PA1 is internal speak for Pre-alpha, there will only be one Pre-alpha but we will use PA1, PA2 etc. to describe phases of development so I wouldn't worry too much about the terminology we use, just know that there will be Pre-alpha to help us set up for Alpha which will, in turn, help us set up for Beta.
Alpha and Beta will be rather long to help us do what we need to do to bring the game in line with release expectations.
Pre-Alpha has been going on for almost a year already and it is still not done.
Does this mean that Alpha and Beta will also be a year+ ?
That puts release at least 2 years away or more. This game should be bugless and awesome considering the time spent on it.
There's no way to know for sure, but usually Betas don't take a year. Beta is to iron out small bugs and network issues. Alpha could very well take a year, depending on what needs to be changed coming out of pre-alpha. I think the earliest Pantheon could release is Dec 2019 and the latest it should release is Dec 2020. My guess is sometime mid 2020, but theres just no way to know for certain.
It's not uncommon to see 5-6+ year development cycles for games with huge ambitions, and these games have secured funding from the beginning and often times a full team of developers. Pantheon's (unsuccessful) Kickstarter was launched in Feb. of 2014, so this coming Feb. it will be 5 years. This includes a journey that has been difficult at times with funding concerns. The only reason we're privy to the information we do have is because the team has wanted to keep us informed throughout the development cycle, most games don't allow for this level of insight at this stage of development. I think expecting a bugless, amazingly polished experience is a bit unfair, and I don't think it's unreasonable for the game to continue development for the next few years (given that funding remains). Regardless of bugs, given the vision I do believe we'll have an awesome experience awaiting us when the game does finally launch.
The only thing they've said consistently is that the testing phases will be "long". Pre-Alpha has been over a year, and is likely to end up being over 15 months, if they stick to their current estimate of Q1 2019 for end of Pre-alpha & start of Alpha.
This has been discussed extensively. We are going to see alpha in early 2019 presumably, so one would expect the timeline to be something as follows:
Alpha early to mid/late 2019
Beta mid/late 2019 to early/mid 2020,
Release mid to late 2020.
I think any slower than this would be absurd (as frankly I would argue we are already near the level where this is taking a ridiculous amount of projected time) but they are a small team and I think largely had to pretty much start over after a couple of years early on. I would love to see release for late next year, and while I do not think it is impossible, I think it is highly unlikely as it would largely require them to get everything developed next year, as well as run alpha in 6 months, then beta test everything and get it polished and released all in the latter half of the year.
Isaya said:Pre-Alpha has been going on for almost a year already and it is still not done.
Does this mean that Alpha and Beta will also be a year+ ?
That puts release at least 2 years away or more. This game should be bugless and awesome considering the time spent on it.
Hard to say. But I will leave this here: I think the Vanguard closed beta lasted somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 1/2 years. But there were some extenuating circumstances behind the scenes that may have dragged that on a bit longer than intended. Hard to say. So I couldn't venture a guess as to how long any of this will run just yet. I do think it's safe to say atm that a 2019 release seems highly unlikely.
My term "bugless" was a little out of line. I am sorry that it was taken that way. What I meant was it would be very playable and free from rampant crashes as EQ was in the first days of release. EQ 1 was so horrible that they gave -i believe- 2 weks play back to subs because it was so bumpy. It was almost 20 yers ago so my 2 weeks could be a little off. But what I was trying to say is with at least 2 more years of development it will surely be awesome and pretty smooth. I have no idea if any other game has been bug free from the start and iff so I surely wasn't in it. A lot of games are still buggy a little and have been out a long time.
A few things to consider. Size of the team available, funding arm, depth of the project and stable development phase.
The work they did in 2014 was largely mesh construction and random placeholder Unity elements. Most if not all of those elements have to be replaced. From the work I saw through the progression which I detailed here [Heavy Data Use] https://imgur.com/a/izvISdX [Heavy Data Use], the real development cycle was around late 2015, especially after the failed Kickstarter in 2014. Add to that, this is a crowdsourced development. Then you factor in the development cycle of games ranging from 3 years to 11 years. Some of the longer ones at 15-16 years were in serious development hell so in those games we'll ignore due to that caveat. ESO for instance was a fairly generalized MMORPG but had a massive team and a ton of money behind them. It started production in 2006 with the office lease and scope out in Hunt Valley, MD. Development began shortly after in early 2007. The release was after 7 years and 8 months in development. If we consider November 2014 for Pantheon development as was the case wih the origin of the initial pictures, that would mean a 2021-2022 release. I doubt we'll see that as we may be looking at a late 2020 release.
The considerations detailed above and with what we know, the time frame seems about right. The only issue is the perspectives or expectations of many who are following Pre-Alpha with the cadence of a late Alpha with regard to other games. Showing development this early on in the game's cycle ends up doing Pantheon a disservice unfortunately. With that said, things are moving surprisingly well for a crowdsourced development and while I have fears, it's more process or detail specific, not in 'if' it will be released.
Kratuk said:Isaya said:Pre-Alpha has been going on for almost a year already and it is still not done.
Does this mean that Alpha and Beta will also be a year+ ?
That puts release at least 2 years away or more. This game should be bugless and awesome considering the time spent on it.
Hard to say. But I will leave this here: I think the Vanguard closed beta lasted somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 1/2 years. But there were some extenuating circumstances behind the scenes that may have dragged that on a bit longer than intended. Hard to say. So I couldn't venture a guess as to how long any of this will run just yet. I do think it's safe to say atm that a 2019 release seems highly unlikely.
I seem to remember that Vanguard had some trouble with Microsoft and the Vista program as microsoft wanted it to be Vista only and the devs didn't want this
But that is only scuttlebutt and I have no hard confirmation. I did like Vanguard and was sorry to see it fail.
