Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen turns out to be a real game (real bad, geddit?)

[Yegolev]

Phone calls will be made.

[Pezzle]

Yeah, that symbol is shamefully similar. 

I had a great time as an EQ guide back when that was still going.  I was likely one of the few, but it was a real blast.  I got yelled at by my superiors, but who cares what they say!  Give some people a little power over others and they can sure get bitchy. 

[Rendakor]

With harm touch even.

Harm touch is the least of it.  That's the exact same class symbol that the Shadowknights of EQ had. 

EQ1 fanbois getting the developer they deserve.

[rattran]

Showing a negative for the day right now.  

[Chimpy]

So how is that other game that had more pledges on its first day comparing?

[DraconianOne]

So how is that other game that had more pledges on its first day comparing?

[luckton]

Checking in this morning, trending level has now fallen below the $800k goal to around $750k. 

[Paelos]

It's not that we're rooting for him to fail...

No wait, we totally are. 

[Niedar]

Next game to overtake Pantheon.

[UnSub]

I guess a lot of people are looking to fuck with him. First time I've heard of that sort of thing actually making a difference on kickstarter.

Kicktrolling is a thing. One identity apparently 'funded' over 100 projects only to reverse charges on them all.

Anway, this will get funded. If McQuaid has some investor money, he can have 'friends' contribute it to the campaign and suddenly they're over the target and getting payments from people waiting for the project to be a success.

[Severian]

Yeah, that symbol is shamefully similar.

C'mon, that's a stretch. They are totally different.

[satael]

Funny how the average pledge per backer on Pantheon is $121 and  £30 on Kingdom (and Kingdom already has well over double the number of backers that Pantheon has) 

[Hutch]

It's not that we're rooting for him to fail...

No wait, we totally are. 

I'm not rooting for him to fail. I'm already certain that failure will be the outcome.
I just want to be entertained 

[Brolan]

It's not that we're rooting for him to fail...

No wait, we totally are. 

I'm not rooting for him to fail. I'm already certain that failure will be the outcome.
I just want to be entertained 

How could he not fail?  The market is saturated, his game model is flawed, there is nothing new about his game, and he doesn't learn from his mistakes.  This has crash-and-burn written all over it.

[Niedar]

I really don't think the problem is with the game model at all, this kickstarter is just a scam.

[Senses]

The real question is this:  Is Brad McQuaid's name a blessing or a curse to his own project?  Would this be doing better if we didn't know he was apart of it, or is it just a poorly put together kickstarter to begin with? 

[calapine]

The real question is this:  Is Brad McQuaid's name a blessing or a curse to his own project?  Would this be doing better if we didn't know he was apart of it, or is it just a poorly put together kickstarter to begin with? 

I guess not that many people even know him actually.

[sam, an eggplant]

I would personally be much more likely to fund the project if he was not involved, but I agree that the public at large really has no clue who he is.

[Senses]

I would personally be much more likely to fund the project if he was not involved, but I agree that the public at large really has no clue who he is.

Even if you didn't know who he was, the minute you look to join a community to talk about your investment you are quickly going to hear everything you want or don't want to know about him.

[dalien]

For those that are in this for the schadenfreude (everyone?) and can't be bothered to slog through the whole rerolled thread, a (supposed) ex-Sigil employee posted this today:

There is only one person on the VR team who writes actual code. Ask ANYone who's ever worked on a small team project or a startup whether your first 11 people should look like this:

Vision guy - B. Mcquaid
Engineer - J. Weimann
Artist (concept) - J. Rochelle
Artist (props) - F. Beleno
Artist (environment) - V. Nguyen
PR guy - B. de la Durantaye
Designer - S. Grant
Designer - T. Garcia
Designer - N. Walling
Designer - C. Lefever
Designer - L. Gullo

Personality defects aside, none of these designers can write useable code for an MMO. I know this because I've worked with most of them, some directly, some indirectly.

