Return of the Pantheon MMORPG, NDA lift, and Alpha test session! Please read this letter to the community and join us on Thursday, November 16th at 5PM PT (-8 GMT) for a live Q&A with Creative Director, Chris "Joppa" Perkins to address your questions regarding this announcement.
This Q&A will be open to the public and hosted on our official Pantheon Discord server. If you will be unable to attend the Q&A, please feel free to leave your questions in this forum thread so we may add them to the list of questions.
Savanja said:
chenzeme said: WOW. I mean. WOW! No mention of graphics? Just so we are clear? Are they staying as is or reverting too?
The art is staying. It was the right move for us.
I was starting to come around to the 247 idea, for a short term game mode, to allow for more testing to further the Pantheon MMO development. It is nice to see VR understand what was promised and what the community wants. This has been my last hope for an MMO for a long time. Thank you VR.
Very good, this is fundamentally the right decision! Communication with the community and for the community will be the key to everything moving forward. This decision builds more trust than any other decision. I am glad that you are including the community in the decision making process and if you keep doing so then everything else falls into place. This was a game conceived and created by a community effort as well and will succeed as such.
Wow... This had to be a very tough decision. Even just because... it sets a precedent that may be hard to avoid repercussions from later. You let whiners get their way. Yes, there was enough valid criticism of the 247 test, but there was also a lot of idiotic and downright empty criticism too. The precedent set is that, now people will be encouraged to ***** and moan to try and get their way on EVERYTHING. And most directly, this will put such a "effort" on the art style change. I can easily see whiners getting emboldened to complain about that 2-3 fold now! They have proof now, that if they throw enough of a temper tantrum about it, they could get their way. I hope VR has a plan to mitigate that.
I am not sad to see 247 go, but I was not completely against it either. I actually read the statements about it, and thought about it. Thus I do have to wonder if testing will go well without it, because 247 was decided on for a reason beyond the popularly assumed "greed".
That said... I am very happy to see that, despite 247 getting canceled... Alpha testers will FINALLLLLLYYYYYYYYYY be in within weeks! I did not expect that. I figured the Alpha testers addition was a 247 only thing, and with that canceled we would end up back on the bench.
I am very glad to see they saw reason here. 247 was not a good look regardless of the motives for having it. The art style is still a big issue, but in full honesty gameplay is king..I can overlook graphics/art style. I did so with WoW after all. Full steam ahead on the MMORPG and if necessary launch it as early access in the next year or so, put the cards on the table and show us what you've got. I would have wanted an extraction game to fail because that's not what I pledged for...but if you are moving forward with the MMORPG I am back on board.
