Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen

i want to love this game so badly but i feel as if it's too big for its britches there isn't enough to do and updates are too scarce and small. if this game was what it is on paper, then it would be absolutely incredible. but it just isn't there yet, and truthfully i doubt it ever will be

Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen tries to bring back that old school MMORPG feeling, but honestly it ends up feeling more dated than nostalgic. The idea is there, group focused gameplay, slower progression, and a heavier emphasis on social interaction, but the execution just doesn’t hit. The combat feels stiff and outdated rather than tactical, and instead of feeling immersive, it feels like you’re fighting the system more than the enemies. Movement and abilities lack fluidity, and that makes the overall experience feel clunky. Visually, the game is inconsistent. Some environments have a nice atmosphere, but overall it looks behind modern standards, and not in a charming way. It just feels unfinished in places, like it hasn’t fully decided what it wants to be. The biggest issue is that it demands patience but doesn’t reward it enough. Slow progression can be satisfying in the right game, but here it feels more like time consuming rather than meaningful. It’s missing that hook that makes you want to stay. There’s definitely a niche audience that might appreciate what it’s trying to do, especially players who miss older MMO systems, but for most people it’s hard to recommend right now. Mediocre overall, not recommended.

Developers cannot coordinate their vision; the game will most likely not last past early access. The population is falling by 30% month over month and is on track to die by the Fall.

These people don't know what they are doing. They have ruined what could have been the best MMORPG ever.

I was an original EQ player who played from the very start (8000 hours or so). I migrated to WoW when that came out. Let me tell you why I gave up on Pantheon. The nostalgia factor wore off quickly. I started to remember all of the things that frustrated me about EQ and were reasons why I left the game for WoW back in the day. The following list are some of the major design deficiencies of EQ that facilitated a mass migration: -Overly harsh death penalties. Nobody like losing hours of exp grinding when they die. Losing entire spell levels was also extreme and unfun. I don't play video games to get excessively punished. Life already accomplishes that. -Corpse runs. All items dropping with your corpse was always bad game design. This got ridiculous in raids when you were partway through a high level dungeon, the raid gets wiped, and ALL monsters have respawned. In a gear dependent game, it was impossible to get back to your corpses without another guild to assist you. This wasted EVERYONE's time and was NOT fun. It also resulted in guild shakedowns. -Shared dungeons/mobs. This is also a poor game design because over time, the guilds who got out ahead could just camp and dominate areas completely preventing others from progressing through desirable content. -Glacial pacing/purposefully throttled advancement. Because EQ existed in an era that was resource bound, games often throttled advancement to an absurd degree to make them feel as if they had more content than they did. EQ was notoriously bad for this. The amount of time it took to gain a level and achieve meaningful progress was extremely slow. -Boring combat. EQ's combat was repetitious, uninspired, and boring. All you did was set up macros and press buttons in sequence for a VERY long time. Combat should not be challenging in that it requires you to press buttons in a timely manner and without making a mistake for 5-30 minutes straight. That's not fun or engaging. In the end, I feel Pantheon's designers misunderstood what made EQ popular. They thought that we enjoyed the mechanics I've listed above. Instead, we TOLERATED them because EQ was the only game of its type that existed at the time. This is why WoW sucked so many players away when it came out. WoW was simply a much more friendly game that was far less punishing and allowed you to experience continual progress. In the end, EQ was as popular as it was because of first mover status. It was the first of its kind, that is all. Also, as a retired software engineer with some experience in the gaming industry, I would be remiss if I didn't point out how utterly slow development progress has been and continues to be. It is dumbfounding to me. With all the 3rd party tools and AI tools available these days, I could take a team of 3 skilled devs and produce what they have produced to date in less than 18 months. I really don't get why they are so slow, unless they just aren't comitting that much time and effort to it.

The updates are coming slow and the player base seems dead the content is basically all group content the higher you go and there is nothing really fun to do as a solo player and when you start out no one seems to want to group that I see anyway one day they will just shut the servers down.

EverQuest 1 in an alternative dimension. For the uninitiated, this is a very slow & chilled game with much downtime, intended to be filled with player conversation. EverQuest was essentially a chat room with swords, however I often enjoyed playing solo while watching or listening to something else on another screen, so I would expect the same experience from Pantheon. I purchased via Steam for convenience to check the state of the game with the intention of refunding but will be back at release or once the last of the character wipes is done. After 90 minutes it provided a solid dose of nostalgia, enlisting many of the same old mechanics with a new coat of paint. Given the timesink this is one to Wishlist and Wait - at least until development is complete and characters are permanent. For context, I played EverQuest for a few years starting in 1999, followed by EQ2, dipped into emulation & live servers over the years, and have been a Pantheon VIP for almost a decade, following the game's development on & off throughout. Pantheon continues to hold my interest as a link to a beloved game, especially given the death of EverQuest Next (aka EQ3) which held promise as the natural evolution for the IP. RIP. - [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/6887038-Skinny-from-the-Fat-Bastard/lists/]Skinnyfat Lists[/url]