will Pantheon be the Death of p99?

[Canelek]

Ooo hard to say. MMORPG history tells us that even if it is top-notch it will flame out in less than six months. SWTOR and Secret World were rad concepts, but failed to have fully-baked "end game" material. Rift was a super-fun WoW clone. Aeon was fuckered from the start due to spam. I guess I can mention Funcom failures and call it good.

Speaking of Funcom--how about a well-made Anarchy Online concept? [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I really do hope Pantheon works and can grab some of that sweet, sweet WoW market share. It's going to be tough with an elf sim though. Will people appreciate something difficult and team-oriented? There's just no telling.

I'll certainly give it a whirl, as I am sure most of us here will. The $15/mo sub fee shouldn't be a factor.

I also hope for the continued success of this project, including Green99. Because EQ is tiptop.

[Baler]

Originally Posted by Canelek [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Speaking of Funcom--how about a well-made Anarchy Online concept? [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

funcom is doing bad. The last time I played AO, (last year) it was entirely filled with multiboxers and old world zones felt empty of players.

[Canelek]

Originally Posted by Baler [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

funcom is doing bad. The last time I played AO, (last year) it was entirely filled with multiboxers and old world zones felt empty of players.

That is too bad. I have not played AO since the many hours I played after I got my beta CD in the mail.

Oh, I forgot to mention EQ2, DAOC, Neverwinter, GW2, Lineage, etc.

I really enjoyed DAOC! That is sort of the vibe I get with Pantheon. Sort of.

GW2 is pretty, and I love the dynamic content, but ultimately, it is just another easy-mode game.

Neverwinter is even easier-mode, and remains a tremendous disappointment to me due to the huge amount of material there is to work with compared to what ultimately was delivered. It is sort of like the Dark Tower movie from last year. Is this what we deserve? :P

[sereal]

Originally Posted by Canelek [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

That is too bad. I have not played AO since the many hours I played after I got my beta CD in the mail.

Oh, I forgot to mention EQ2, DAOC, Neverwinter, GW2, Lineage, etc.

I really enjoyed DAOC! That is sort of the vibe I get with Pantheon. Sort of.

GW2 is pretty, and I love the dynamic content, but ultimately, it is just another easy-mode game.

Neverwinter is even easier-mode, and remains a tremendous disappointment to me due to the huge amount of material there is to work with compared to what ultimately was delivered. It is sort of like the Dark Tower movie from last year. Is this what we deserve? :P

I used to love the neverwinter nights persistent servers. That shit was a lot of fun.

[Canelek]

Originally Posted by sereal [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I used to love the neverwinter nights persistent servers. That shit was a lot of fun.

Too bad the Neverwinter MMO wasn’t as good!

I also agree with your earlier comments regarding leveling. It is so much more fun in an open world grind than quest hub hopping. I keep thinking there will be a gift shop at some point.

Oh wait...

[Cylock]

About Pantheon, I done the 100.00 Knights pledge a while ago and it comes with Alpha and Beta access. I have not agreed to a NDA or anything so when it goes to Alpha I will post SS's and stuff as long as its okay with VR.

[sereal]

Originally Posted by Canelek [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Ooo hard to say. MMORPG history tells us that even if it is top-notch it will flame out in less than six months. SWTOR and Secret World were rad concepts, but failed to have fully-baked "end game" material. Rift was a super-fun WoW clone. Aeon was fuckered from the start due to spam. I guess I can mention Funcom failures and call it good.

Speaking of Funcom--how about a well-made Anarchy Online concept? [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I really do hope Pantheon works and can grab some of that sweet, sweet WoW market share. It's going to be tough with an elf sim though. Will people appreciate something difficult and team-oriented? There's just no telling.

The failure of new MMO's has been that they make it all about end game and everyone gets to see ALL the content with little effort. The 1-max is just busy work solo play and thus they make it fast to hit max because it's boring. So other than the 1-4 week grind the entire time playing is end game. No raid competition means you always get your chance at a target, if you fail well you just try again.

EQ worked because the 'fun' stuff isn't just the end game content. In fact many prefer the levelling up part.

Originally Posted by Gumbo [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Pantheon is a game coming out for the PC so the graphics should be extreme... Hell, check out Cyberpunk 2077 and tell me why those type graphics can't be for Pantheon?

