I hope you can bring those folks back ASAP. You definitely have some very hopeful and excited fans in my circles. I believe the seasons approach was creative and took some courage to "try it" and not without some push back. It seems this direction, art style, and vision is sticking and excited to see everything being content addition from here on!
I think it is great to want to let more people in, and certainly the pace of content has sped up.
However, be very careful with the words 'early access' for many people in general gaming community this signifies a soft launch and may set expectations too high. You only get one launch.
Personally, I would change next season to an 'Alpha' (and give champions full access) and swap to status 'Beta' or 'Open Beta' in December with some very clear guidelines to what this is, and leaving open a future 'Early Access' to attract another wave of customers.
Beta implies still in development (which it will be for some time) and balance/systems may change or maybe even a wipe/rollback if we get bugs. Basically it gives you more options, and buys more time/forgiveness from pledgers.. It also fulfils you Alpha / Beta access pledges on your page.
My current understanding from chatting on Discord (It was a horrible experience chatting on Discord as multiple people implied I was basically stupid that I had some concerns about Early Access.) is that VR has done away with using Pre-alpha, Alpha, and Beta to describe the progress of where Pantheon is in development. VR is using Pre-release, Early Access, and (I think) Release. If this is news to you, don’t feel bad about that because it was news to me too. Until yesterday, I thought VR was still in Pre-alpha. Yeah, several people made me feel bad on Discord for not knowing Pre-alpha, Alpha, and Beta are terms VR is no longer using.
Interestingly make sense, in a way.
Or maybe i misunderstood, but in the end where we were sold on alpha access, for many years. Within months Seasons were created and Now Early access.
It feels like we skipped steps regarding access to testing :-P now i am a dreamer mostof the time! lol so i do not think this will do anything but heck, as a champion and speaking of myself, getting full access to the game like VIP after this upcoming season Leading up to Early Access, id be down for that :-)
Cheers
Beez
They didn't "drop" it. They have been bringing in classes as the game functionality has advanced to meet the abilities of those classes. After getting Summoner in the game, the functionality is now closer to supporting Necro than to supporting Druid. So they are bringing it in first.
IMO it also better supports their EA plans because we already have 2 Healers in the game, but only one Support/CC class. So getting Necro in for EA gives them 2 of each, rather than 3 Healers and 1 Support.
@Jothany
Love it.
Perhaps they can totally redo the Druid as more of a DnD flavor where they are elemental shapeshifters. Could have them be a close range AoE healer in water elemental form using their own body (HP) to heal those close... and perhaps one of the other healers could heal the Druid while the Druid is sacrificing their essence to AoE heal (or AoE damage using their HP in a fire elemental form). IDK... there's so much they could do with the Druid :(
I'm just happy to hear Necro is in!