As someone who has little to no experience in old school or indie mmos, I have to say that I’m so grateful that you put me on them Red! I have had so much fun playing Pantheon since EA launch. The gameplay loop, the community but most importantly the ORE DEPOSITS!! Comparing this to modern mmos has taught me that games can still suck in 4K.
People are excited for old-school MMORPGs because they offer a nostalgic return to slower-paced, community-driven gameplay. These games emphasize social interaction, player cooperation, and a sense of accomplishment through challenging, non-linear progression. Unlike modern MMORPGs, which often focus on convenience and fast rewards, old-school games provide a more immersive and rewarding experience by prioritizing exploration, role-playing, and meaningful player choices. They remind players of the genre's roots, evoking memories of when virtual worlds felt vast, mysterious, and alive.
Dropped over 100 hours into Brighter Shores so far. Subbed today. I'm honestly relieved to be out of my MMO rut and happy to support a smaller game with a lot of potential.
So true i love brighter shores, osrs, pantheon have held me. I played wow, lost ark , throne and liberty but was done with them in a month. All these youth jump from one pretty thing to another and never figure out that the gameplay was bad is why they left. Older games are way better gameplay and design.
Have been play testing 5 different mmos over the past few months. Pantheon looks like it has such great potential and im loving it so far. Ever craft is another one that is great fun when they open up testing
It's why so many of us play emulators. We play them, not because they are free, but because they are not monetized cash grabs. I would gladly pay $30 a month for a good, non-monetized game. Think about that, subs are still were they were in the late 90s because of the EXTRA cash shop on top of it. I'm not really looking forward to EQ3 because of the company making it. It will be more monetized garbage, like the rest of the franchise has become.
Yes exactly. There seems to be a lot of hype around EQ3 (or, rather, the fact that DPG acknowledged it's in the planning stages, lol), but I expect DPG to fully ruin it.
All these games parasitize on the nostalgia of old MMO players who started their journey in the late 90s and early 2000s. I think in 20-30 years, the trend for such games will pass, when the players finally grow old. I am against monetization that kills any game.
I'm not entirely sure if you're saying that the basics of a classic mmo are "just nostalgia" and that there's no benefit to it and that gameplay will just die off or if you're saying new mmos are using that nostalgia by throwing out games like new world, throne and liberty, blue protocol, bless online...etc. just to get a quick buck then kill the game.
@@Redbeardflynn Games that want to make a quick buck can attract players with anything. But the scheme of such games is to make it in a short period of time, add more donations, collect more money in the first months and start making a new MMO using the same scheme. In this case, they just want to make money on the nostalgia of old players. Maybe someone just wants to make the game of their dreams, but in the end, everyone is still parasitizing on the nostalgia of old players. It all comes down to promises and fundraising, no one has made a good old-school MMO. When Blizzard made WoW, it was an innovation in the MMO genre, it was clear that the developers knew their job. Most of these indie MMOs look like the work of students.
Those feels you get when you realize millions of people built new $$$$ PCs this year, but spend most of their time playing indie games that run on a potato.
Great video and exactly why I'm looking forward to Monsters and Memories, Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen, and EverCraft Online (in that specific order, although each one is unique and special in their own right)
Yeah. got a good feeling there will be timed releases so people can bounce between the games. Making it so that profit isnt about cutthroat competition but a shared love for some simple concepts. If tue different games make the bold move to talk with eachother and be mindful.. i can see myself dumping $100 every year, year after year in a cycle between all those games
steve jobs has a great succinct talk about this in the 90s. it's the tension inside of a company between product people and marketing. a company goes big from it's product and then slowly dies as it gives up control to marketing as the creatives go away.
One of the harder things for me is RSI issues, hand pain. I get a really bad right hand pain pretty easily. A controller makes this nearly a non-issue. Most indie MMOs tend to not have controller support and the communities even look down on it sometimes. It is seen as anti-classic MMO. Some will make their own controller support but it always turns out to be sorta-works and you still have to use the mkb for any UI interaction. I don't really have a solution. I would love to go back to playing something like Warhammer Online or to try Pantheon. I mostly dabble in Elder Scrolls Online though because its controller support is sound and even has controller-specific UI addons.
I think playing Pantheon has really hit a chord with me. I realized how much i just appreciate the older design in games. I think ive been so mentally exhausted by the dopamine casinos that modern games became that i just like the old design where games were a journey. I love bouncing and having choice paralysis between my conjurer and necro because it means that choice matters. As much as i like ff14 and stuff i realize how much i prefer its older brother xi. Having things hyper balanced like 14 makes me just not care when its something that boils down to mere aesthetic choices.
Even the developers of first generation MMOs like Ultima Online, EverQuest, and Dark Age of Camelot have struggled to release indie MMOs, even at much higher budgets than the original games because development costs and player expectations are so much higher now. New developers who have no experience with live service games are in an even tougher spot.
@@Redbeardflynn Basically 10x the problems of a single player RPG. All of a sudden you need both a client and a server, you have to secure everything, optimize performance, test at scale, and a dozen other things single player games don’t need.
Despite the few exceptions, indie MMOS are still paving the way. It's a known fact folks pay more attention to drama and controversy than positive things. There are lots of Indie MMOS that are decent games, but lack the finances to offer more. In addition to what you talked about, games like Project Gorgon, Embers Adrift and others are made by passionate developers. It seemed like the original MMO developers made decent games they wanted to play that became successful instead of the current mindset of creating an MMO to make money. For those who don't know the difference, I wish you well because I won't go back and forth to explain further. I won't play all of them, but I am rooting for all of the Indie MMOS being made by passionate developers. I follow most of them and see the passion and effort. I know I'm a unicorn in that I don't like full action combat in my MMOS, so I have not enjoyed any of the so-called "better" modern MMOS with superior graphics.
