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Topic: Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen turns out to be a real game (real bad, geddit?) (Read 329693 times)
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sam, an eggplant
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1518
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To be honest, there are times when I miss that slower pace. I have decided that I loathe the linear quest hub to quest hub theme parks, with everyone dancing to their own tune and almost no interaction between people (even though I hate everyone). EQ was certainly different. I actually miss things like dangerous high level mobs wandering around lowbie zones and swatting the unwary, and hair-raising runs across high level zones. It felt like an adventure rather than a safe Disneyfied 'experience'. You remember the high points, rose-colored glasses. I remember sitting at the zoneline to lower guk trying to get my ranger into a group for 2 hours before finally giving up. I remember server-wide calendars to kill bosses. I remember camping a room in highpass for 40 hours straight, with 3 mobs carefully staggered two minutes apart, to get to level 55. I remember that fucking prick Abashi. The server communities were great. Your reputation mattered. Social interactions were deeper, no question. But the game itself sucked goat asshole, as did developer interactions with players. Modern MMOs like WoW lost those communities when they threw away heavy interdependence and introduced instancing. But the games themselves are now fun on a minute to minute basis. And to me, that's what matters.
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« Last Edit: February 20, 2014, 11:59:17 AM by sam, an eggplant »
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WayAbvPar
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Oh I know..there was a lot of horribleness too. But every game these days has a terrible homogenous sameness that something outside of the WoW blueprint would be refreshing.
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When speaking of the MMOG industry, the glass may be half full, but it's full of urine. HaemishM
Always wear clean underwear because you never know when a Tory Government is going to fuck you.- Ironwood
Libertarians make fun of everyone because they can't see beyond the event horizons of their own assholes Surlyboi
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Lucas
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3298
Further proof that Italians have suspect taste in games.
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(even though I hate everyone)
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" He's so impatient, it's like watching a teenager fuck a glorious older woman." - Ironwood on J.J. Abrams
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Numtini
Terracotta Army
Posts: 7675
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Oh I know..there was a lot of horribleness too. But every game these days has a terrible homogenous sameness that something outside of the WoW blueprint would be refreshing.
I actually think the market is ripe for another DnDish game with the standard elf, dwarf, gnome, orc, human etc. Everybody theoretically wants a game with something different, but nothing in paper or online seems to have grabbed players like that.
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If you can read this, you're on a board populated by misogynist assholes.
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HaemishM
Staff Emeritus
Posts: 42632
the Confederate flag underneath the stone in my class ring
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The market is ripe for a lot of things, but not at the idiotic mega-budgets that publishers are spending on MMOG's. These things need to be built for niche audiences with smaller, tighter budgets using off-the-shelf components for servers and backend technology. Shit, as many MMOG's have been released, you'd think that part of the process would be fairly standard by now but no one seems able or willing to do that. Fucking Minecraft has decent server tech, FFS. Niche budgets, niche audiences, embrace the niche.
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sam, an eggplant
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1518
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To be fair, that's an reasonably accurate description of McQuaid's pitch.
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Lucas
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3298
Further proof that Italians have suspect taste in games.
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The market is ripe for a lot of things, but not at the idiotic mega-budgets that publishers are spending on MMOG's. These things need to be built for niche audiences with smaller, tighter budgets using off-the-shelf components for servers and backend technology. Shit, as many MMOG's have been released, you'd think that part of the process would be fairly standard by now but no one seems able or willing to do that. Fucking Minecraft has decent server tech, FFS. Niche budgets, niche audiences, embrace the niche.
In other words, you're describing Richard Garriott's new endeavour. *ducks*
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" He's so impatient, it's like watching a teenager fuck a glorious older woman." - Ironwood on J.J. Abrams
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WayAbvPar
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Give me a multiplayer Minecraft with modern graphics, Mount and Blade style combat, and some sort of clan/guild/alliance territory taking and holding ala EVE and you can have all my money. Make city-building a collaborative effort, and then defend said cities against the unwashed. Have people fight over the best mining areas. Carebear types can build/explore/mine/craft and the PVPers can defend/expand the territory. Easy, right?
