Welcome Jawi & Adriann!
Anyone that has made a Pledge and depending on the pledge level, they will be playing sometime between now and EA release. The servers are up from now until EA. Take a look at the Seasons page for more information. If those two pages, Pledge & Seasons, don’t answer your questions, please ask what else you’d like to know.
My ape brain agrees that the doors should be opened to Champions who fully expected to be testing for a considerable period of time prior to EA or launch. Back when some of us pledged, there were no seasons, no VIPs. We expected to be in there with our sleeves rolled up, helping to bring Pantheon to life. I'd been in alpha for Vanguard, EQ2 and EQ Landmark. In those days, you had to apply for access and it wasn't simply a matter of opening your wallet. I expected something similar with Pantheon. When they introduced VIP access it was a bit of a crushing blow.
Whatever the original intent, I'm sure it's purely a fiscal decision. When it was just employees and the odd streamer who had access, they probably ran Terminus on a machine in the corner of Brad's office. Opening up to VIP's would have increased the load so they'd be running a small config on Amazon AWS. Put all of the Champions on top of that and the AWS costs are going to go up substantially.
Things are tight enough that they have suspended some team member's contracts. I'd rather see the money spent on the team rather than giving me something I've already been waiting for for nearly a decade.
I do agree that "Early Access" is an unfortunate renaming of "Alpha" for the same reasons others have stated.
I'm old school. I don't find Discord an effective way to communicate major announcements or to look for information. Chat apps like Discord or Slack are fine for internal use where disruptions are necessary in real time. Thankfully the forums are still in use by some, even if they've fallen out of fashion.
~Cel~
"Seasons will continue for now. Halnir Cave next season, and Necro in the following season.
Then we pause Seasons and bear down on finishing the EA content for December."
Does this mean the servers will be down between the last season and EA? or just that no new seasons arrive but servers stays up?
Thanks again Neg. That is very good news indeed. I think I am having withdrawal from gaming.
I've tried a few MMO's, but the last I played with any duration was WoW and that was because it was my wife introduction and the PvP was very enjoyable in vanilla and into the second or third expansion. I didn't realize how much I missed playing.
I'm sorry please forgive but I am having trouble understanding when I will be able to play the game, I pledged $100, When will me and my buddy be able to join all you all of you brave adventurers? and thank you in advance.
Hi, thanks for pledging.
If you click on your name in any of your posts, and look on the left side of the page it takes you to, you will "User Level: Supporter".
Everyone in the game currently is a VIP, or a Champion, or a Supporter (depending on the level of pledge they made).
It also happens that accounts made from Buddy keys also are User Level Supporter.
On this page you will see the Current Season we are in - Necromancer - and the dates that players will get into the game. You and your buddy will be able to log in starting Oct 25.
See ya on Terminus
@Jothany: "On this page you will see the Current Season we are in - Necromancer - and the dates that players will get into the game. You and your buddy will be able to log in starting Oct 25."
Does this mean that we will get Buddy Keys soon?
The FAQ sheet mentions that:
Will EA have character wipes?
There will likely be periodic wipes, as needed.
I assume this to mean that there will be a general wipe at the end of EA when the game launches for real? I ask because while I am enjoying the seasons I hesitate to over commit to a character until I know it's not going to be wiped. I'd rather focus on testing stuff and don't want to spoil the surprise of quests and other content until it's game time for real. I've waited this long, figure I can wait longer. At the same time I don't want to wait for 'real release' just to find out that EA really was the actual release of the game but with a 'we are still testing' disclaimer....
I have a couple questions. Okay, maybe a few.
1) Is there any estimate or even hope on how long EA will run? Are we thinking months or years here?
1.5) If years do you have a plan for income? I know our donation is letting us in, but I would be willing to begin paying monthly to support the development efforts. This would likely be unpopular with many people, but I doubt I am alone.
2) Will we get character customization in EA or will that be saved for production?
3) I know we are getting new zones, but can we anticipate more polish in existing areas? For example, the town in AVP is there, but really needs Bob the Sign Maker to come in and mark things up.
4) Will guilds get some love for EA? A guild roster showing who is on and a note so you can tell main vs alts.
5) Will we have persistent characters for all of EA or will there be resets like we have had between seasons? The programmer in me understands the power of a reset, but the gamer in me would like to play all of EA without a reset.
6) Will crafting be separated from adventuring levels in EA?
7) Will we get the newer crafting paradigm where we specialize and are restricted on total crafting ability?
It turned out to be more like a half dozen or so questions.
May peace find you
- Dalberon
so has there been and alpha and beta yet or is early access that? or is early access before all that?
"so has there been and alpha and beta yet or is early access that? or is early access before all that?"
Over the last year, VR has made some major changes in their approach to game development and to pledgers' access to the test servers. In regards to growth and completion of the game, Pantheon is still mostly in a Pre-Alpha State. But in terms of access to the game Pre-Alpha, Alpha and Beta pledges are now getting equal access to play on the test servers.
The fact that those labels generally mean both a level of game development and a level of pledge access makes it difficult - and confusing - to continue using those labels to define the current state of the game. VR has therefore stopped using them.
Instead of Pre-Alpha, Alpha and Beta we now have VIP, Champion and Supporter. These labels refer only to pledge status and not to game development.