I’ve been having a great time playing on the EQ Teek TLP server, but I certainly recognize the shortcomings of Daybreak’s business model. My current plan is to ride Teek to Live, but I’m looking forward to hearing your ongoing reviews of these other games!
My biggest concern with daybreak is what they've been doing with eq2 live. They seem to be testing some aggressive monetization there and I hope they realize it's not gonna work
I agree with you pal. And i rly hope that social MMORPGs like Pantheon will be successfull, maybe not as big as WOW and FF14 but for a smaller audience. We rly NEED social MMORPGs that are not 85% SOLO again like Daoc and Everquest back in the days.
I agree 100%. Passion in gaming because it is art. Thank you for keeping us informed on the MMORPG games for all these years, to what's in development etc.
It's a good point that we aren't looking for that next step. But we also shouldn't not be looking for better ways to do things. I played EQ back in the day, and I played on P99 20 years later, and some of the features from back there were REALLY outdated and just unnecessarily clunky. Maybe the real next step for MMO is just another game that focuses on communities and the friends you can make but also makes sure that some parts of the game progress. For instance, in EQ I hated that new spells were so far apart. Instead of getting 10 spells at level 5 and 9 and 14, etc you should get 2 spells each level to smooth out thing. Some of the EQ UI was really poor, but some of it was also kind of cool and was lost when MMOs transitioned to more WoW-like things. One thing I liked about EQ was that you could only ever have 8 spells memorized so it added to the strategy of fighting.
I have 700+ hours in Throne and Liberty, I personally never saw the P2W side of it, in our guild we are almost all F2P and whoever shopped was still not stronger then others who just farmed, also a dude with a strong sword is not changing much in a 250v250 fight, it give the opportunity for F2P to reach whales, also just watching dev videos about the game show that they are following a nice direction changing the things people don’t like, my only complaint is that it’s missing some content right now but it’s a solid MMO
I'm glad to hear you're enjoying it so much. Locking peer to peer trading behind a currency buyable with real money kills it for me. The game, like all f2p, will rely on whales spending exorbitant amounts of money and there's built in incentive to continuously push to make that more attractive to players to get them to spend more because the profit motive for a game built on that foundation isn't more players, its more whale spending.
@ luckily almost anything can be farmed in alternative ways, the fact that people pay in this game give the opportunity for others to play it as a F2P even at competitive level, there is nothing that you can get ONLY with money, and some of the rarest drops are not even the best in slot, I guess it take time if you don't want to spend money tho, as I said I put a lot of hours in it ahah :)
Love brighter shores its so chill and relaxing. Love pantheon a dangerous world full of adventure. Love osrs play how you want with great quest. The big mmos all lack creativity and gameplay but just bring pay to win.
Bought in to CorePunk before EA after spending a month in T&L. Polar opposites. Whether CP survives or not, I agree that voting with my wallet is important to seeing the kind of change we want in the market. Thanks for spreading the word :)
Maintenance mode for the most part, though. It was rushed out with a polished starter area and unpolished beyond it, kept going for a bit, they tried free to play and then seemed to have moved on to Conan Exiles and Dune Awakening. Similar to what they did with Secret World.
@@Redbeardflynn It is maintenance mode now for sure. It did run fairly successfully for a number of years (thus expansion packs). Like many companies they used the previous game to fund the next game, leaving the money maker to languish. Saying it was cancelled though is inaccurate. heck, anarchy online is still running! :D
@JohnMayfield-NS releases in 2008, one expansion in 2010 not counting the smaller adventure packs. Abandoned would have been a better word. Warhammer online faced the same fate. At least I didn't say closed 😉
The issue with indie MMOs especially with those "back to basics" "old school" MMOs is that most of the time there's no audience. You have the hardcore fans and the really old school ultima online gamers that want to play those games, but that most of the time isn't enough to keep them playing. Even younger ones like me who like those MMOs keep sticking to the more modern MMOs because of bad decisions via the devs side. Especially in today's day and age a subscription isn't a suitable option anymore and will drive players away because why should they pay monthly for a game when for example new world is 60 bucks and no additional costs basically box price then free to play. So younger players stop playing the game which leads to less funding via a sub and old players realize "hmm the updates are slower and slower I might need to look for alternatives" and then even less money comes in to fund the development. 10 years development of course also eats up a lot of funds and when the next half-assed BIG new MMO title comes out more players leave for the new MMO that promises all this stuff and won't have a sub. Then we have the issue with finding a group. I can understand that an MMO is group based, but right now we have the best example of "shiatt that won't work at all" with pantheon. You have such a hard time finding people on your server to play, and I already read some comments about servers that have players stuck at the beginning because all players are more progressed and won't waste the time with the level 3 warrior. There's a reason MMORPGs evolved around lategame and have all those QoL changes because old and new players demanded that and nobody can say otherwise. Even my dad who used to play EQ 1 and Ultima online don't like the "chat for a group" thing anymore. He has like 5 hours a week to play and just wants to find a group to play in 10 minutes, otherwise he wastes so much time finding a group to play with from his already low play time. It basically feels like ppl want to have the old nostalgic feel of EQ1, ultima online, classic WoW, but It's just too outdated to work with our modern QoL and design stuff. That's why I have hope in Corepunk because the monetization is already thought out, they don't talk to old school audience only but also to MOBA players and already have modern MMO QoL change in it without killing the old school feel. I also think Pantheon over the next year can change a lot into a more modern phase without losing the old school EQ feeling, and ofc the change of monetization with a subscription being not planned anymore is a good step. But for Memories and monsters and so many others I don't see a real future, maybe for embers adrift after the steam launch and ofc thanks to the removal of a mandatory subscription they already had more players. Just my 2 cents but I'm way too long in the MMO scene that I know a lot of things, especially "old school text based" and "subscription" won't work in today's market
I say Amen! ( And that the Everquest 2 Origin server is also awesome, because it is the Everquest 2 we all loved. Before if f*cked up with monetization).
