I blame all of you

[Kergan]

https://www.pantheonrotf.com/blogs/355/91/pantheon-s-financial-situation

We had our chance, now Brad will be eating cup o' noodles 4 life.

[vouss]

Brad had his chance too

[Azure]

Nong Shim Shin Ramyun Black Premium Noodle Soup (http://www.theramenrater.com/2012/01/17/special-re-review-nong-shim-shin-ramyun-black-premium-noodle-soup-eatyourkimchi-com-recipe-mash-up/)

[Kergan]

He aimed too high. Star Citizen had an initial goal of $500,000 and now they're up to what, $40 million? Not saying that would have happened but donations for anything tend to have a snowball effect. I think a lot of people didn't bother because they were pretty sure the goal wasn't going to be hit.

Plus instead of treating it like he was presenting an idea for a game to a board of directors of some venture capital firm, he acted like everyone was already sold on the idea to begin with. They slowly released information about classes, races, zones instead of showing everything up front like other games. It was quite literally the worst run kickstarter for a game I've ever seen. It's like he expected his name to carry the game somehow, but he hasn't made jack shit in 10 years and most gamers (even ones that play MMOs) have never heard of him.

All that being said, I'm still disappointed. But at this point we need to all realize (Brad especially) that an EverQuest style game is a niche market and you need to develop it accordingly.

[Swish]

It was quite literally the worst run kickstarter for a game I've ever seen. It's like he expected his name to carry the game somehow, but he hasn't made jack shit in 10 years and most gamers (even ones that play MMOs) have never heard of him.

Agreed, and to be quite honest if Brad wasn't on board it I don't think it would have hit $100k.

The more they added, the more it was shaping up to be some kind of EQ clone.

[Tassador]

Joel olsteen acting mother fucker!

[Kergan]

Should have asked for less money in the kickstarter.

Yep, I think they even admitted it. Pretty much arrogance on several fronts is what lead to the situation they're in.

Just checked, Star Citizen about to hit the 42 million stretch goal. What began as an indy title from an old school game developer will likely become the most expensive game ever made. They have over TWO HUNDRED developers working on it.

But yeah, why base decisions on anything they did.

[Elderan]

Yep, I think they even admitted it. Pretty much arrogance on several fronts is what lead to the situation they're in.

Just checked, Star Citizen about to hit the 42 million stretch goal. What began as an indy title from an old school game developer will likely become the most expensive game ever made. They have over TWO HUNDRED developers working on it.

But yeah, why base decisions on anything they did.

They needed to wait until they had more material to show before doing the kickstarter. Also a lower goal would have helped but this game is so far off, from an investment standpoint it was just mismanaged.

[Kergan]

They needed to wait until they had more material to show before doing the kickstarter. Also a lower goal would have helped but this game is so far off, from an investment standpoint it was just mismanaged.

From the "Brad's Soapbox" section on the website:

Why Didn’t the Kickstarter Fund?

As to why we didn’t reach the $800k, there are a lot of theories and opinions and I’m sure many of them are correct. We think there are three main points:

1. People are leery about investing in three+ year projects and we should have broken the development process down into smaller chunks instead of simply talking about the full three-year development cycle.

2. We approached Kickstarter as if we were revealing an MMO to the press and public much closer to the game’s release date. We didn’t launch the Kickstarter with enough game info, with the intent of revealing a lot of details over time as well as using feedback from the community to help us come up with some of the features and mechanics as well. While this is the way you build excitement up with the public and press towards the end of an MMO’s development cycle (something we’ve all done with the MMOs we’ve worked on to completion in the past), it is not how you conduct a crowdfunding campaign. Potential funders want to know as much about the game as possible up front and right away.

3. People who pledge also want, and rightfully so, very attractive, well thought out, and meaningful rewards for their pledges.

We had done some research into Kickstarter campaigns, but clearly not enough. Our efforts and focus since September were on building Pantheon, not getting ready for a Kickstarter campaign. Experts we were and are at building MMOs, but Kickstarter campaigns? Not so much, at least not back in January, but you’ve taught us a lot.

So basically, we marketed it wrong, ran the campaign wrong, had initial funding goals that were wrong and funding rewards that were wrong. We also used the wrong website.

