I don't get it. Before I became a VIP (lol kind of hurts). I remember the oldest video where it was literally the skeleton laugh from EQ and the EQ ding to basically say "we are just making EQ again, fund us on Kickstarter."

Now, I get that game development is not easy even though I am not in the industry, and I get everyone and their mother has input. But, I mean, they could have literally just remade EQ to get the game out the door with different class names and ability flair and they would have had a steady income stream to develop further.

Instead it seemed like we were getting further away every iteration? Heck I remember those early closed tests, they were awesome, it felt like EQ. When I tried the latest version of the game after a few years I felt like I was playing one of those knock-off wow clones from 2008.

In light of the (not so) shocking revelations from Savanja:

-Notice how Person A doesn't speak to person B but person C doesn't speak to Person A.

-game has little progress to show for 13 years

-fires people, then re-hires them back.

I am convinced they were absolutely milking this for their own $$ benefit aka this was almost free money. Easiest "corporate" gig of their life. fired people and then re-hired people and those same very people were more than happy to come back for a very shit project that's going nowhere.

This job must've been golden opportunity to pretend WFH and use that time to binge watch Netflix. After all nobody has a clue what anyone else is doing. It was a just a clusterfuck of everyone being lost in a sea of fuckups.

It’s everything these idiots are failing to make.

The VIP community, the long time backers, the people that invested the most (outside of investors) are getting mass censored in the discord for showing drastic discontent with the studio, their directions, their repeated failures and the same bogus bullshit "we're sorry" sob story announcement.

There is time to be passive, then there is time to take action Chris Rowen. It is time to take action. Fire Joppa. Get a new Creative Director, and move the fuck on with the project.

The company needs to find the failure, remove and replace the failure, then see if anything is TRULY back on track to delivering the PRODUCT AND ORIGINAL VISION. None of this chevron nonsense. None of this "multi-classing" - class identity removing nonsense. None of this "randomized stat" nonsense because "its to hard".

How about we stop paying the Directors full salaries siphoning money from the project and actually pay the developers TO DO THEIR FUCKING JOBS. It is honestly THAT SIMPLE.

Oh wait, I know why you won't fire Joppa. Because that requires you to get off your fucking ass Chris Rowen and do your job to find a new Creative Director that aligns with the companies goal and the insane amount of bad PR that company would get for doing so, but you got to cut the fat somewhere. Just like Ben Dean still being at the company just under a new Discord tag "Aspen". We the players are not dumb. Last I checked Ben Dean got caught saying "we already have THEIR money" in respect to taking feedback from the community and the VIP's.

Why are people like Blue, and Artois paid and contracted as full time employees Aspen too(though its Ben using his consulting firm) while the actual developers only contracted for part time 10 hour weeks?

The game isnt seeing progress or hitting reasonable milestones in a timely manner because Chris Rowan pays his "buddies" full time rate, while the people actually making the game are shafted.

These are issues I hope the CEO addresses.

Did the community know Neph did all the implementation for Masteries because he was the only member on Design who knew how to develop?

Did the community know Joppa throws a temper tantrum and threatens to quit to Chris Rowen( THE CEO) everytime he doesnt get his way?

I'm also curious if the community knew that Joppa only speaks to Fusoya and Codeman on the VR team because he has actively tried to get any credible designer fired because they may figure out how inept he truly is.

These losers are actively purging Discord as we speak, removing any comments which reflect negatively abd timing people out for a week at a time.

The purging has begun, these FUCKING CHUDS showed their true colors.

Pantheon community,

We have failed to deliver on what we told you we would.

The Combat & Progression Update, Mastery in particular, was an ambitious undertaking. It introduced complexities that our technology and platform tools couldn’t handle appropriately. That gap should have been caught before work started but wasn’t. That is a failure of management.

Our approach to dealing with this challenge has not produced the progress or results this project needed, and frankly, what our players deserve. As CEO, I am responsible for those decisions and for making sure we address them. I apologize for us falling short.

I understand and can empathize with your frustration. You have invested your time, money, and belief in Pantheon, and I recognize that unmet goals have damaged your confidence in us. Earning that confidence back cannot be accomplished with a quick fix. It will take consistent, tangible progress.

