For those of you who have played Everquest, you probably remember Brad McQuaid, who played a huge role in its development.
He, and a few others ex-SOE employees are now working on this title called Pantheon : Rise of the Fallen that is scheduled to launch sometimes this year.
From what I’ve observed so far, it’s the spiritual successor of what was once one of the top MMORPGs in the world.
Since they’re using Unity, I thought some of you would be interested in seeing what they’ve accomplished.
I’m more than a little wary reading the following:
As a loooooooooong time MMO player, I know how challenging it can be to get schedules to line up in order to actually play a game even in the case of 5-player dungeons. Like, when I was playing WoW at its peak it was difficult to get non-PUG people into a dungeon on a regular basis. If they’re expecting that sort of thing for questing I imagine a lot of people are going to bounce off this game hard when they start encountering basic enemies that require at least one other person to defeat.
WoW was smart about this back in the day before it became a game you could steamroll through on your own by having periodic group quests and elite mobs that would grant more EXP and better loot. It made it so there was a social element of the game while not forcing you to be unable to play because your friends and you don’t have an aligned schedule. Having that be the default, however, kinda concerns me.
Yeah, I completely understand your point. Everquest had a few solo classes back then, but like Pantheon, was majorly focused on grouping.
Best I can tell, it turned out being their niche. They put a lot of efforts in having a non-toxic, clean and mature community. They would suspend/ban players that had a foul mouth. They had GMs who would meet-up with players in-game and cheer at them during raid encounters. I’m not sure if they would have performed better if there was more solo content, to be honest. Possibly?
Because of the difficulty of the content, mostly everyone had to group. That resulted in a lot more social encounters and lead more knowledgeable players to educate the newer players. Overall, a more knowledgeable community emerged. At least, that’s how I perceive it.