KickStarter Pantheon - (Brad "EQ" McQuaid's new MMO)

[Alchemist]

Not sure what to think of this yet - but Brad McQuaid (of original EQ design fame) launched his Kickstarter today:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1588672538/pantheon-rise-of-the-fallen

They promise a group-focused, challenging, non-linear exploration-heavy game. Spiritual successor to EQ1 maybe?
I'm not jazzed about the name - but the game might have potential. They aren't afraid to cater to a niche - which is a good thing.

Discuss...

Edit: Here's the pitch video and a Q&A they did...

 

[Zed]

cheap photoshop-newb logo doesn't inspire confidence.

"we really put together an all-star team; a team tha- they're veterans"
HAHAHAHAHA

also stretch-goals up to 7mil. eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh.

PASS

 

[Bubbles]

Don't think we need more MMOs tbh.

 

[Dire Roach]

The fallen (Brad McQuaid) probably won't rise with this pitch. Saying "it'll be cool like EQ1" while avoiding going into details doesn't inspire much confidence. The super-generic art and lore doesn't help either.

 

[Great Deceiver]

This is a guy who's been inactive since the miserable failure of Vanguard (which wasn't a bad game, btw). Since a couple of years ago, he was re-hired by SoE into some kind of backwater EQ 1 position, and now he has a new company?

Doesn't inspire any confidence at all. The presentation is amateurish, the vignettes are laughable (lens flares WOOSH). Too many buzzwords repeated ad nauseam (EPIC ADVENTURE EXPLORATION GROUP FRIENDS OVERCOME CHALLENGES), etc. As an unrelated aside, McQuaid looks old and tired as shit.

This will never fly.

However, watching the Q&A I can agree with his sentiment that having a targeted audience is important, instead of trying to appeal to everyone (I assume his target audience are the poopsocking EQ1 raid crowd). Although, that is probably a pipe dream and getting enough money to sustain a game of this scope is impractical without dumbing everything down.

 

[Thane Solus]

i dont know to be honest, i am not raised much about his pitch, but who knows, it cant be that bad as the shitty MMOs we have now. So i give it thumbs up, i might add some money too...

Also we need a lot of more MMOs, but ones that not suck or are a carbon copy of wow or a instant gratification facebook game.

MMO Industry at the moment is complete shit. We have a few good games like EVE or Darkfall, each with their big flaws, but good overall, a few of the old ones still surviving and a few indie which are ok...

 

[Xenich]

Don't think we need more MMOs tbh.

Depends. We don't need anymore mainstream MMO's as Thane said. We need more "niche" mmos that do a particular focus very well and tell the rest of the player base to look elsewhere. MMO's don't need to be huge success stories. They only need to pull in around 200-300k subs (more or less) to be profitable. Problem is, the investing crowd currently driving the market can't be bothered with "profitable", they want to invest and then 3-4 years later become mega lotto rich from it. I find it odd that games like EQ were being touted as the king of the genre, incredible success story and yet I don't remember them ever breaking 1 million subs. I think on average they held about 350k. Now apparently, an MMO isn't a success and must be tardsolized into store gimmicks if it doesn't hit 3+ million subs.

 

[Mortmal]

Everquest was a fantastic game, an hardcore game , considerably harder than world of warcraft and requiring insane dedication sometimes. So brad was (is?) a design genius however i already heard his speech on vanguard , it ended up with an uncomplete game not fulfilling most of its promises . Some devs posted on fire of heaven forum years after release that brad was suffering of opium addiction and was never coming to the office. Vanguard end up an ok game that was salvaged by the newbie developpers working on it .

I encourage opium for extra creativity, but not working at all on the project ? No ..I'd like to trust him and feel younger again playing a true everquest again but that wont happen, i have has much confidence for him than for molyneux or garriot now.I cant see how he will get 7 millions.

 

[Zed]

I honestly do not think top tier EQ was harder than top tier vanilla/TBC (or even current heroic SoO) WoW.

Harder to understand, more abstract -- yes. Like comparing Silmarillion to The Hobbit. But more challenging? No.

Looking at EQ videos on youtube, all I see are dolts standing still spamming fireball. In WoW there's constant motion, often phases and alternating boss attacks, and very volatile "retard checks".

 

[Xenich]

dd

I honestly do not think top tier EQ was harder than top tier vanilla/TBC (or even current heroic SoO) WoW.

Harder to understand, more abstract -- yes. Like comparing Silmarillion to The Hobbit. But more challenging? No.

Looking at EQ videos on youtube, all I see are dolts standing still spamming fireball. In WoW there's constant motion, often phases and alternating boss attacks, and very volatile "retard checks".

Hard to say. Fights were endurance fights in EQ. I remember the AoW being around a 2-3 hour fight that required carefully synced chain heals with supplement heals in between combined with necros feeding mana and having a chain of 5-6 tanks rotating between each other by having the entire raid stopping attacks for a period while the next in line tank slowly built agro with taunt/AoE taunt (loss of agro or a screw up by any of those people was a guaranteed wipe) and that wasn't even a complicated fight as you ran into with SoL, POP, and GoD.

 

[Xor]

There's no way this will even meet its funding goal, much less any of those stretch goals.