The last answer we had on this was that Alpha will start when 1) All classes in the game, 2) All races in the game, 3) All abilities up to level 40 in the game, 4) All core systems are in the game and functioning to some degree, 5) Kingsreach is finished outside final polishing.
We're moving towards that as #1 is done. #2 is getting closer, still need Dark Myr, Skar, and Archai. #3 is in for some classes, but well off for others. #4 is getting closer, crafting will be in next Pre-alpha. #5 seems a long way off, we don't know all the zones they've done, but looking at the map, there's a lot more to go especially if they are revamping the old zones we've seen.
I would assume Alpha will be at least a year, possibly two. The focus will be on fine-tuning the systems, but mostly world building the other two continents. Animations will need to be done prior to beta as well, along with another graphics overhaul most likely.
Beta should be 6 months or so. Mostly to stress test and get a feel for the final complaints a large mass of people will have. Lots of technical work and polish. Get an idea of server populations and if content is bottlenecked at any point.
I don't expect to see this game launched in 2020, probably closer to 2022 imo, there's a lot to do. And that's fine, they basically started this entire game over from scratch in 2016. It's only been a couple years.
These posts are why I would like to see some sort of timeline. It can be vague, but maybe some sort of anticipation as to what the team is at least projecting (worst/best case scenarios?).
For the most part, we are all understanding as far things getting pushed back. However, this is asking a lot of them and I understand why VR would/should not provide this.
Isaya said:PA1 is internal speak for Pre-alpha, there will only be one Pre-alpha but we will use PA1, PA2 etc. to describe phases of development so I wouldn't worry too much about the terminology we use, just know that there will be Pre-alpha to help us set up for Alpha which will, in turn, help us set up for Beta.
Alpha and Beta will be rather long to help us do what we need to do to bring the game in line with release expectations.
Pre-Alpha has been going on for almost a year already and it is still not done.
Does this mean that Alpha and Beta will also be a year+ ?
That puts release at least 2 years away or more. This game should be bugless and awesome considering the time spent on it.
There are certain aspects of the game development, for business and other reasons, are not shared. So, we only have inference from what we do know to guess when some of that might happen.
When PA started last December, Brad made a comment that he was hoping to be in Alpha by December 2018. Obviously, that hasn't happened since they are in PA-4.
We also know that there has been some shake up in their world building team this past year, with Monty no longer on the team. They've had to bring on some new people which probalby set them back quiet a bit. World building and art is one of the largest investments (time and money) into a MMO. They’re also bringing on people now with the November pledge, so it seems they are ready to scale up their world building.
We also know that they 'started over' with Farthael as the template zone, feature wise, which other zones will be based on. I'm assuming that means the existing zones will all have to be revamped or gone over with a comb once more to ensure they are meeting the new standards.
We have also not even had a hint of the second continent (the other ½ of the world) is even being worked on right now. Considering the races we see being actively developed, I think it’s fair to say they are not working on the second continent yet, other than planning.
I do think their content like class design and trade kills are probably on track and nearly final designs for the major components. Probably just a matter of developers building the tools and code to support them at this point.
Based on all that, I’m guessing Alpha will hit when Kingsreach continent is “done”, which should be sometime later this year. Players will be able to create characters of the races that start there and should have full content up to level 50.
Isaya said:I did like Vanguard and was sorry to see it fail.
I loved VG but I didn't start playing it until it had already been out for a while and had a relatively low player count. I tried the beta and it was... not good. So not good, in fact, that I didn't bother coming back for a long time. It was nowhere close to beta quality and caused a massive tide of bad press as a result. I'm happy (though anxious) to wait for VR's timeline to avoid a similar outcome. Ultimately it was the bad press VG received during its beta that prevented its success, at least as far as I can tell.
Everyone be patient. The more VR is able to fine tune the game the better its chances of success. A successful launch will mean many years of enjoyment where a failed launch could see all of this hard work and effort wasted very quickly.
Vegas said: There's no way to know for sure, but usually Betas don't take a year. Beta is to iron out small bugs and network issues. Alpha could very well take a year, depending on what needs to be changed coming out of pre-alpha. I think the earliest Pantheon could release is Dec 2019 and the latest it should release is Dec 2020. My guess is sometime mid 2019, but theres just no way to know for certain.
This is very optimistic. We are about 5 years in and not even through pre-alpha yet. I'm putting it more like 2021 at the earliest and with any set backs, into 2022 is possible. Time will tell.
philo said:Vegas said: There's no way to know for sure, but usually Betas don't take a year. Beta is to iron out small bugs and network issues. Alpha could very well take a year, depending on what needs to be changed coming out of pre-alpha. I think the earliest Pantheon could release is Dec 2019 and the latest it should release is Dec 2020. My guess is sometime mid 2019, but theres just no way to know for certain.This is very optimistic. We are about 5 years in and not even through pre-alpha yet. I'm putting it more like 2021 at the earliest and with any set backs, into 2022 is possible. Time will tell.
As long as they don't run out of money, they can take however long they wish to in my opinion. It hurts to wait, but if waiting means it's even better than we imagine it could be, I'll be okay with battling to find other things to occupy my time until Pantheon.
I think the more people testing the better that way they can fix issues.
Such as to many actions going on at once so many people in x city or x cave it lags real bad or shuts down server.
To many logins at once which crashed eso for like 4 days.
The more pressure put on servers will create a smoother launch
Not sure how far along they are but hopefully we will see some action by december 2019 for beta.
One things for sure Pantheon will be out by time Winds of winter is released ha its been being written for like forever.