@Redbeardflynn but not as bad as the three tier subscriptions they did man years ago. But yes, there are some annoying things. Nevertheless, at least ma daughter and wife can play (casually) without paying anything. Main problem is the destroyed economy because of Krono... :(
I'm shocked at how much fun I'm having playing Pantheon. I was one of the skeptics and haters, and I decided I would just log in and confirm the fact that it's bad. What actually happened is I have over 25 hours of played time in 2 days.
Great vid! I completely agree. I am having a blast so far in Pantheon because it feels like the old comfy EQ style i love. Do not get me wrong, FFXIV will be my main mmo still, and as far as AAA goes, they do it right, but I get the point on the others. I wish I could get into brighter shores, and others, but i feel giving my love to Pantheon will be enough. :)
Glad we saw you log in on early head start day! I was with Nathan if you are wondering.... This is also PENANCE..........Actually no we plan to be better. This triple A thing is an illusion and one streamers continue to help not tair down
Started with Everquest in 1999. I now only play the TLP's because IMHO they ruined EQ. I am playing pantheon now and waiting for Monsters and memories. I do not care about pretty and I agree with you 100 %.
Passion isn't enough, you have to know how to design a good MMORPG and most devs do not, especially the devs most hyped ones like Ashes. So we get crappy games that dont last long and bringing the genre closer to death.
Lots of folks are enjoying Ashes and the other Indie MMOS, so I don't know what you're talking about. You have every right not to like them, but acting like you speak for the majority is wrong.
@broquietstorm1266 First off, I never said nor implied I speak for the majority. Secondly, these games are following the same patterns of failed games past. In the case of Ashes, that's drawing too heavily on outdated design. You can ignore patterns but that will only lead to massive disappointment and disillusionment.
@boredfangerrude8759 Saying "we get crappy games" is implying that you speak for others. I'm not a backer of Ashes, but I watch their monthly streams. Steven has addressed why he chose a PVP path and the pitfalls of PVP. He has also talked about ways to address it and sincerely takes feedback. The one thing folks like you ALWAYS ignore is that none of these games are 1.0 releases. They are still in development and will improve into the full vision of their perspective developers. Folks far to often equate, speak on, and make dismissive judgment based on the current state of these games. You ignore, like your main argument is doing right now, that these indie developers haven't learned from the past and actually are making improvements from previous design models and not just copying/pasting them. I try to look at the complete picture of what they have said, not just the current iteration we all see. I don't like action combat in my MMOS, so IF your concept of "outdated design" includes that, for example, then I strongly disagree.
@broquietstorm1266 1-You're taking meaning that is not there. 2-I'm judging based on what I see and hear and both are that the game is focused on pew-WoW design which doesn't work. The corruption system is a mess for that very reason and it's affecting other things. From what Steven has said, he does not understand corruption systems or pvp in MMORPGs. 3-He is hardlining on certain things from what I've heard and that's stuff that's outdated. 4-Things like the same old corruption system, open world Dungeons, corpse Runs, etc are too common in indie games and they are outdated. 5-I don't care if it's action or tab.
Im not into pvp and ill try ashes hope it does do well. I love pantheon ,osrs and brighter shores. Hate wow, lost ark, throne and liberty and all pay to win games.
careful when talking about TL. I once asked other than repeating dungeons, what can i do? and i was attacked and it felt like they were foaming out their mouth in rage. I wasn't even trying to insult the game, i was legit curious too lol
Yes and no. They've added more systems. Good example being a game like Throne and Liberty which has several systems stacked on top of each other. They just don't actually bring much to the gameplay, at least imo. They detract. You spend more time in UI menus then in the world updating things, throwing daily requirements, randomized unlocks, stacking tier difficulty dungeons with laundry lists of requirements. Enemy encounters have become infinitely more complex than the days of "hide from naggy's AE..." but its come at cost of impressiveness thats largely in the pursuit of keeping you engaged by dangling keys in front of you so you forget that you're bored..
Some times more systems aren't the right answer. Systems for the sake of systems isn't good. Don't need to overcomplicate things to artificially create "depth" that just adds tedium instead.
I still dont think pantheon will make it to launch. 2k peak players on steam plus prob another thousand backers on their own site is still only 3k concurrent players. Hopefully it stays afloat but I have my doubts as more mmos come out. Having fun while it lasts though
There's more than a thousand backers for Pantheon on their site. This year alone, Pantheon probably gained a thousand backers. I strongly support the game, but I don't like testing. I'm not alone in the community. A lot of us only log in to see updates, but don't play regularly. We've been around for years, so we're patient and do other things until release or closer to. I'm still supporting the game using the old monthly subscription. Please note that I said 'old' because there is no sub in EA. Despite that, we all know the money we have contributed is still not enough. But, don't underestimate the support of this community or the team. Some of us are even buying STEAM versions to support and give away.
If you're having fun "while it lasts" and hoping it stays afloat, might I suggest stop being negative about it. 3k concurrent players is no small achievement. And yes, there's a risk that my pledge and the copies I've bought on Steam for friend and family may be for naught, the same is true for EVERY GAME out there that relies upon some Internet resource to run (which is nearly every game these days.) The risks with Panthon are no different than any other game.
