I support Pantheon because I have not enjoyed a MMORPG in quite awhile due to the loss of player dependency and community necessity. A MMO where social community is actually part of the game and not just chat room. As well, having a world where you are dropped in and your options are fully open. Where your are not following a series of breadcrumbs to max level and then a follow a specific process of activities in the same order every day.
I do not expect to recapture the same feeling I had when I first played EQ, but I do hope to have the experience of accomplishment even from the little things, something current MMOs seem to fail to generate.
I played (lived) EQ from its release 1999 to 2004. With each expansion after Velious the game started to lose its appeal. I thought the newly introduced quality of life features (bazar, nexus, maps, etc) really sounded great in theory but I could never figured out why the feel of being part of a Community disappeared and when WoW released I moved on. I got bored of WoW and I have gotten bored of every MMO I have tried since then. Now fast forward a couple of years. In 2015 I found project 1999. In the beginning I thought I would enjoy it for nostalgia reasons. Today I still play p1999 and now I know that nostalgia has nothing to do with it. The design of classic EQ is vastly superior every other MMO I have played.
Kilsin said:Why do you personally support Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen? #MMORPG #communitymatters
I support challenging, group-centered content that requires thought and coordination, where decisions matter. I appreciated Brad's vision for EQ and Vanguard, which seems to have been somewhat translated here.
What's more, I appreciate this team's transparency with the process and the steps they take to get the community involved, even if the product is not as polished as we'd like yet.
That's where my pledge came from.
Also, crowd control FTW.
Brad McQuaid. EQ1.
Even with the crap that was delivered as Vanguard, he still gets unlimited good will from me for EQ1. Got a solid decade out of that game. That and CounterStrike were the only games to hold my attention that long.
That's why I supported Pantheon. The reason I continue to support Pantheon is Chris Perkins. Love hearing him talk, love his direction for the game. The dude is a developer badass. If Brad and this guy can't deliver the game I want, than the MMORPG genre can go kick rocks permanently. (Get that Bard in Chris, tick tock...)
I did not play EQ beyond a brief try though I go back to the MUDs in my multiplayer experience. I mostly play solo in MMOs these days - more because groups are unnecessary for most content than because I am antisocial. I consider "training" an atrocity that has no place on a pve server. I firmly disagree with many forum members on issues ranging from solo play to world chat to auction houses to death runs. Though my views are not always and even not mostly in the minority on the many issues relating to Pantheon's development. Did I pledge and become active here because I didn't understand what kind of game Pantheon was likely to be - heck no I read many scores of posts before I decided to become a Patheon supporter. So. Why? Not in any order of importance.
1. I wanted a game that had a lot of content before the endgame. More, I wanted a game where the goal was to enjoy that content and not race through it to the endgame. I want things to do at maximum level, as we all do, but not things that are better than getting there. Maybe things that are not as much fun as getting there. So there would be no huge rush. I have gotten to level-cap in EQ2 and Rift in days with a new character (after learning the games). I want a game where things are far slower and level-cap is months if not years off.
2. Apart from speed, I want some challenge. Fights are not meaningful if everything other than trying to solo group content is trivially easy. Fights are not meaningful if you can go afk while autoattacking an enemy higher level than you are and come back to find that enemy and maybe 5 others that attacked one by one while you were gone dead at your feet.
3. Similarly I want death to be more than a convenient means of getting to a respawn area faster than walking. I want it to be painful enough that I care whether I win or lose a fight. A difficult fight where if I lose and die I respawn 10 feet away with no loss of experience or gear and go back to try again gives no feeling of accomplishment if I finally win on the 5th try. It gives no feeling of pleasure and relief if I win on the first try. So what? I saved a 10 foot walk. Oooohhhhhh!!!
4. I want a detailed world with different races and different classes. I want a realistic (yes realistic in a fantasy game - once the basic parameters are set one thing should flow logically into the next) world where choices matter - there are factions and if I am hostile to a race's interests maybe ((gasp)) they treat me poorly. As in kill-on-sight. Maybe even if I am neutral - xenophobia has been widely practiced even among humans where we are all the same species.
5. I do not want tedium just for the sake of tedium but I want some compexity. I don't want instant travel all around the world. I don't want automated worldwide trading. I don't want instant mail delivery, (with attachments, no less) anywhere in the world. I don't want magic banks where if you deposit an item it is magically available instantly in any of scores of other branches wherever situate.
