Yea this all happened about the time Savana took over as CM. It's my belief this was her decision to open things up to a larger audience and more input.
In my opining this opened to door to the Feature Creep form the barrage of Free-to-Play crowd (remember Brad had closed forums, only those serious enough to invest were given the opportunity to give input)
Unfortunately, we lost Brad in Nov of 2019,
7 months later in June of 2020 they decided to pursue the Free-to-Play model and opened the OfficalPantheonMMO Reddit page
Followed by opening the Closed VIP Discord to the public in May of 2023.
IMHO this is what Destroyed Pantheon; it tossed aside the target paying audience Brad had in favor of a fly by night bunch of free to play easy mode players who wanted every character to be able to Rez, and Summon, and then keep all our gear on a "Corpse Run Summon". It left the door open for Joppa to chase his next failed WoW killer clone.