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When speaking of the MMOG industry, the glass may be half full, but it's full of urine. HaemishM
Always wear clean underwear because you never know when a Tory Government is going to fuck you.- Ironwood
Libertarians make fun of everyone because they can't see beyond the event horizons of their own assholes Surlyboi
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HaemishM
Staff Emeritus
Posts: 42632
the Confederate flag underneath the stone in my class ring
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The market is ripe for a lot of things, but not at the idiotic mega-budgets that publishers are spending on MMOG's. These things need to be built for niche audiences with smaller, tighter budgets using off-the-shelf components for servers and backend technology. Shit, as many MMOG's have been released, you'd think that part of the process would be fairly standard by now but no one seems able or willing to do that. Fucking Minecraft has decent server tech, FFS. Niche budgets, niche audiences, embrace the niche.
In other words, you're describing Richard Garriott's new endeavour. *ducks* Yes, if it weren't built by a narcissistic man child puffed up on the fellatio of thousands of fanbois who ought to goddamn know better by now.
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Hutch
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1893
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Fellatio, it's a hell of a drug.
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Plant yourself like a tree Haven't you noticed? We've been sharing our culture with you all morning. The sun will shine on us again, brother
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WayAbvPar
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And cold turkey sucks. Or doesn't.
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When speaking of the MMOG industry, the glass may be half full, but it's full of urine. HaemishM
Always wear clean underwear because you never know when a Tory Government is going to fuck you.- Ironwood
Libertarians make fun of everyone because they can't see beyond the event horizons of their own assholes Surlyboi
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Kitsune
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2406
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I like the boat.
No, really. The fact that there isn't a flying carpet vending machine to zip you to anywhere from anywhere is why the world felt so massive despite not really being so large. Final Fantasy 11 was similar; if you wanted to reach a distant locale you needed to board a boat or airship to reach it. One thing that FFXI did that EQ did not do and should have done was have posted schedules for the boats and airships, so you didn't have to bolt through Freeport wondering if you were going to miss the boat by seconds. In Everquest you could show up at the pier and wind up waiting for an hour before finding out that the boat had bugged out in the middle of the ocean and wasn't coming.
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Hoax
Terracotta Army
Posts: 8110
l33t kiddie
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I don't want to go back to the days of spamming "LFG" for hours on end. Of waiting in lines for a spawn or drop.
But I also don't know that I buy the "nobody has time anymore" bullshit. If you've played Dota/LoL you know damn well that people are putting in their hours every day. Those games may seem like they are just small experiences but you need to have an hour plus to spare and more if you are going to get people together and not pub. So I think we could step away from the WoW, everything is instanced, teleport to everything, everything is easy as fuck model just a bit and people would still manage.
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A nation consists of its laws. A nation does not consist of its situation at a given time. If an individual's morals are situational, then that individual is without morals. If a nation's laws are situational, that nation has no laws, and soon isn't a nation. -William Gibson
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Rendakor
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10131
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The problem is that no one's stepping "a bit" away. We have old-guard idiots like McQuaid and Garriott on one end of the spectrum and everyone else is going for "Like WoW but-".
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"i can't be a star citizen. they won't even give me a star green card"
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sam, an eggplant
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1518
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Bullshit. GW2 innovated quite far in the diku space. Neverwinter committed to user-generated content. Shroud of the Avatar is a non-massively multiplayer RPG. Lots of titles like Tera, DDO, Neverwinter, Conan, and Wildstar all incorporate twitch combat, to various degrees. Many modern MMOs also toy with eliminating the tank/healer/dps holy trinity. EVE, Rust, DayZ, EQNext, and Minecraft are all sandbox multiplayer RPGs, with different degrees of 'massively'. A Tale in the Desert didn't even have combat. The Secret World innovated in its puzzles, ARG content, and storylines. And of course everybody's trying every conceivable non-subscription business model.
There's been a shitton of fumbling exploration away from those diku tropes. The problem is that none of them have been truly successful when compared to WoW. But the innovation is out there.
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« Last Edit: February 20, 2014, 02:30:36 PM by sam, an eggplant »
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IainC
Developers
Posts: 6538
Wargaming.net
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I think the problem is that people say they want innovation but what they pay for is to be punched repeatedly in the dick.
The fact that Brad can't sell dick-punching futures to a group of people begging to be punched in the dick is the hilarious coda to that.