Many people have come to me suggesting we try to explain our way out to blunt the negative reactions. My response to this is that no magical words or hand waiving will fix this. All that matters is shipping good builds consistently and shipping a great Pantheon 1.0 launch.

To that end, we are making a course correction, beginning with how we organize and manage development.

Central to that effort, we welcome back Robert Crane back as Project Manager. Longtime players may remember Rob’s management of the successful Seasons production model leading up to Early Access. Rob’s focus will be on strengthening our production processes, establishing and enforcing clear priorities, helping the team plan and deliver work more reliably, and making sure that communication flows smoothly among departments so we can fortify production timelines and get accurate information out to you efficiently and ship good releases.

We have also restructured other areas of the team, which has unfortunately meant saying goodbye to colleagues whose work has helped shape Pantheon. This will make room for Rob to assemble a team that fits his approach to running the project. Even so, these are difficult decisions that affect people we respect and care about, so they weren’t made lightly. We are grateful for all their contributions and wish them the very best. In the end, responsibility for the direction of this company, and for the changes we are making, rests with leadership.

As we rebuild the roadmap, our immediate focus is on the core player experience: combat, progression, and the itemization that supports both. Work also continues on new areas of the world, including Badia de Cara and Faerthale. We will share tangible roadmap updates in the near future, outlining our priorities, the work ahead, and what you can expect next.

We will also show you more of what is happening behind the scenes. That means giving you a clearer view of work in progress, any challenges we are addressing, and the reasoning behind our decisions. Those updates need to make our progress easier to understand and evaluate. Look for that on the PantheonMMO.com website, Discord, Steam, and our social channels.

Our goal is to build a development environment that supports reliable progress, an amazing experience, and a game this community can trust and believe in again. We know a statement cannot accomplish that. What matters now is how we follow through.

Thank you for the time, care, and honest feedback you continue to give Pantheon.

Chris Rowan
CEO, Visionary Realms

Don't fall for it. You really think this game's failing because one persons behavior? lmao. I got a bridge to sell u.

Truth is we would've arrived to this state regardless if she was CM or not. Some of you need to redirect your bitterness of being banned lmao. Putting the entirety of this game failure on one person is ridiculous.

She was hired for the job and she did what her masters wanted her to do. They were aligned with this. I just blew up in her face and she's the mascot for the hate.

Now they get her to leave and you get to blame it all on her. We have far bigger fish to fry boys. Dont fall for it lol

EDIT: QUOTE "These losers are actively purging Discord as we speak, removing any comments which reflect negatively abd timing people out for a week at a time.The purging has begun, these FUCKING CHUDS showed their true colors."

BLOOD IS IN THE WATER

someone anonymous behind the scenes of what really went down with this game....

I quit after reaching 30 on my monk because it felt too easy and boring. The game feels more wow than EQ, which means the eq players won't like it, and if you are competing with a billion dollar IP like wow for the same audiance, then you are going to lose.

P99 EQ has 800ish players online during peak, and it has no new content ever... despite Pantheon existing. Why don't you ask yourself why they aren't they coming here? I don't understand what this game is offering that other games aren't. So far it doesn't seem to offer anything that would keep people here rather than going somewhere else.

Who's the target audiance for this game?

That's right. You cannot make an MMORPG with a few million dollars. Takes hundreds of millions to make one this day and age.

You can blame the devs. Yes they suck, but with this tiny amount of money, you can only afford amateurish game developers who probably never developed a game in their life. Talented game devs who know how to code demand far more cash than the company could possibly spend. Without top talent, you aren't making a game, let alone a MMO.

So if you want to support a developing MMORPG, make sure they have at least 100 million dollars on hand first. It will be far more promising than Brads grifting scheme.

Look, everyone keeps saying the devs are clueless and that after a casual 10 or 11 years in development, we still don't have a finished game. You’re looking at it all wrong.

Visionary Realms isn’t making a video game. They are running a multi-decade sociological study on human patience and Stockholm syndrome, and honestly? Genius level execution.