I dont have an answer off hand but i know there is discords for it. pantheon devs are a bit overwelmed by legit fantastic ideas. They have said they decided to focus on what seems to work best for them in the short term. This means talk with people and share your ideas, but please dont feel ignored when a reasonably great idea isnt being adopted. Past problems proven to be attached to 1000 ideas happening at once
We really gonna act like most of these indie MMOs over the years haven't been basically scamming the crap outta players? Also you can still be AAA as an indie studio as it's the budget that determines if you made a AAA title and Ashes def falls in to the AAA realm for game budgets just like Baldurs Gate 3 did. Sadly none of the small MMOs will survive because they simply won't have the financial support to appease the playerbase with regular meaningful content at a pace players now expect.
You lose the argument when you say most. There are SOME, but not most. So, yes, we are really gonna act like most aren't scamming because it's not an act. It's true.
No MMOs made to day are complexity for the sake of complexity... sorry this old treads are nice but its time we go a new direction....... Just embrace PENANCE but remember you had the shot :P
I am surprised they leave it running. Kudos to them for that. It is funny how jank the website for it is, but its server are kept on and I respect the heck out of that.
I just started pantheon and played for the past 8 hours & love the slow grind, the difficulty, the environment. When it gets dark....its gets darrrrrrk! It's a lot of fun with the challenges, the hundreds of emerald spiders I've killed which I still haven't gotten a spider silk drop for my quest. These are the basics I enjoyed. Great lore & difficulty I don't want to burn through content in a month. That's why I stopped with WoW, the lore was great at the beginning, but then I noticed I could hit level 20 in 15 minutes which wasn't fun. I am excited for ashes as I'm hoping for the same feel of story, difficulty, and a polished look as I do like their graphics, but that's just icing on the cake really.
Personally im a fan of advanced goal grinds. Location unique power ups for those that love a area and kill there a ton. Epic quest spawns as well. Rewarding people who take the harder path is better than rewarding groups who figured out the shortcut imo. People who enjoy slow grind should not be called stupid by the game or the players. There needs to be good reasons for doing it other than leveling.
Partly what speeds up the experience has to do with if the grinding is so slow people are just looking for shortcuts so that they actually hit max level. When more than half of the accounts never achieve max level characters, something went wrong
I feel like arguing against the faults of the big mmos is kind of a strawman argument in this case. Wow and New World's flaws and problems don't have much to do with the having a perfectly valid opinion that Pantheon appears half baked for how long its been in development. I dont think that makes one a hater for expressing that opinion.
Certainly doesn't. This isn't a video excusing any missteps by any of rhe indie mmos. There's several ways to take it. It's a statement on the genre itself and why these mmos are the future for me because it's gotten so out of hand and so bloated. Recent mmo releases from big companies have been decidedly lacking imo from bless online to new world to lost ark to tl. They lack the basics. And the basics are all indie mmos can manage. And this video is about *all* indie mmos. Not just pantheon.
Yeah and the cult-like trolls even tried to review bomb Pantheon. Fortunately, most people that checked it out legitimately, knowing that it's a development stage early access release, left positive reviews.
When people who play modern-style MMOs tell classic-style fans "Those graphics suck!", they always reply "Dude graphics dont matter, gameplay does." But now they're complaining about Pantheon graphics. Ya can't win with some people. I didn't follow Pantheon for 10 years so I'm not jaded; just hope enough people give it a chance.
Theirs alot of reviwers and streamers paid by big mmos to trash other games. Its really sad that big studios are so greedy they pay to try to destroy other games.
We know graphics can be toggled! EQ 1 and 2. This seems it should be a developer morale booster! ...if they make that tool. There is a way! We Gamers also know that there is people willing to devote tons of hours to textures. For Free! Pay them, praise them, defy corperate ways of NDAs! Ive seen developer bounties and frankly they are mostly wimpy and poorly worded. Looking at EQ3 attempt 1... Narrow the goals and the community will come through for indie devs
I tried almost all of them, and frankly - it just isn't it. Basics is fine, but tedious is not. I would love to play a simpler PvE MMO, but all of them go for decisions that make little to no sense and are there just to make life harder because that's how it was back in 2002. Why we have no map and atrocious inventory management in Pantheon? Because that's how it was in 2002! Except it's not 2002 anymore and some past things should stay in the past.
@@Redbeardflynn Yes yes, "immersion", that's why you can /loc your corpse ingame when you die and then use third party site map to find the place to run back to. No, it's just idiotic stubbornness that tries to justify bad and outdated design and thinking. This is the reason why Pantheon or these games will never take off and eventually will wither and die.
I have followed VR for years. If someone has sincerely listened to Joppa over the years, listened to his recent streams, and said he doesn't care, then that person's opinion is worthless to me.
@@RedbeardflynnBro you know what i mean. SDV: 1 man project that started because he couldn't land a position with bad grades and no experience. has external publisher LARIAN: has twice the developers than half the AAA MMOs in the market. Tencent owns 30% I like both of them and don't want to undersell their success, But its more like extraordinary talent rather than particularly passion that are only "indie" until opportunity comes knocking Similar with albion taking the literal same approach with monetization or CCP and GGG being sold to PA and Tencent respectively
I've seen you around a few places, you really love to hate on Pantheon and don't seem to understand that MMOs are exponentially harder than just games, right? You also don't seem to acknowledge that the devs have mostly owned their mistakes and have had to make unpopular compromises with themselves and their fans in order to make progress on the game. Did they do EA perfect? No! But what they had was better than Conan Exiles when it started (and didn't have an Early Access tag, was full price and took YEARS for Funcom to fix). Core game play loop is good. Classes don't feel like copy and paste of the others. The foundations of trade skills are good (but need improvement). Itemization improved tremendously between Alpha and Early access. Quests are sorely lacking, Some of the new mobs in EA feel like copy/paste, but it's better than nothing. There's hundreds of issues I've encountered and yes, they are frustrating. Do they have the hundreds of millions of dollars that it takes to bring an MMO to market? No. Barely a fraction of that budget with a tiny team. What they've done is quite good with their budget and resources. Just do everyone else a favor? Go play something else if all you can do is 😡any time you see Pantheon. I'd like to see them succeed, even it EA lasts another 5 years I'm patient enough to get a game that's not going to micro-transaction my wallet to death.
