't be brutally honest with us, the pledgers, with the status of the game. All of the "internal dates/goals" are horseshit that do nothing but keep us in the dark - guessing and pooling up lots of animosity that could be easily resolved. A simple, "We are aiming for X date, but if Y doesn't get finished, we will have to push. However, we just finished up Z system, so check that box!"Mostly? Because they seem to have a problem with dates and/or estimates, in general..oneADseven, 2017-09-25: http://pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/6904/pre-alpha-alpha-period/view/post_id/128266 [ I couldn't find the source for this quote ]
"Here is a quote from Kilsin back in January: Kilsin - 01/06/2017 Pre-Alpha is a stepping stone to helping us catch some glaring bugs/issues and helping us set up Alpha testing, it won't for a huge testing period but it will be a very important one, maybe a few weeks/month or two at max then into Alpha"
Brad, 2016-08-21: https://www.frailage.com/index.php/131-aradune-ama
"Timetable for Alpha/Beta: Nothing too specific or set in stone, no, because the most important thing is that we are ready, that the game is ready. Remember, alpha and beta are not like early access, where by design a portion of the game is sold to people. Alpha and beta for us is all about people helping us test the game, the mechanics, the features, the content. If enough of the features and mechanics are not present, or if there is not enough content, then starting bringing in outside people would actually do more harm than good. It would frustrate the tester and it wouldn't provide us with much useful information. So the answer is when we're ready, and we hope to be by the first quarter of next year [2017], but again, no promises."
...
"We want to be in full testing for a full year -- it helped EQ launch in a solid, fairly balanced way, and we want this for Pantheon as well."
Brad, 2017-09-13: http://pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/6904/pre-alpha-alpha-period/view/post_id/127109
" All I can say is this right now: I feel strongly that one of the reasons EQ was successful was that we had a nice, long beta. With Pantheon we don't use the term 'beta' in the same way, however. It's more specific. With Pantheon I can say that Pre-alpha+Alpha+Beta will equal a nice, long period during which we will tune, take feedback, tweak, enhance what needs to be made better and yank anything that seemed like a great idea but when exposed to real players just doesn't pan out. "
Kilsin, 2016-07-18: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/3723/game-status/view/post_id/58099
" We have said many times on these forums, in podcasts and streams etc. that testing is not ready and will be hopefully announced early next year [2017] but that is still not set in stone. As we have also said before it is just too hard at this stage of development to give time frames or even estimations since being unable to meet them disappoints many people, so instead we just work our butts off and announce news when we have it, that won;t change until we get further into development or receive investor funding. "
Kilsin, 2017-02-26: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/5397/beta-information/view/post_id/96978
" There is no set time length for any testing phase, we will continue testing until we feel the game is in a good place and ready for the next testing phase or for full release, but it is impossible to predict when that will be or how long it will last. "
Kilsin, 2017-02-21: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2213/where-is-my-beta-download/view/post_id/95418
" Pre-alpha is soon, we are working out butts off to get the game ready for that amount of people and getting everything into the game that we need tested, once it is ready, we will announce it with plenty of warning for people to take holidays/time off etc. as previous stated. " [Pre-Alpha 1 started Dec 6, 2017]
FAQ, 2016-09-08: http://web.archive.org/web/20160908191055/www.pantheonmmo.com/game/faqs/#q45
" What are the approximate timeframes for Alpha, Beta, and commercial release?
There are many variables involved and developing a massively multiplayer game is not an easy thing to do. Our goal is to be in alpha and beta in 2016, and to release the game in 2017. But this is not set in stone, and the above dates are subject to change. "
Brad, 2016-08-17: https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/4y7sd0/i_am_brad_aradune_mcquaid_cco_for_pantheon_rise/d6lmjt6/
" Can you provide any sort of timeframe for alpha/beta?
... we hope to be by the first quarter of next year [2017], but again, no promises."
Kilsin, 2017-10-02: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/7004/pre-alpha-mentioned-in-the-stream/view/post_id/129464
" We don;t have a timeframe for PA1 or Alpha/Beta, but PA1 is to help us set the game and servers up for large amounts of people and to help crush and game-breaking bugs that would affect large amounts of people, so however long it takes to get a stable build running minus game breaking bugs is how long Pre-Alpha will last, it may be only a month it may be longer but we won't know until we get in and test. "
A more optimistic view of the statements from 2017 that clearly reflect a planned timeline that never happened is that VR got significant investor funding and changed the timeline significantly for a combination of three reasons.
Reason one - they had *substantially* greater resources and therefore could make a significantly better game - and they went back a bit on the timing in order to do so.
Reason two - the investor(s) wanted certain changes made to improve the likelihood of success and they went back on the timing to make such changes.
Reason three - while they still care about us and want our pledges and purchases they can afford to risk the loss of some of us by being less visible and aggressively optimistic in their public statements. So they went back to saying less which was their preference all along as witnessed by many statements they have made. By saying less I mean about future timing - they are certainly saying more about game features as things move forward.
I do not know enough to say that any of this is actually *true* but it very well could be.
Ok guys, I am going to put this one to bed, I left it open so you could discuss it and I was genuinely interested in seeing what some of you have to say but putting the reasonable/sensible answers aside - a lot of it was just demanding things we can't give, hard dates/time frames/updates and we have explained why numerous times.
We are working hard on getting Project Faerthale ready for PA5, as soon as we are happy with it, we will release it to our PA testers, what happens after that will depend on the feedback and testing data we get from PA5 as to whether we have a PA6 or work towards Alpha, either way, there isn't an answer we can give that won't be a complete guess or flat out wrong, so instead we focus on the work that needs to be done instead of talking about it.
We will release updates as they become available and as always, we appreciate your patience a lot, games like this take many years to complete and we know it can put a strain on peoples patience, it is the nature of the gaming industry unfortunately but we are committed and focussed on delivering Pantheon to you guys in the best shape possible while holding ourselves to a very high standard and that takes time, sadly.
To answer the OP's question from my own personal (insider) opinion: No, Pantheon is not in trouble. We are in a very good place and working hard to release the next stage of Pre Alpha testing.