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sam, an eggplant
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1518
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I don't know that I'd go that far. Many of the titles I listed are quite successful, making enough money to continue releasing content, with committed players. They don't make money hand over first like WoW, but that's not such a tragedy.
I like that these games exist, that innovation continues. I don't know of any huge games like TOR in production today; everything is scaled down, and that's a good thing. ESO and WIldstar will release, make a bunch of money, then go F2P or Buy2Play in a year and continue serving their players, and that's a good thing too. You don't need to beat WoW. I'd rather have dozens of smaller multiplayer titles competing in a vigorous market than 3 WoWs.
Also MOBAs are a huge multiplayer genre that didn't exist a couple years ago. They compete with WoW for revenue. I tend to keep them separate from this sort of discussion because they lack persistence, but they are multiplayer and they are RPGs. Who would have imagined that a completely new genre was even possible 5 years ago? But there'll be another one soon enough.
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« Last Edit: February 20, 2014, 02:44:20 PM by sam, an eggplant »
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lamaros
Terracotta Army
Posts: 8021
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Need more negatives.
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tazelbain
Terracotta Army
Posts: 6603
tazelbain
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You'd see some great numbers in kickstarter would let you counter bid for charity like I want. He could have raised a million for Childs play or something.
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"Me am play gods"
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Lucas
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3298
Further proof that Italians have suspect taste in games.
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A few comments by McQuaid on KS, published during the last hour or so: onvo yes, we are aware. Which means we will be working hard to show what we can do. The team has plenty of experience in game development, so it's just a matter of showing y'all what we've got. The initial funding will help with that. We're also upping the team size in our efforts to address concerns and answer questions. We've learned a lot from the KS and also have new team members coming aboard with plenty of skills to help in avoiding any oversights we initially had. So, moving forward, you'll see some more streamlined rollouts and faster turnaround to get out the kinds of information and adjustments the community is looking for. We are also looking into making some public appearances where we can talk about any concerns that may have come up during the Kickstarter funding. @Buccaneer Right now my focus has been to get more eyes on the Kickstarter and the project. We're pretty confident that we've reached a large segment of the gaming audience who have been looking for a game like this (that's verified by the 3k+ backers). So right now I'm working on ways to get more eyes on the project - the people who have been waiting for a game like this but aren't necessarily reading gaming sites or forums. It's a bit tricky to get those eyes here, but we've been making progress. This kind of outreach will be going on not just for the next few days, but beyond the kickstarter. @Buccaneer - Doing another Kickstarter is not currently in the plans. We do have some other options in addition to our crowdfunding efforts on the game site, but I can't get into details about that right now. @Jave This kind of goes in line with my comments to Buccaneer. There are some options right now, but it's too early for me to go into detail. I can say though, that we have received a great amount of interest in the project and things are looking good. And I totally hear you - we don't expect anyone to make an investment that they're not sure of. So we will be working hard to show you something much more substantial in the near future to ease your minds a bit. And hey, even after that, if you're not convinced - no worries. We don't want anyone jumping in where they're uncomfortable, and we'd be ecstatic to see you at launch if that's the case. @Brunt thank you for your kind comments :) The team has been doing what they can to keep transparent and keep everyone up to date - that's going to be much easier in the near future with more team members aboard so that everyone can focus on their personal skill set. Last one is from 3 minutes ago, so it's kinda on-going. EDIT: oh, another one: @Buccaneer We're going to keep pushing here. We're aware of the numbers, but we're also not ashamed in the least bit of having over 3,000 backers and over $400k in pledges for such an early stage of the project. If you're asking if there's going to be a demo unveiled or a teaser vid within the next few days, no, that won't happen unfortunately, but we are going through all our connections to make sure everyone knows the Kickstarter hours are few remaining
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" He's so impatient, it's like watching a teenager fuck a glorious older woman." - Ironwood on J.J. Abrams
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KallDrexx
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3510
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@Brunt thank you for your kind comments :) The team has been doing what they can to keep transparent and keep everyone up to date - that's going to be much easier in the near future with more team members aboard so that everyone can focus on their personal skill set. More team members they can't pay for? I wonder how many designers they have ready to jump on board
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Venkman
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11536
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I don't know that I'd go that far. Many of the titles I listed are quite successful, making enough money to continue releasing content, with committed players. They don't make money hand over first like WoW, but that's not such a tragedy.