and yes they have done a lot in the past couple months. out of necessity because the money stopped. if they did this amount of work for 12 years you would have seen a complete game. every studio had covid, deaths/illnesses on staff, coding problems, etc. what other excuses you got for your incomplete homework
As someone who has little to no experience in old school or indie mmos, I have to say that I’m so grateful that you put me on them Red! I have had so much fun playing Pantheon since EA launch. The gameplay loop, the community but most importantly the ORE DEPOSITS!! Comparing this to modern mmos has taught me that games can still suck in 4K.
Mate, you better stay away from my Ore Deposits! :P
People are excited for old-school MMORPGs because they offer a nostalgic return to slower-paced, community-driven gameplay. These games emphasize social interaction, player cooperation, and a sense of accomplishment through challenging, non-linear progression. Unlike modern MMORPGs, which often focus on convenience and fast rewards, old-school games provide a more immersive and rewarding experience by prioritizing exploration, role-playing, and meaningful player choices. They remind players of the genre's roots, evoking memories of when virtual worlds felt vast, mysterious, and alive.
It's popular with old players who started playing MMOs in the 2000s.
Dropped over 100 hours into Brighter Shores so far. Subbed today. I'm honestly relieved to be out of my MMO rut and happy to support a smaller game with a lot of potential.
Brighter shores is my casual play mmo, I'm subbed mostly just to support the team. I want them to be succesful.
@@Redbeardflynnbetter support yourself then superstar developer who give you shitty mmo and you blindly following his cult.
@xxxzzz5406 🤔 I'm assuming you're talking about Gower? I had fun playing the game so I'm gonna support it. It really is that simple.
So true i love brighter shores, osrs, pantheon have held me.
I played wow, lost ark , throne and liberty but was done with them in a month.
All these youth jump from one pretty thing to another and never figure out that the gameplay was bad is why they left. Older games are way better gameplay and design.
Have been play testing 5 different mmos over the past few months. Pantheon looks like it has such great potential and im loving it so far. Ever craft is another one that is great fun when they open up testing
It's why so many of us play emulators. We play them, not because they are free, but because they are not monetized cash grabs. I would gladly pay $30 a month for a good, non-monetized game. Think about that, subs are still were they were in the late 90s because of the EXTRA cash shop on top of it.
I'm not really looking forward to EQ3 because of the company making it. It will be more monetized garbage, like the rest of the franchise has become.
Yes exactly. There seems to be a lot of hype around EQ3 (or, rather, the fact that DPG acknowledged it's in the planning stages, lol), but I expect DPG to fully ruin it.
I'm having a ton of fun in Pantheon.
Same. Let the haters hate. This game is fun.
Pantheon looks super cool!
"Games are art and selling them piece by piece is killing what makes these games a joy."
All these games parasitize on the nostalgia of old MMO players who started their journey in the late 90s and early 2000s. I think in 20-30 years, the trend for such games will pass, when the players finally grow old. I am against monetization that kills any game.
I'm not entirely sure if you're saying that the basics of a classic mmo are "just nostalgia" and that there's no benefit to it and that gameplay will just die off or if you're saying new mmos are using that nostalgia by throwing out games like new world, throne and liberty, blue protocol, bless online...etc. just to get a quick buck then kill the game.
@@Redbeardflynn Games that want to make a quick buck can attract players with anything. But the scheme of such games is to make it in a short period of time, add more donations, collect more money in the first months and start making a new MMO using the same scheme.
In this case, they just want to make money on the nostalgia of old players. Maybe someone just wants to make the game of their dreams, but in the end, everyone is still parasitizing on the nostalgia of old players. It all comes down to promises and fundraising, no one has made a good old-school MMO.
When Blizzard made WoW, it was an innovation in the MMO genre, it was clear that the developers knew their job. Most of these indie MMOs look like the work of students.
Those feels you get when you realize millions of people built new $$$$ PCs this year, but spend most of their time playing indie games that run on a potato.
Another banger video by RBF! Loving your content lately mate.
Great video and exactly why I'm looking forward to Monsters and Memories, Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen, and EverCraft Online (in that specific order, although each one is unique and special in their own right)
Yeah. got a good feeling there will be timed releases so people can bounce between the games. Making it so that profit isnt about cutthroat competition but a shared love for some simple concepts. If tue different games make the bold move to talk with eachother and be mindful.. i can see myself dumping $100 every year, year after year in a cycle between all those games
Damn right. Everyone is naked right now in Pantheon, it's been a damn good time. We're makin memories boys
steve jobs has a great succinct talk about this in the 90s. it's the tension inside of a company between product people and marketing. a company goes big from it's product and then slowly dies as it gives up control to marketing as the creatives go away.
I JUST had this conversation with a friend! lol! way to go, glad you put it out there!
One of the harder things for me is RSI issues, hand pain. I get a really bad right hand pain pretty easily. A controller makes this nearly a non-issue. Most indie MMOs tend to not have controller support and the communities even look down on it sometimes. It is seen as anti-classic MMO. Some will make their own controller support but it always turns out to be sorta-works and you still have to use the mkb for any UI interaction. I don't really have a solution. I would love to go back to playing something like Warhammer Online or to try Pantheon. I mostly dabble in Elder Scrolls Online though because its controller support is sound and even has controller-specific UI addons.
why u aint usin vertical mouses or trackballs?
