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

[tazelbain]

Ya, that's KS basic conflict of interest.

[Nebu]

How much of a kickback does kickstarter get from funded projects?

[Draegan]

5 or 10% I think.

[Trippy]

How much of a kickback does kickstarter get from funded projects?

5%. Amazon also takes a cut for handling the payment processing.

[tazelbain]

Is good place to go for people investing these kickstarters?  I would think it'd be fun for the  internet detectives.

Kickstarter is selling appearance creditability not actual creditability.

[sam, an eggplant]

Nah, it's Kickstarter working as intended. Kickstarter only checks that the pitch looks good, not that the person behind it will keep their promises. They rely on 'the crowd' for that.

I disagree. The pitch was for a game. Taking the money to pay for services already rendered to create the pitch itself is fundamentally fraudulent.

[palmer_eldritch]

Nah, it's Kickstarter working as intended. Kickstarter only checks that the pitch looks good, not that the person behind it will keep their promises. They rely on 'the crowd' for that.

I disagree. The pitch was for a game. Taking the money to pay for services already rendered to create the pitch itself is fundamentally fraudulent.

But they're all a bit like that. When these studios claim that they'll be able to add an extra feature if they raise an extra £100,000, and then another extra feature if they raise an additional £100,000, they're lying. An extra £100,000 makes bugger all difference to the feature set of full-blown MMO, any more than the total sum raised through Kickstarter actually allows the game to be made.

[Venkman]

Exactly.

It's not fraud as much as it's pulling a PT Barnum.

[palmer_eldritch]

It's just hit me that they're charging $15 a month to subscribe to the forums for their imaginary game.

People are actually paying it.

Oh my.

[Draegan]

I was told this just happened on SA.

[luckton]

I was told this just happened on SA.

A shot for those of us without Rerolled accounts, if you please?

[dalien]

I was told this just happened on SA.

A shot for those of us without Rerolled accounts, if you please?

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem possible to view the SA thread anymore without buying an account there.

[Numtini]

I just peeked. He doesn't seem to have noticed it yet.

[KallDrexx]

This is turning more and more scammy by the day.

They redid their website and claim they have raised $425k.  Which is not really true since they aren't on track to actually claim that money.  Furthermore, they don't say that it's potential money but put it out as money on hand without mentioning KS at all, while using that $425k to try and scam other people out of money in their store

*edit:* Also, supposedly the Champion forum tier was renamed to Apprentice Developer ($14.95 monthly) 

[sam, an eggplant]

They're just flat-out lying. Kickstarter does not pay when the funding goal isn't reached. They raised $0. It really is scummy.

[Numtini]

I wonder if he's trying to get it shut down so he can blame Kickstarter for the failure?

[Hutch]

I wonder if he's trying to get it shut down so he can blame Kickstarter for the failure?

[Paelos]

He seems to have made the "We've raised" tag on his site "Coming Soon" instead of implying he raised $400,000. Probably because one of his lawyers got to him and told him that is fraud.

[Miasma]

For some insane reason they are designing their website on the fly using the public url instead of on an internal site that only they can see so every terrible idea they come up with and try is viewable by everyone.  It is the same slapstick, fly by night, poorly run mess that the game would be so it's sort of like accidental truth in advertising.

[KallDrexx]

For some insane reason they are designing their website on the fly using the public url instead of on an internal site that only they can see so every terrible idea they come up with and try is viewable by everyone.  It is the same slapstick, fly by night, poorly run mess that the game would be so it's sort of like accidental truth in advertising.

I'm kinda looking forward to when they unleash the final store on users and watch it get hacked.

[shiznitz]

Front page: "We're goin [sic] on an adventure" is just sloppy shit.

[Hutch]

Cant stop, where alraedy late!

[Falconeer]

The domain https://www.pantheonrotf.com/ is one L short of making fun of itself.

[satael]

The domain https://www.pantheonrotf.com/ is one L short of making fun of itself.

Maybe there's nothing to laugh about when pantheon rolls on the floor.

[HaemishM]

I want him to get funded just so the LOLZ will continue.

[IainC]

He's being eviscerated on SA right now. He still hasn't noticed (or isn't commenting on) his avatar either. Last Bradpost was yesterday.

[Falconeer]

Not that we should really care, there are worse tragedies in the world, but considering his emotional fragility this whole thing is probably gonna hurt him for real. Real. If it isn't already.

[Hutch]

I want him to get funded just so the LOLZ will continue.

