Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen

This one won't be around much longer. They've decided to take any fun that could have been had and chucked it out the window. Most people don't want to group with a bunch of idiots, but they've made this so solo "unfriendly" and the mechanics really are bad. You can make an old school mmo without incorporating all of the old school mechanics that made older mmos too much a of a chore to play. A lot of areas that I experienced are tiny and choked off. I really had high hopes for this one as EQ1 was my first mmo, followed by DAoC.

VR is biased, only chooses to enforce rules when it suits them or players they like, cant be consistent, very hard to play by the rules if you get punished anyways because a lesser guild cries about not being able to compete in the open world @VR_Aspen I have reported this KS behavior in the past and this was your Pantheon Support Team's response: Thank you for your report. The current rules of engagement has no camps and no one can own a camp. Experience is given by most damage done which encourages normal competition for monster. Harassment isnt allowed though so we have noted your report. We never said anything to the other players in /say, we never followed them, we never did anything to break YOUR rules. We came, we saw, we killed the mob and moved back to our grind. You saying this is toxic behavior only shows your hipocracy towards other players.

I tried several times to log in over the course of multiple days, but kept running into a "Failed Steam Login" bug that wouldn't let me even get into any sort of tutorial area after character creation. After doing some cursory research and making some attempts to fix the issue based on what I saw, I determined that the game just isn't worth the hassle until they can fix it on their end. In that research, I discovered that apparently this is a fairly common issue that doesn't affect everyone, but also doesn't have a clear fix. Also, it apparently has been present in the game for several months, if not over a year. As an avid MMO fan, I'd genuinely love to give this game a shot. Goodness knows that the industry could use a breath of fresh air that won't fizzle out after a couple of months. However, if I can't even log into my character, I don't see much reason to pay $40 for the game. This isn't a kickstarter, after all. Should the issues with the game be fixed to the point that I can at least log in, I'd love to come back and give it an earnest try; but until then, I've refunded my copy.

Listen, I am also a early supporter of the game and was a higher tier pledge. The game is taking longer than expected but at least its in EA versus nothing. Yes, the direction of the game has gone multiple directions but it is back to where it was originally. The game is fun. The game brings back nostalgia. It reminds me of EQ. Its scary to run at night, some classes like EQ require grouping while others can solo no problem. its definitely a work in progress. The game is fun. Thats all that matters.

I suppose I did this to myself by choosing to play a game that has been in development for longer than some published games survive. I loved this game when I first started playing. Maybe part of it was wishful thinking since I was a fan of Vanguard and Brad. It was a good game with a solid foundation. Then extraction, then not, then releasing the MMO they were supposed be - then art changes, then stat changes (lost count). And mounts cause why not - somehow it's required for the future. Oh, and they have achieved a new record. First game I've seen a PTR for when not even 1.0 has been released. I tried to stick with them, I really did.

I don't recommend it anymore, sorry!