Everytime I hear Warhammer Online, I cry a little inside.
I was just playing that. Well, Return of Reckoning anyways.
I think playing Pantheon has really hit a chord with me. I realized how much i just appreciate the older design in games. I think ive been so mentally exhausted by the dopamine casinos that modern games became that i just like the old design where games were a journey. I love bouncing and having choice paralysis between my conjurer and necro because it means that choice matters.
As much as i like ff14 and stuff i realize how much i prefer its older brother xi. Having things hyper balanced like 14 makes me just not care when its something that boils down to mere aesthetic choices.
Even the developers of first generation MMOs like Ultima Online, EverQuest, and Dark Age of Camelot have struggled to release indie MMOs, even at much higher budgets than the original games because development costs and player expectations are so much higher now. New developers who have no experience with live service games are in an even tougher spot.
It's been interesting seeing MMORPG royalty struggle to have follow-up acts to their first games. Seems significantly harder than say, an RPG.
@@Redbeardflynn Basically 10x the problems of a single player RPG. All of a sudden you need both a client and a server, you have to secure everything, optimize performance, test at scale, and a dozen other things single player games don’t need.
Despite the few exceptions, indie MMOS are still paving the way. It's a known fact folks pay more attention to drama and controversy than positive things.
There are lots of Indie MMOS that are decent games, but lack the finances to offer more. In addition to what you talked about, games like Project Gorgon, Embers Adrift and others are made by passionate developers.
It seemed like the original MMO developers made decent games they wanted to play that became successful instead of the current mindset of creating an MMO to make money.
For those who don't know the difference, I wish you well because I won't go back and forth to explain further.
I won't play all of them, but I am rooting for all of the Indie MMOS being made by passionate developers.
I follow most of them and see the passion and effort.
I know I'm a unicorn in that I don't like full action combat in my MMOS, so I have not enjoyed any of the so-called "better" modern MMOS with superior graphics.
I’ve been having a great time playing on the EQ Teek TLP server, but I certainly recognize the shortcomings of Daybreak’s business model. My current plan is to ride Teek to Live, but I’m looking forward to hearing your ongoing reviews of these other games!
My biggest concern with daybreak is what they've been doing with eq2 live. They seem to be testing some aggressive monetization there and I hope they realize it's not gonna work
Great video red
Glad you liked it!
I agree with you pal.
And i rly hope that social MMORPGs like Pantheon will be successfull, maybe not as big as WOW and FF14 but for a smaller audience.
We rly NEED social MMORPGs that are not 85% SOLO again like Daoc and Everquest back in the days.
I agree 100%. Passion in gaming because it is art. Thank you for keeping us informed on the MMORPG games for all these years, to what's in development etc.
It's a good point that we aren't looking for that next step. But we also shouldn't not be looking for better ways to do things. I played EQ back in the day, and I played on P99 20 years later, and some of the features from back there were REALLY outdated and just unnecessarily clunky. Maybe the real next step for MMO is just another game that focuses on communities and the friends you can make but also makes sure that some parts of the game progress.
For instance, in EQ I hated that new spells were so far apart. Instead of getting 10 spells at level 5 and 9 and 14, etc you should get 2 spells each level to smooth out thing. Some of the EQ UI was really poor, but some of it was also kind of cool and was lost when MMOs transitioned to more WoW-like things. One thing I liked about EQ was that you could only ever have 8 spells memorized so it added to the strategy of fighting.
I have 700+ hours in Throne and Liberty, I personally never saw the P2W side of it, in our guild we are almost all F2P and whoever shopped was still not stronger then others who just farmed, also a dude with a strong sword is not changing much in a 250v250 fight, it give the opportunity for F2P to reach whales, also just watching dev videos about the game show that they are following a nice direction changing the things people don’t like, my only complaint is that it’s missing some content right now but it’s a solid MMO
I'm glad to hear you're enjoying it so much. Locking peer to peer trading behind a currency buyable with real money kills it for me. The game, like all f2p, will rely on whales spending exorbitant amounts of money and there's built in incentive to continuously push to make that more attractive to players to get them to spend more because the profit motive for a game built on that foundation isn't more players, its more whale spending.
@ luckily almost anything can be farmed in alternative ways, the fact that people pay in this game give the opportunity for others to play it as a F2P even at competitive level, there is nothing that you can get ONLY with money, and some of the rarest drops are not even the best in slot, I guess it take time if you don't want to spend money tho, as I said I put a lot of hours in it ahah :)
I haven't been able to put down Pantheon. When I checked its reviews on steam out of curiosity I couldn't find a single viable complaint.
I expected reviews to be mixed. Especially with previously pledges currently unable to review i was pleasantly surprised to see it at mostly positive.
Love brighter shores its so chill and relaxing. Love pantheon a dangerous world full of adventure. Love osrs play how you want with great quest. The big mmos all lack creativity and gameplay but just bring pay to win.
Bought in to CorePunk before EA after spending a month in T&L. Polar opposites. Whether CP survives or not, I agree that voting with my wallet is important to seeing the kind of change we want in the market. Thanks for spreading the word :)
@@Tooltip I’m really enjoying corepunk no rushing no pressure just grinding and the community is super friendly and helpful so far
People looking for these things are all welcome to OSRS :)
You are a constant champion for passion and creativity. It is inspiring so shout from your soapbox- people are listening.
Age of Conan wasn't cancelled, it's still running... several expansion packs came out also.
Maintenance mode for the most part, though. It was rushed out with a polished starter area and unpolished beyond it, kept going for a bit, they tried free to play and then seemed to have moved on to Conan Exiles and Dune Awakening. Similar to what they did with Secret World.