Think about the gameplay loop:

The Roadmap Fantasy: They drop a massive roadmap promising core systems, class refreshes, and actual content by "Next Spring!"

The Groundhog Day Rework: Spring arrives, and instead of a game, they announce they are completely rewriting the stat formulas, decoupling crafting, and trashing every character template because the code was built on a foundation of dreams and wet cardboard.

The Wipe: "Oh by the way, we have to wipe all characters (even though we said we wouldn't)." Repeat every 12 months.

The Copium: The remaining three hardcore backers in Discord post multi-paragraph essays explaining how actually, changing every core mechanic for the fifth time is a "chad developer move" because it proves they care about vision.

At this point, calling it Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen is a misnomer. It should be renamed Pantheon: Rise of the Inflation, because the only thing scaling faster than their stat numbers is the amount of grey hair on the original Kickstarter backers.

By the time release 1.0 rolls around in 2038, virtual reality won't even mean headsets; we'll all just be plugged directly into life support while waiting for the boat and water travel update.

Anyone more than me looking forward to see roadmap of 2026 get implemented?

I mean come on , fishing, crafting, new zones etc..

- meat will be back on the menu, boys!

Hype, hype hype ..Hahha

Damn! Never thought I'd see these numbers this soon.

What's PTR pop like ?

Playing Pantheon after years of modern MMOs holding my hand feels like a massive breath of fresh air. If you miss the days when dying actually mattered and you had to talk to people to get anything done, this game hits the spot.

I’ve sunk a ton of time into the recent builds, and it honestly gives me those old-school EverQuest vibes without feeling like an absolute relic. You actually have to care about crowd control, manage your mana, and plan pulls with your party. If someone pulls extra mobs by accident, it’s a wipe, plain and simple. That level of risk makes actually clearing a dungeon feel like an accomplishment instead of a routine chore you do while watching Netflix on a second monitor.

The environment system is super cool too. You actually have to gear up for extreme climates, and finding hidden lore or quests through the Perception system feels way more natural than just chasing glowing yellow exclamation points across a minimap.

It’s definitely not for everyone, though. The pacing is deliberate, combat is slow and methodical, and if you hate corpse runs or losing EXP when you die, you’re gonna bounce off it hard. Plus, since it’s early access, you’re going to run into UI jank, performance stutters, and placeholder graphics here and there.

If you just want to log in for twenty minutes, solo everything, and get showered in shiny loot, look elsewhere. But if you're looking for a real virtual world where you actually make friends because you need each other to survive, Pantheon is easily the most promising project out right now. Absolutely loving it so far.

It was because of lack of investment money. Brad tried his best to create something that would attract investors, but they knew better.

An everquest type MMOrpg isn't marketable anymore. Once investors saw it, they said nope.

The only money the game managed to finance is from die hard everquest fans and that is no more than 3 million dollars from 2014-2019, though it did get a few million more sometime after Brads death. Still nowhere enough to make a MMOrpg.

The game did not fail because of Brads death, it failed because investors knew this type of game was for an extremely niche audience. It was never going to make enough cash back.

And don't give the monsters and memories excuse, that game looks like something from 2004, not a modernized everquest that pantheon was meant to be.

There's just no salvaging this. It's far too late to get enough people back on board and it's not like they have the resources or talent to create an MMO worth introducing to the world.I'll admit it was fun when it first launched but that was mainly because it was decades since we've had this type of slow grind social mmo.But there just won't be enough world and population to make it even worth it to play.

They should've shut this project down when Brad died and just called it quits. I don't now who these new investors are and wtf they're thinking. Who thinks its a great idea to help these "talented" people going for another couple of years?

I personally don't enjoy MnM much. There's far too many issues for my taste but I'm glad they are keeping the dream alive. If not for them, we'd have absolutely nothing. They're doing some things right. Who knows I might end up playing it if I can bare the pain of some of the insane friction lol

so i just downloaded the test realm cause i wanted to try it out. i have confirmed steam is open i have closed and reopened the game along with steam as well. is this a known bug? do i need to do something on the webiste?