I wonder what the popularity of cross-server travel or mentoring down AND up would be? Personally, I'm beginning to think as long as the game is trying to challenge us and is able to explain these things with lore and it all fits together then I'm not sure I'm against it. Typically I would be, but that's because the games which do these things first are usually the casual ones. I guess it depends how it's done. If I can group with someone on any server and get going in an instance almost immediately, how is reputation and a sense of community or home going to be preserved? Wouldn't that be like playing in a sea of other players? Maybe it could somehow and I'm open to it, I just hope some resemblance to a smaller-scale environment can be preserved.
I do think players like us as a community have to be more open to these sorts of things. An interesting idea is if they're going to use these typically casual features, why not innovate on them? So rather than just copying XYZ features from other MMO's, take em and rethink them on some level to make them Pantheon-esque. This way it's distinctive and if players are critical of it they can't say it's - in precise terms - cloned.
Imagine for a moment through some miracle Pantheon passes the kickstarter and proceeds to pass its future budget goals and launches in 2017-2020 and does so in a reasonably bug free fashion with a game that has enough in common with other modern mmo's that when players play it they don't immediately criticize it. If the game stays niche and doesn't adopt some of the modern features it'll be a lot easier to criticize. And when a game is criticized in various reviews other players will be less likely to give it a try.
Brad has stated they expect upwards of 25,000 to 50,000 players. In my mind, that means they should be developing this game with the expectation their population will be considerably more casual. If they do this then this can give them some extra room for error. The future is very hard to predict, after all.
The sooner Brad and his team can "casualize" the Pantheon vision the better for its future. If they can do this while convincing the majority of us it's still an EQ-like game then it has a chance.
Just having "Brad McQuaid" on the game gives me a feeling of nostalgia. I wonder if anyone else feels that? I want to see Brad make a game that works and doesn't fall apart like the last one did.
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