@@Redbeardflynn It is maintenance mode now for sure. It did run fairly successfully for a number of years (thus expansion packs). Like many companies they used the previous game to fund the next game, leaving the money maker to languish.
Saying it was cancelled though is inaccurate.
heck, anarchy online is still running! :D
@JohnMayfield-NS releases in 2008, one expansion in 2010 not counting the smaller adventure packs. Abandoned would have been a better word. Warhammer online faced the same fate. At least I didn't say closed 😉
The issue with indie MMOs especially with those "back to basics" "old school" MMOs is that most of the time there's no audience. You have the hardcore fans and the really old school ultima online gamers that want to play those games, but that most of the time isn't enough to keep them playing. Even younger ones like me who like those MMOs keep sticking to the more modern MMOs because of bad decisions via the devs side. Especially in today's day and age a subscription isn't a suitable option anymore and will drive players away because why should they pay monthly for a game when for example new world is 60 bucks and no additional costs basically box price then free to play. So younger players stop playing the game which leads to less funding via a sub and old players realize "hmm the updates are slower and slower I might need to look for alternatives" and then even less money comes in to fund the development. 10 years development of course also eats up a lot of funds and when the next half-assed BIG new MMO title comes out more players leave for the new MMO that promises all this stuff and won't have a sub. Then we have the issue with finding a group. I can understand that an MMO is group based, but right now we have the best example of "shiatt that won't work at all" with pantheon. You have such a hard time finding people on your server to play, and I already read some comments about servers that have players stuck at the beginning because all players are more progressed and won't waste the time with the level 3 warrior. There's a reason MMORPGs evolved around lategame and have all those QoL changes because old and new players demanded that and nobody can say otherwise. Even my dad who used to play EQ 1 and Ultima online don't like the "chat for a group" thing anymore. He has like 5 hours a week to play and just wants to find a group to play in 10 minutes, otherwise he wastes so much time finding a group to play with from his already low play time. It basically feels like ppl want to have the old nostalgic feel of EQ1, ultima online, classic WoW, but It's just too outdated to work with our modern QoL and design stuff. That's why I have hope in Corepunk because the monetization is already thought out, they don't talk to old school audience only but also to MOBA players and already have modern MMO QoL change in it without killing the old school feel. I also think Pantheon over the next year can change a lot into a more modern phase without losing the old school EQ feeling, and ofc the change of monetization with a subscription being not planned anymore is a good step. But for Memories and monsters and so many others I don't see a real future, maybe for embers adrift after the steam launch and ofc thanks to the removal of a mandatory subscription they already had more players.
Just my 2 cents but I'm way too long in the MMO scene that I know a lot of things, especially "old school text based" and "subscription" won't work in today's market
I say Amen! ( And that the Everquest 2 Origin server is also awesome, because it is the Everquest 2 we all loved. Before if f*cked up with monetization).
I wish they'd treat eq2 live the way they're treating origins. They seem to be testing some bad monetization on live.
@Redbeardflynn but not as bad as the three tier subscriptions they did man years ago. But yes, there are some annoying things. Nevertheless, at least ma daughter and wife can play (casually) without paying anything. Main problem is the destroyed economy because of Krono... :(
I'm shocked at how much fun I'm having playing Pantheon. I was one of the skeptics and haters, and I decided I would just log in and confirm the fact that it's bad. What actually happened is I have over 25 hours of played time in 2 days.
Wow classic through tbc will be my home until one of these come to fruition.
Great vid! I completely agree. I am having a blast so far in Pantheon because it feels like the old comfy EQ style i love. Do not get me wrong, FFXIV will be my main mmo still, and as far as AAA goes, they do it right, but I get the point on the others. I wish I could get into brighter shores, and others, but i feel giving my love to Pantheon will be enough. :)
Glad we saw you log in on early head start day! I was with Nathan if you are wondering.... This is also PENANCE..........Actually no we plan to be better. This triple A thing is an illusion and one streamers continue to help not tair down
Saw you running around during the M&M Stress test two weeks back.
Started with Everquest in 1999. I now only play the TLP's because IMHO they ruined EQ. I am playing pantheon now and waiting for Monsters and memories. I do not care about pretty and I agree with you 100 %.
I am the odd ball out. I own the $90 mount and love indie mmo's
Passion isn't enough, you have to know how to design a good MMORPG and most devs do not, especially the devs most hyped ones like Ashes. So we get crappy games that dont last long and bringing the genre closer to death.
Lots of folks are enjoying Ashes and the other Indie MMOS, so I don't know what you're talking about.
You have every right not to like them, but acting like you speak for the majority is wrong.
@broquietstorm1266 First off, I never said nor implied I speak for the majority.
Secondly, these games are following the same patterns of failed games past. In the case of Ashes, that's drawing too heavily on outdated design.
You can ignore patterns but that will only lead to massive disappointment and disillusionment.
@boredfangerrude8759 Saying "we get crappy games" is implying that you speak for others. I'm not a backer of Ashes, but I watch their monthly streams. Steven has addressed why he chose a PVP path and the pitfalls of PVP. He has also talked about ways to address it and sincerely takes feedback.
The one thing folks like you ALWAYS ignore is that none of these games are 1.0 releases. They are still in development and will improve into the full vision of their perspective developers. Folks far to often equate, speak on, and make dismissive judgment based on the current state of these games.
You ignore, like your main argument is doing right now, that these indie developers haven't learned from the past and actually are making improvements from previous design models and not just copying/pasting them. I try to look at the complete picture of what they have said, not just the current iteration we all see.
I don't like action combat in my MMOS, so IF your concept of "outdated design" includes that, for example, then I strongly disagree.