Fwiw, it should look more like:

Vision guy/CEO (gets dat money)
Engineer (server and backend)
Engineer (tools and pipeline)
Engineer (gameplay)
Engineer (gameplay/AI)
Artist (concept and props)
Artist (props)
Artist (environment)
Designer (systems and content, must have excellent excel/scripting/writing skills)
Designer (systems and content, must have excellent excel/scripting/writing skills)
PR guy


As for myself, I was one of those unfortunates fired in the parking lot (still employed in MMOs though!), so I have a certain negative reaction to seeing Brad's shenanigans once again in full swing. It looks like this ill-thought-out project probably won't make it, so at least he won't be rewarded again for deceiving folks, but even people who don't know much about game design or MMO production should be able to understand production bottlenecks. With their current team of SOE/Trion castoffs and their egregious lack of technical skills (not a personal attack per se - this is a problem endemic to MMO designers), they would have no chance of producing a playable anything even WITH plenty of funding and a real game design document, which I do not believe they even have.

Also, one of our resident attention whores is butthurt that Brad isn't paying personal attention to him, so he's been pledging 10k and withdrawing it over and over for the past couple days.

[Trippy]

That's a lot of butthurt.

[Lucas]

Oooooh, moar popcorns!!!!

[KallDrexx]

lol at 5 designers for 1 engineer.  

[UnSub]

lol at 5 designers for 1 engineer.  

That's a lot of Vision.

[Paelos]

Once again a reminder that the games industry isn't run like a real business for the most part.

[Nebu]

lol at 5 designers for 1 engineer.   

... and people make fun of academia.

[Lantyssa]

As long as they have vision they can always hire more technical guys.  They're not that important, right?

(Said after 80 solid hours in five days from moving a data room by herself, with the exception of hard labor, and resenting them not thinking maybe she needs at least a day of rest rather than continuing on like a normal work week.)

But when has any MMO hired enough coders to match and reign in the number of designers it had?

[Numtini]

Maybe they can get some engineers and coders later and move them across the country a month before they go bankrupt a la Schilling.

[Numtini]

dupe

[HaemishM]

I bet you that ONE engineer/tech guy is a 5-star talent with 3-star drive.

[sam, an eggplant]

They're still in the initial funding phase. There's still tons of preproduction work to be done once it funds, if it funds. I'm in it for the schadenfreude as much as any of you (assuming nobody reading this was in that parking lot, anyway) and obviously they will need tech expertise but the fact that they didn't list any in the initial "give us money" pitch does not necessarily indicate an endemic problem. We have enough real failures to laugh at without manufacturing more.

[lamaros]

No, that's a real failure.

[Ingmar]

I don't see this as necessarily a big deal. You don't hire people until you can pay them and actually need them, and neither appears to be currently true.

[KallDrexx]

I don't see this as necessarily a big deal. You don't hire people until you can pay them and actually need them, and neither appears to be currently true.

Yet he managed to hire 5 designers at an extremely pre-production stage.

But lets look past that.  The roster he put up actually makes me realize how clownshoes this whole KS is.   Contrast it to Camelot Unchained (both were mocked here, both are KickStarters with the explicit intent to try and drum up enough interest to get more money from investors).  Camelot Unchained set a goal of $2 million, which is a good number to show investors for interest and gives good breathing room for development to proceed while trying to get that investment.  Also it's headed by Mark Jacobs, which while everyone here questions his game design after fucking up DAOC he does have a proven record of 1) running a game company 2) managing and gaining investors.

Now let's take a look at Pantheon.  Pantheon right now has 11 developers, and according to the ReRolled thread they claim they already have some more developers lined up once funding starts.  So lets take a low estimate of how many devs they want to bring on and lets say they want a total staff of 15 (which is laughibly low for what they want to accomplish).  Not even counting the 10% KS takes, $800k between 15 developers is $53k per year per employee, which isn't all salary because of benefits and other overhead.  $53k is barely a junior engineer (hell I made not that much less than that as a junior *designer*).  That's also not counting all the equipment, licensing, and other resources they need (hope they don't expect an office!).  At most $800k gives them 4-6 months before they are out of money. 

Also, I would highly doubt that raising $800k via a high profile kickstarter would really appear to investors like a huge amount of interest if you look at trends from other high profile kick-starters (not to mention the fact that investors will see the daily graphs and see how slow that money was raised). 

[sam, an eggplant]

Yet he managed to hire 5 designers at an extremely pre-production stage.

Nah. Those are a bunch of buddies that got together to do a kickstarter. You think those guys have 401ks? Not a chance.

Also they did pre-production work for the kickstarter pitch. All those concept pics, the unity engine demo, etc. That was a non-trivial amount of work. Nothing compared to making a real game, much less a MMO, but you don't knock that out in an afternoon.