Not without a major investment and/or a corporate backer. The money they pull in from this crowdfunding thing isn't going to pay for the kind of effort they'll need to produce an actual working MMO.

They may not go belly-up right when the KS expires, but it won't be far off.

[WayAbvPar]

He's being eviscerated on SA right now. He still hasn't noticed (or isn't commenting on) his avatar either. Last Bradpost was yesterday.

I had to go look this thread up to see what was going on, and ran into this GEM-

I hate say this, but while you were busy growing up and getting a job, a whole new generation of people without time on their hands came about.

But these people will never experience the glory that is a game where you have to put any effort towards winning. Your everyone-must-get-a-trophy mentality is what is not only ruining the MMO genre, it's ruining the entire fucking world. Because "no one has time to play anymore" everything is now designed to fit your cookie-cutter 2-hour-maximum playstyle. You can now buy your way to victory through kickstarter initiatives and cash shops, and get the best loot from all the dungeons by simply standing in line for it. You don't even have to talk to people anymore because that is a waste of your precious fucking time.

All I can say is fuck you, and your shameful mentality. If you don't have time to play MMOs then you should get back to your fucking work and leave video games to the people who enjoy playing video games.

And look what you did making me get all emotional on the internet. Fuck you.

We have found him. McQuaid's perfect target demographic. Hopefully his mom doesn't cancel the internet service to the basement when he doesn't clean the cat box.

[Paelos]

Not that we should really care, there are worse tragedies in the world, but considering his emotional fragility this whole thing is probably gonna hurt him for real. Real. If it isn't already.

I don't really care when con-artists get their comeuppance, no.

[Pennilenko]

He lost any measure of sympathy from many people when he pulled the spineless parking lot layoff. I don't know him, but I worked for a company when I was younger that did nearly the same exact bullshit. It left a permanent scar of hatred in my heart for people like him.

[Nebu]

We have found him. McQuaid's perfect target demographic. Hopefully his mom doesn't cancel the internet service to the basement when he doesn't clean the cat box.

Funny thing about this guy is that the game he pines for isn't really a game.  It's a queue.  EQ rewarded people that had the time to wait in long queues, not those that were indeed skilled at the game.  McQuaid was excellent at designing queues with a game-like interface attached.  That's a lot of what I liked about EQ.  It was a chat interface.  I got to meet and interact with some very cool people while we were waiting. Waiting for mana to regen, waiting for a camp to respawn, waiting for a quest mob to appear, waiting for the boat to come... you get the picture.

[Numtini]

There's also no ability by him or his minions to pick and choose what may or may not be useful about the older systems and what was just plain misery. I really appreciated a lot of aspects of the EQ era. I'm willing to put in some time for the return of getting to know people. I'd love to see slower mana regen. I'd appreciate a solid non-automatic group finding tool. But put my name on a list to join the group camping whatever spawn? Wait 30 minutes for a boat? Brutal fights on message boards about the official unofficial reservations list to kill a boss?

No. Thank. You.

[sam, an eggplant]

McQuaid was excellent at designing

No he wasn't. He didn't design dick. Brad was a dikumud player, and EQ1 was a dikumud with a graphical interface. It had every diku convention, including superfluous one like server messages "it begins to rain" (in a graphical game where you could see the rain!), the holy trinity, threat, sense heading, considering targets, etc. In fact, EQ1 was so similar to dikumud that there was a lawsuit because the diku codebase owners believed Verant literally used their code underneath! They hadn't, but EQ1 was still unmistakably a diku.

Dikus were popular and addictive in their time, and slapping a graphical shell on top of one was a great idea, no question. But it was an idea whose time had come, with the rise of the mass-market internet, and broadband, and computers coming with low-end integrated 3D accelerators out of the box. If he hadn't done it, someone else would have-- UO had already proved the market existed.

[WayAbvPar]

We have found him. McQuaid's perfect target demographic. Hopefully his mom doesn't cancel the internet service to the basement when he doesn't clean the cat box.

Funny thing about this guy is that the game he pines for isn't really a game.  It's a queue.  EQ rewarded people that had the time to wait in long queues, not those that were indeed skilled at the game.  McQuaid was excellent at designing queues with a game-like interface attached.  That's a lot of what I liked about EQ.  It was a chat interface.  I got to meet and interact with some very cool people while we were waiting. Waiting for mana to regen, waiting for a camp to respawn, waiting for a quest mob to appear, waiting for the boat to come... you get the picture.

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'.