Pantheon - Financial Situation

Visionary Realms has a new post on the the Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen blog that announces development will be slowing down due to low funding.

In the past few months we have seen some of the most passion bubble up from the Internet than we have in some time; all for an idea of a game we all want to see happen. It has been an exciting time for all of us.

Over the first month of development through crowdfunding, we’ve been able to achieve what was needed to be done in order to gain investor interest. That is, we’ve shown there is interest in a game like Pantheon, we’ve built the term sheets and business plan, and now have a prototype we can show to potential investors.

The downside now is that our initial resources have depleted, which regrettably means that development is going to slow down until finances can be secured. It’s not something we want to do by any means, but as we cannot guarantee paychecks to the team, they each need to be able to spend time on other things to pay the bills.

Once we’re able to get that level of funding we can then secure much-needed studio space and be able to pick up the pace of production dramatically. We are deeply thankful to this community for getting Pantheon to this critical point, where we have been able to put together an attractive package to present to potential investors.

In the interim, any donations made at this point until further notice will be going directly to maintaining the website during this phase, and not towards development.

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More information.

"Thanks for your money. It was probably in vain."

Don't get me wrong, they were honest about this from the beginning, so I certainly do not blame them.

What I don't get is why people pledged in the first place as it was pretty clear and probable that this would happen.
Every crowdfunded project may fail, there never is a guarantee, but this one always had "might very well fail despite being funded" written all over it.

If they could not find a publisher until now, I'm not sure how likely it is that they succeed. I'd suspect that they only lose momentum from now on.

well I pledged in kickstarter, but not in their site. I do want the safety of 'if it doesn't reach the goal you get your money back', same reason why I don't pledge on Indigogo

I loved EQ and pledged to the kickstarter but when it did not reach its goal I was out. Just too many rumors about Brad. Some of the people that worked with him on Vanguard just had horrible things to say about him. I would love to play a game like the original EQ but it looks like this will not be possible.

When he had the money, the studio, the resources, the staff...he couldn't make "that game." Why would anyone think he could do it this time?

And the dream is dead. Oh well. The march towards mediocre online entertainment continues unabated.

As much as I'd love to see something in the MMORPG sphere besides yet more WoW clones with tons of solo snooze mode, barely any endgame (yet called "the real game"), and obligatory crappy grief-based PvP, I'm not sure The Brad is the person for the job.

We need new MMORPGs with old school stylings - particularly an emphasis on full time grouping and almost no solo - but maybe not so much the kick in the nuts hard coreness that he tends to favor.

I miss a lot of old school MMORPG gameplay - particularly the emphasis on grouping almost all the time, challenges, and the less forgiving of failure - but simply rehashing old games isn't going to be enough - there needs to be a modern twist and the good parts of modern MMORPGs blended in (minus the solo ez-mode and obligatory PvP minigames that have nothing to do with anything). Ie, I think it's possible to create a game that is grouping heavy without it simply being camp and grind and with some of the slickness that's been added to the genre over time in presentation, UI, class design, etc.

I also kind of thought the lore/story stuff behind Pantheon sounded hokey.

I'm not sure it's over but another factor is that MMORPGs take a lot of money to do well and it's not doing ANYBODY any favors to try to do an old school MMORPG on a tight budget that will leave it looking and feeling as primitive as a 15 year old MMORPG.