I like that these games exist, that innovation continues. I don't know of any huge games like TOR in production today; everything is scaled down, and that's a good thing. ESO and WIldstar will release, make a bunch of money, then go F2P or Buy2Play in a year and continue serving their players, and that's a good thing too. You don't need to beat WoW. I'd rather have dozens of smaller multiplayer titles competing in a vigorous market than 3 WoWs.
Also MOBAs are a huge multiplayer genre that didn't exist a couple years ago. They compete with WoW for revenue. I tend to keep them separate from this sort of discussion because they lack persistence, but they are multiplayer and they are RPGs. Who would have imagined that a completely new genre was even possible 5 years ago? But there'll be another one soon enough.
All of this. It bears repeating annually, even here. Genres are not defined by the most successful game in it, but by all the rest from position 2-n. Because there's where the true breadth of possibilities derive. This is how you get people saying Eve, GW2 and Wizard 101 are in the same genre. And how obviously and patently misguided it is for any company to say "like <game #1> but...".
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Nebu
Terracotta Army
Posts: 17613
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More team members they can't pay for? I wonder how many designers they have ready to jump on board Maybe he has Curt Schilling on retainer as a hiring consultant.
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"Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other."
- Mark Twain
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shiznitz
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4268
the plural of mangina
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This just in! Pantheon is moving to Rhode Island for loan guarantees!
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I have never played WoW.
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luckton
Terracotta Army
Posts: 5947
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This just in! Pantheon is moving to Rhode Island for loan guarantees!
/thread
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"Those lights, combined with the polygamous Nazi mushrooms, will mess you up."
"Tuning me out doesn't magically change the design or implementation of said design. Though, that'd be neat if it did." -schild
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Paelos
Contributor
Posts: 27075
Error 404: Title not found.
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This just in! Pantheon is moving to Rhode Island for loan guarantees!
2 points, and the foul.
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CPA, CFO, Sports Fan, Game when I have the time
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Hutch
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1893
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The Kickstarter limps to a close.They got $460k out of $800k needed to fund. They got a final "surge" of $19k each of the last two days. So, more of a final muscle twitch than a surge, really. This has been fun, but it's over now. Brad's next game will be called Paycheck: Rise of the Fry Cook. fake edit: punctuation
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Plant yourself like a tree Haven't you noticed? We've been sharing our culture with you all morning. The sun will shine on us again, brother
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Paelos
Contributor
Posts: 27075
Error 404: Title not found.
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A new letter emerges: (And holy shit it's wordy!)
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CPA, CFO, Sports Fan, Game when I have the time
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luckton
Terracotta Army
Posts: 5947
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The True Believers have spoken, and they were a day late and a dollar (or several hundred thousand) short. I like how he's trying to play this off as "it's cool, gang, we got this...we just weren't TOTALLY ready for KSing this thing yet." Yeah, you keep thinking those happy thoughts there, sunshine. In truth, this should be a personal wake-up call to him that he's trying to fulfill roles that are too fucking big for him to actually fill. Go back to CSRing, or something.
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"Those lights, combined with the polygamous Nazi mushrooms, will mess you up."
"Tuning me out doesn't magically change the design or implementation of said design. Though, that'd be neat if it did." -schild
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satael
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2431
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I would think that failing to achieve a goal they've set themselves for the kickstarter might be a bit of a red flag for any investors that might look into how realistic their plans are (I mean the kickstarter goal was set by they themselves with the 800k being the minimum they thought they could get).
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Venkman
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11536
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This is the thing about visionaries though. They are never wrong. This is the mother of all "if we had done X differently" that plagued all early high concept MMO ideas that never worked out. They always needed X more dollars, Y more people or Z more time.
They were never ever about anything wrong with the idea itself nor the people who tried to manage it.
It's a mindset most people eventually outgrow when met with strings of failures. But occasionally there's a few that never get to that moment of self-actualization.
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Tyrnan
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Posts: 428
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Mithas
Terracotta Army
Posts: 942
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The community didn't want it hard enough.
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Tyrnan
Terracotta Army
Posts: 428
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It was the constructive criticism in the comments that scared people away from pledging. Totally.
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KallDrexx
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3510
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..... This has been fun, but it's over now. ....
Hahahahahahhahah aahhhhh hahaha. He thinks this is over.
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