Stay the hell away from this game untll it is in a more polished state... The prisestess in Availia will give your Paladin a quest to kill any 3 Skelitons, any level will do. On the next steep in the questline, She ask you to go to the haunted ruins just out side town. There you will need to find and interact with a brazier. The area is mainly group content designed for players around lv 8-10 and those normaly hit a chain armor wearing class for around 5-12 dammage. The brazier you need to interact with is guraded by 2 skeletons which will hit you for 188+ at lv 12 I am decked out with really nice gear for my level by other players who donated gear to a newbee when I started out playing. I have 268hp on my paladin tank and I have abselutly no idea what level those are but I got low level pull aggro before I even saw they were there. Needless to say our group got wiped in a few sec amd then it took forever to get our copses out of there. As for game designer you gotta have something wired compleatly wrong in you head to place monster that much diffret from general population of the area and they are placed so they are hard to see before you aggro them and all hell breaks lose. I have never expirended the game crashes to desktop but server to client communication is horrible, you will spend alot of time locked trying to loot a corpse while the server is trying to figure out if there is any loot on that corpse or not. The same goes for havesting any resource node which will need mutible clicks on them before anything happens and when you do start to interact with the node it will take an insane amount for time to get done. When you are fightning multible mobs at once, pray you won't have to but when do you will need to TAB Target between them because mouse targeting is useless and you will most likely target anything else and their grandma before you get any of the mobs hitting you into the targetbox. When your target dies you will stay locked to the corpse and will not start auto attack any of the mobs still hitting you before you select a diffrent target yourself? WTF! - for the love of god ... WHY ! VR's take on class mechanics are probberly the strongest selling point for this game every class feels special and interesting to play some are utterly off though. Ex. Necromancer need bone fragments and mana to summon his minion, this can resoult in his minion being between level 5 & 9 when you are lv 11 no matter what level the pet is at this point it will be useless. It won't hold any aggro you won't notice it's melee dps either no matter what you equip it with. At lv 12 your pet get taunt skill and time will tell how useless it is... My expirence with other players in the game is mostly positive i.e high level handing gear and buffs out and most of the time if you ask for help getting your corpse back or a ress they will help you. Trade skills is a mess and feel horrible too, you will need a PHD in physics to figure out what schematics is needed to make the componants need to make the item you thought you bought the schematic for in the first place. You can only see what is requred to craft an item when you own the schematic and you are interacting with the crafting station. The crafting station window can not be scaled so you can actually real all the text in the componant list. No crafting station can draw matirials from your bank and some componants you need make, others farm or buy. All trade skills require parts from other tradeskills and you can only learn two of those in all. Anythig made by tradeskills is subpar to anything droped with in the game world and the only way to get schamtics for anything remotly interesting is by opening tressaure chests and keys for those are obtained from killing named group mobs which is constantly being framed by highlevel players who can 1 or 2 tab them in the lower level zones so my advice forget atbout crafing untill you reach atleast level 25 and can collect you goverment pension. The game have a spawn cycle mechanic where day and night time is the deciding factor on what kind of wandering mobs can be found in the zone you are in. On the upside, it makes the world change which is interesting aproch but Removing all present night time mobs at daybreak incl. the you target, feels abselutly horrible! same goes for nightfall. Spawn in mechanic can make mofos pop in right on top of you and instantly attack which will probberly be the main reason why you die in this game. As far as I can tell place holders of extremly low con (grey) can take any wandering mobs spawn spot. In general wilderness mobs are to far apart and have way to big of an aggro range to any players that would benifit for hunting expirence in that area. Close to anything above grey con will attack you on sight unless you play a druid, all normal animals love you. I have seen other people complain about the game having no ingame map system, no shared bank slots so you can trade items between all your toons on your account or even that there is no quest markers dirrecting you where to go to progress a quest. To solve quests you will need to read the text presented to you before accepting the quest and learning to navigate the world your toon live within which is exactly what I want from a game like this and probberly why I keep logging into the game.

Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen scratches that “classic EQ MMO” itch like nothing else I’ve played. The world feels hand-crafted — every zone has its own atmosphere, and dungeons have real depth and verticality that make exploring genuinely exciting. I’ve spent hundreds of hours just sneaking through Halnir Cave, discovering secret paths, hidden rares, and loot tucked away for the curious. I’ve logged around 700 hours across multiple classes, reaching the level 30 cap back when that was the limit. The only real drawback is that it’s still in active development, so you may eventually hit a content wall — but it took me hundreds of hours to get there, and they’ve since added new dungeons and zones. By now, there’s easily over a thousand hours of content to enjoy. For the small price tag and surprisingly light install size, if you love classic, high-fantasy MMOs like EverQuest, ESO, or early WoW, it’s absolutely worth a shot. I’ll admit, it didn’t grab me instantly — I played to level 6, stepped away for a bit, then came back and fell in love once I reached Thronefast. Brad McQuaid’s vision of meaningful adventure and community-driven discovery is alive here. It’s not just nostalgia — it’s the kind of MMO spirit we don’t see much anymore. If you’ve ever missed that feeling, give Pantheon a chance.