Doing fancy graphics costs a lot of money and I doubt Pantheon would have done a crowd funding if they were rolling in money.

[Caldwin]

Originally Posted by sereal [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The failure of new MMO's has been that they make it all about end game and everyone gets to see ALL the content with little effort. The 1-max is just busy work solo play and thus they make it fast to hit max because it's boring. So other than the 1-4 week grind the entire time playing is end game. No raid competition means you always get your chance at a target, if you fail well you just try again.

EQ worked because the 'fun' stuff isn't just the end game content. In fact many prefer the levelling up part.

Exactly. What's the point in having levels if they don't mean anything. Might as well start out at max level and just have raid content if the end game is all that matters.

I've never raided myself. And, after reading about the raid seen in the forums, I'm not sure I even want to raid. My highest character on live was mid 20's, due to little time and being an altiholic. Even on P99, my highest character just made lvl 51 two weeks ago.

There are still many areas I haven't experienced and may never experience like it would have been on live, because even on P99, the race to the top exists by twinks, as well as just having so much knowledge now that wasn't there in the beginning. Twinked soloists, duos or trios can take on content that used to be difficult even with a full group. What was several camps on live, are now combined to a few camps, or one camp. Also, there are the high level farmers. I for one, would love to go with a level appropriate group and actually get experience from the jailmaster camp in Permofrost.

If I had the knowhow to make a server myself, I would make one that is classic like, but make it more difficult for the twinks, like maybe having a decay factor on items, such that the lower the level you are from the mobs or quests the items come from, the faster the item decays (i.e. the stats get worse) until the item eventually vanishes. If you are at the appropriate level or higher, there would be no decay. Well, that's just one idea.

Another issue, which is related to the twink issue, is the obsolescence of older content by newer content. Maybe having newer items not usable, or not as usable, on older mobs. Not sure how that would work. But, something needs to be done to address this issue.

Hopefully Pantheon can address these issues.

[Mblake81]

Originally Posted by Caldwin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Exactly. What's the point in having levels if they don't mean anything. Might as well start out at max level and just have raid content if the end game is all that matters.

You have to put a little filler in there, like taco bell. But yeah it would make it much better for stream culture so they can finish in a few days tops then be on to the next gayme they are trying to market push.

[sereal]

Originally Posted by Caldwin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

There are still many areas I haven't experienced and may never experience like it would have been on live, because even on P99, the race to the top exists by twinks, as well as just having so much knowledge now that wasn't there in the beginning. Twinked soloists, duos or trios can take on content that used to be difficult even with a full group. What was several camps on live, are now combined to a few camps, or one camp. Also, there are the high level farmers. I for one, would love to go with a level appropriate group and actually get experience from the jailmaster camp in Permofrost.

That's just a reality of having the server locked and running for almost a decade. Only way to get around that is to release more expansions like SOE did, or reset the server. Neither are options here.

Originally Posted by xCry0x [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

However, is that really a problem? The game is 14 years old. The playerbase, is focused around the raid scene.

Would you really want to buy a 14 year old game and have to spend months leveling in abandoned zones because the majority of people are max level?

No, but when I played WoW during cataclysm I hit max in a week, and started raiding, but the thing is the gear I got levelling was better than the best gear from the previous expansions raids so there was zero reason to ever go do that content. Which is kinda a shame because well before my 3 month sub finished I had already seen all the raid content and had nothing to do and just didn't renew. I also heard good things about previous expansions raids.

I mean there are advantages to that system (like being able to be raiding with friends in a week) and instancing makes older content difficult to incentive.

Nothing wrong with the WoW model, I just wish we had a bit more choice.

Originally Posted by Silken [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It is a niche-MMO with a limited but rabid group of followers. If they can draw some of the players from some of the "hand-holding" MMOs, without alienating their target audience. I think that it could be a success, I am just worried about their timeline, as it seems like it is still several years away from release.

I mean there is definitely a big enough niche out there and most of these folks are going to sub for YEARS, it's just more if you spend a ton of money over multiple years making the base game you gotta make that money back while still funding the development of expansions, GM's maintenance, bugs etc. to keep your player base around. I mean like I said I don't know how the money stuff work with game dev, maybe they got this shit under control