I won't get precisely all of what I want and nothing I don't want. None of us will not even the head of VR who will need to sacrifice some of his personal preferences where other choices work better for his customers.
What I want is Pantheon and Gods of Terminus willing I will get it.
Because during Beta, there's the slightest chance all the illogical design choices will be fixed by the weight of 3000 voices, and we'll end up with a great game with many years of longevity.
I didn't support the Kickstarter because of things like "Enchanters will be able to control groups of charmed of enemies", but instead, when things were scaled back to the land of rational thought, then I pledged.
I support Pantheon because I would like to play a community, group-centered MMORPG again that includes things like progression depth, challenging death penalty/corpse recovery, meaningful travel, tricky raids, guild-play that actually matters, strategic adventuring, risk vs reward, meaningful regen, ultra rare drops on rare spawns, intense dungeons, RP, and fun but limited race/class combinations that fit the lore.. to list a few. The single thing that brought myself and many others back is Brad Mcquaid and the Old EQ & VG that he had a major role in; communities that have truly enjoyed his games. Hundreds of thousands of people played these games and it’s nice to see them returning. After playing Old EQ then Vanguard, I see Pantheon as the next great game in this direction. I was also thrilled when I learned that some VR devs played Brad’s games as well.
I will say that I am quite impressed with what VR has already achieved. This game looks absolutely amazing thus far.
Kilsin said:Why do you personally support Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen? #MMORPG #communitymatters
Because Pantheon is offering us an experience like none other currently available. VR intends to bring back challenge, mystery, travel, interdependency, and class identity to MMOs, and I like that!
((Which illogical design choices are those? Care to elaborate?))
Please don't.
This is a thread devoted to listing reasons to support the game, as you did in your answer.
Let us not sidetrack it into a debate on the many issues that you and I and others have debated (sometimes on the same side and sometimes not) in many other threads.
Kilsin said:Why do you personally support Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen? #MMORPG #communitymatters
Everything about the design tennets (group-focused, slower, traditional, more challenging, death that stings, ect.) is a virtual world I've been waiting to come along since EQ/Vanguard. Pretty much every MMORPG over the last decade has dissappointed on that front. And given that I'm not a huge fan of the action combat MMO, very little has released in the last half a decade for me. So I have high hopes for Pantheon as it may very well be the last time we get an MMORPG like this.
Because when I fantasize about having billions of dollars and self funding the MMO of my dreams and the choices I would make...nothing out there or on the horizon is even in the same hemisphere except Pantheon. Now, we may not be living next door to each other, but so far it looks like we are in the same area code and frankly, that is enough for me.
I believe in Brads (and VR's) vision. I want to play EQ1, but sony/Daybreak -whoever- killed the game with KRONO.
Pantheon will be the updated EQ/Vanguard that I have been waiting for. I gave money hoping for a real mmo that isn't a DPS meter.
Daybreak should get ready to close down their EQ franchise and file bankruptcy. Pantheon will empty the servers on EQ1 and EQ2 if it ever releases.
- The unique world design and fascinating lore that provides tons of great opportunities for stories
- The promise of challenge throughout the game
- In a similar vein, the promise that the game will not start at level cap, but rather have meaningful content throughout
- Group-focused play
- Creative race design that's more than just bland high fantasy human/dwarf/elf
- Class gameplay customization through limited action sets should prove to be entertaining
I support Pantheon because it's not just another shameless cash grab aimed at the young and lazy. It's not yet another action MMO, twitch-based, first-person platformer.
I've been playing MMOs since the dawn of MMOs, at least until I gave up on the genre 5 years ago. I've been looking for a real MMO since then and nothing that has been released is worth a second look, until Pantheon. The team behind this game has been behind some of my favorites so there is every possibility this will add to that list of favorites.
I even went to the trouble of learning how to execute all the roles necessary to create an MMO from design to layout to art to animation and mechanics. All that did was give me a deep appreciation for how complex building an MMO can be, not to mention running it. I'm a career software engineer but now that Pantheon is a possibility it's far (far, far, far) easier to support one already in progress than to build my own even if the final product isn't exactly what I would have built. And who has that kind of time?
I support Pantheon in the hope that it will turn out to be a place I can get involved, meet new friends and kick some virtual ass for many years to come.