This dude needs to stop running companies. Not everyone is good at running a business.

[HippoNipple]

I don't think they were counting on the Kickstarter for funding. It was just a resume builder to present to investors. They haven't landed a good deal yet. I don't think it is a big surprise. They are in a position they probably expected to be in. They got the game as far as they could and have built anticipation and hype over the game. Now they just have to find an investor that is impressed with it. Up until now it has basically been a race to build as much as they could before funding depleted.

[Zoolander]

i dont care about pantheon as long there is nilbog

[Vile]

game looked shitty anyway tbh

[BattleToad]

My only complaint was the name of the world. "Terminus". That's the name of the starting zone on Rift - Defiant Side, and that one area in Diablo 3 during Act 2.

[thefloydian]

McQuaid is a moron and this game would have sucked. It wouldn't have been some glorious return of classic EQ. Better it die now than be Vanguard 2.0.

[thefloydian]

I don't think they were counting on the Kickstarter for funding. It was just a resume builder to present to investors. They haven't landed a good deal yet. I don't think it is a big surprise. They are in a position they probably expected to be in. They got the game as far as they could and have built anticipation and hype over the game. Now they just have to find an investor that is impressed with it. Up until now it has basically been a race to build as much as they could before funding depleted.

There is no way this is the position they were expecting to be in at this point.

[sprinkle16]

anyone who donated any real money to this is a clown.

even if you FOLLOWED It you are a clown.

you guys are such saps

[Galacticus]

anyone who donated any real money to this is a clown.

even if you FOLLOWED It you are a clown.

you guys are such saps

https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/7541861376/h2730A65C/

[Kergan]

I don't think they were counting on the Kickstarter for funding. It was just a resume builder to present to investors. They haven't landed a good deal yet. I don't think it is a big surprise. They are in a position they probably expected to be in. They got the game as far as they could and have built anticipation and hype over the game. Now they just have to find an investor that is impressed with it. Up until now it has basically been a race to build as much as they could before funding depleted.

Hmm, I guess I'll take Brad's word for it that they fucked up and that it wasn't part of their master plan to crash and burn their kickstarter attempt and then run out of money to give people paychecks.

I could be wrong though.

[Rushmore]

https://www.pantheonrotf.com/blogs/355/91/pantheon-s-financial-situation

We had our chance, now Brad will be eating cup o' noodles 4 life.

All Brad has to do is recreate EQ with old technology....we'd all pay 5 or 10 dollars a month.

[Smedy]

i was never excited for the product they showed, from the few clips i saw i felt like they would be better off by just talking about it rather then showing it off, it looked like shit.

[Aenor]

Should have asked for less money in the kickstarter.

[Aenor]

Are they not allowed to redo the kickstarter with a realistic goal? Let's say they started over with a goal of $300k. They got something like $400k in pledges but they will lose some people since some will have lost confidence in them.

However, if they made that 300k, that's one third of the original budget. You make your goal a very barebones finished product. Now your game is really attractive to investors. They look at it and say the first 300k in development is paid for. These guys have a real, verifiable fan base.

[Kergan]

Not sure if they can do another kickstarter. I think they tried to move to a privately done crowdfunding thing on their website but they only got to like $140k, even though the kickstarter hit almost 500k. Had they asked for 500k originally it would have easily been reached imo, once the funding got close near the end people would have thrown in some extra cash to put it over the top. If the 150k or so they made was enough to keep people paid for 3-4 months then conceivably 500k would have kept it going until the end of the year with some funds to bring in another dev or two. By then maybe you have enough of a project to get a publisher to back you.

At this point though doing a fantasy MMORPG is like opening a restaurant. You better bring something unique or you're going to fail because of the amount of competition. I think one of the biggest reasons Star Citizen funding went crazy is there really is only one other space sim that's decent (EVE) and it's pretty dated.

[LulzSect]

Market it as an indie "classic" pixel graphics MMO a la Minecraft. Polish a few zones and a handful of classes and take it from there. This could be done with minimal funding, no?

[Kergan]

I don't you'll see something like that out of that crew. They are in it to make a living.

[LulzSect]

Good thing we have P1999 then, eh?

[Kergan]

Amen to that.