 

[Bubbles]

Brad stole opiates from his employees, not actual opium. Still, I do not think he would be a good person to give $800,000 to.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Haha fuck you Brad. I'll just start the countdown until you go and sell out to SOE once again. Like you always do. I liked EQ1. I even liked Vanguard quite a lot. But I know that this asshole has a problem with selling out and then abandoning the ship once he has made a quick buck. But I guess it wasn't enough the first two times since he's here back again begging for more.

 

[Ranselknulf]

Judging by Vanguard I don't think Mcquaid will be able to pull of a decent game.

 

[Xenich]

The one thing I think would be awesome from his KS stretch goals is the UGC server (private server software). I think if he had put that in as the base goal for the game, it might have been worth it to see it made, but having it as a 5 million + goal? The guy is smoking crack. That is one thing that disappointed me about the progression of multiplayer gaming. After NWN, I was hopeful about seeing more and more games coming out expanding and developing off the private server software model. I thought it would only be a matter of time before we started to see MMORPG games being marketed for that direction. Heck, Neverwinter was actually being designed for that focus until PWE turned it into another junk gimmick FTP game. It is a shame that never took off as it is the only way that everyone can have a game they like to play.

 

[Bubbles]

To be fair, asking for 5 mil for an MMO is like asking for a thousand bucks for a regular game.

 

[Xenich]

To be fair, asking for 5 mil for an MMO is like asking for a thousand bucks for a regular game.

Lets be even more fair. Asking for 5 million dollars with as little details on the system and design that he provides is like a drunken bum seeking investors with a cocktail napkin outline as they walk down the street.

 

[Alchemist]

Vanguard had so much going for it, which was seemingly marred by mismanagement and a terrible launch. Classy Keith Parkinson art direction, that massive world to explore... it was like my dream MMO when I first heard of it. Even though it's a decent game now, it seems it never really fulfilled it's potential due to the poor launch and lack of players.

Mostly this KS just makes me want to go play some Vanguard...

Honestly, Pantheon seems doomed unless he can pull out some amazing material during the campaign to entice people. It's billed as an explorer's MMO but so far I've seen nothing very interesting to explore. It all feels a bit generic. Fighting skeletons in an abandoned castle? We've been there about a million times now... come on. Show us some of the cool planar stuff in concept art at least.

 

[Xenich]

Judging by Vanguard I don't think Mcquaid will be able to pull of a decent game.

Vanguard wasn't entirely terrible. One of the biggest problems with that game on release is that most people couldn't run it on their machines and the fact that the world was crawling with game breaking bugs. Even after years of sony fixing the game (which honestly turned out not too bad in some of the systems), the game still had many bugs the last time I tried it a few years ago. That aside, it has one of the best crafting interaction systems out there and many other innovative features.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Vanguard had a lot of interesting character classes that felt very unique from each other. I tried nearly all of them and I hardly ever felt like what I was playing felt too samey to some other class. The Bard was also the absolute best Bard I've seen in any game.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Vanguard was pretty special, in my opinion. I still remember many hours of adventuring in Wardship of the Sleeping Moon; the huge open dungeons, getting lost in them. I think it was the last of that type of MMO, and it's fondly remembered.

 

[veryalien]

He might reach his funding goal but 6 million is insane.

Remember Camelot Unchained reached its goal and the videos were a lot more neurotic.

 

[Xenich]

I went back and starting playing some vanguard again. I have to say, as much as I despise Brad selling out with the game and the various design directions in EQ I disagreed with, the game really is a gem. Back then, I viewed the game with spoiled goggles, expecting progression of systems to keep improving off each other, taking for granted what the game provided in its design. Now, looking at Vanguard compared to most of the games out today, well... it is a complex innovation of in depth game play and development that makes pretty much all of the MMORPGs today look like they were designed for children under 8.

Now you can certainly disagree with many choices and implementation of design concerning that game, but the game is certainly not the shallow face rolling pointless 5 min carrot grinds that we see today. I am not saying the game doesn't have problems (some are frigging huge ones), but it is from a different era of gaming, where reading, difficulty of objectives, and long term success goals that were ever shadowed by consequences of failure were considered a challenge and fun. These days, fun is apparently getting a shiny trophy for turning the game on and logging in.

That said, I am not sure I trust him to make another game. Heck, I honestly don't think anyone can be successful in making an mmorpg that isn't assembly line trash catering to the boy band fans of online gaming.

 

[veryalien]

As I understand it Brad was mostly absent from the development of Vanguard. At least that's what some postmortem accusations were when people got layed off.

 

[Xenich]

As I understand it Brad was mostly absent from the development of Vanguard. At least that's what some postmortem accusations were when people got layed off.

Question is, was the result of systems in Vanguard due to his absence (if that is the case) or were they the result of a pre-planned direction? It has been a long time since I remember reading about the early development of the game. I can't remember if a lot of the systems in it were "realized" to an extent in the early design documents.

Regardless, I really would love to see another game with the depth of system that Vanguard had. I do have one contention with Brad though in terms of his design goals. I don't mind contested content, even in some raid content, but his ideas around those areas are ridiculous at times. EQ was great, but there are obvious problems with contested content. I am not saying instancing everything is the answer, but constant "camp checks" through crowded dungeons of people bitching and fighting over spawns, to cock blocking in raids, and the whole time zone server fiasco's and raid requirements hitting 60-70 people... yeah... "I am getting too old for that shit". Granted Brad appears to claim that this new game will be a mix of contested and instancing, I still think he has some poor ideas as what made EQ/Vanguard great.