@broquietstorm1266 1-You're taking meaning that is not there.
2-I'm judging based on what I see and hear and both are that the game is focused on pew-WoW design which doesn't work. The corruption system is a mess for that very reason and it's affecting other things. From what Steven has said, he does not understand corruption systems or pvp in MMORPGs.
3-He is hardlining on certain things from what I've heard and that's stuff that's outdated.
4-Things like the same old corruption system, open world Dungeons, corpse Runs, etc are too common in indie games and they are outdated.
5-I don't care if it's action or tab.
Im not into pvp and ill try ashes hope it does do well. I love pantheon ,osrs and brighter shores.
Hate wow, lost ark, throne and liberty and all pay to win games.
Well said thanks for the video mate. 💪😈🤙
Thank you for watching!
careful when talking about TL. I once asked other than repeating dungeons, what can i do? and i was attacked and it felt like they were foaming out their mouth in rage. I wasn't even trying to insult the game, i was legit curious too lol
Devs have dumbed down MMO's since WOW.
Yes and no. They've added more systems. Good example being a game like Throne and Liberty which has several systems stacked on top of each other. They just don't actually bring much to the gameplay, at least imo. They detract. You spend more time in UI menus then in the world updating things, throwing daily requirements, randomized unlocks, stacking tier difficulty dungeons with laundry lists of requirements.
Enemy encounters have become infinitely more complex than the days of "hide from naggy's AE..." but its come at cost of impressiveness thats largely in the pursuit of keeping you engaged by dangling keys in front of you so you forget that you're bored..
Some times more systems aren't the right answer. Systems for the sake of systems isn't good. Don't need to overcomplicate things to artificially create "depth" that just adds tedium instead.
I still dont think pantheon will make it to launch. 2k peak players on steam plus prob another thousand backers on their own site is still only 3k concurrent players. Hopefully it stays afloat but I have my doubts as more mmos come out. Having fun while it lasts though
There's more than a thousand backers for Pantheon on their site. This year alone, Pantheon probably gained a thousand backers.
I strongly support the game, but I don't like testing. I'm not alone in the community. A lot of us only log in to see updates, but don't play regularly. We've been around for years, so we're patient and do other things until release or closer to.
I'm still supporting the game using the old monthly subscription. Please note that I said 'old' because there is no sub in EA. Despite that, we all know the money we have contributed is still not enough.
But, don't underestimate the support of this community or the team. Some of us are even buying STEAM versions to support and give away.
If you're having fun "while it lasts" and hoping it stays afloat, might I suggest stop being negative about it.
3k concurrent players is no small achievement.
And yes, there's a risk that my pledge and the copies I've bought on Steam for friend and family may be for naught, the same is true for EVERY GAME out there that relies upon some Internet resource to run (which is nearly every game these days.)
The risks with Panthon are no different than any other game.
Playing Ashes in alpha now and I really like the game for now it has great potential...Pantheon not so much but I hope it succedes.
Do you have a Discord? I'm looking for some like minded people to talk to about Pantheon.
I dont have an answer off hand but i know there is discords for it. pantheon devs are a bit overwelmed by legit fantastic ideas. They have said they decided to focus on what seems to work best for them in the short term. This means talk with people and share your ideas, but please dont feel ignored when a reasonably great idea isnt being adopted. Past problems proven to be attached to 1000 ideas happening at once
Funcom takes the cake of creepy ashhole company launching unfinished games.. And they won the Dune franchise.
We really gonna act like most of these indie MMOs over the years haven't been basically scamming the crap outta players? Also you can still be AAA as an indie studio as it's the budget that determines if you made a AAA title and Ashes def falls in to the AAA realm for game budgets just like Baldurs Gate 3 did. Sadly none of the small MMOs will survive because they simply won't have the financial support to appease the playerbase with regular meaningful content at a pace players now expect.
You lose the argument when you say most. There are SOME, but not most.
So, yes, we are really gonna act like most aren't scamming because it's not an act. It's true.
yo! when do you think VR MMOs comming out? specialy mmorpg. also nice vid i suscribe.
No MMOs made to day are complexity for the sake of complexity... sorry this old treads are nice but its time we go a new direction....... Just embrace PENANCE but remember you had the shot :P
POE2 early access hasn't been terrible. I have over 50 hours in already.
Age of Conan was amazing
I am surprised they leave it running. Kudos to them for that. It is funny how jank the website for it is, but its server are kept on and I respect the heck out of that.
Just play City of Heroes Homecoming. Simple.
I just started pantheon and played for the past 8 hours & love the slow grind, the difficulty, the environment. When it gets dark....its gets darrrrrrk! It's a lot of fun with the challenges, the hundreds of emerald spiders I've killed which I still haven't gotten a spider silk drop for my quest. These are the basics I enjoyed. Great lore & difficulty I don't want to burn through content in a month. That's why I stopped with WoW, the lore was great at the beginning, but then I noticed I could hit level 20 in 15 minutes which wasn't fun. I am excited for ashes as I'm hoping for the same feel of story, difficulty, and a polished look as I do like their graphics, but that's just icing on the cake really.
Personally im a fan of advanced goal grinds. Location unique power ups for those that love a area and kill there a ton. Epic quest spawns as well.
Rewarding people who take the harder path is better than rewarding groups who figured out the shortcut imo.
People who enjoy slow grind should not be called stupid by the game or the players. There needs to be good reasons for doing it other than leveling.
Partly what speeds up the experience has to do with if the grinding is so slow people are just looking for shortcuts so that they actually hit max level. When more than half of the accounts never achieve max level characters, something went wrong
I feel like arguing against the faults of the big mmos is kind of a strawman argument in this case. Wow and New World's flaws and problems don't have much to do with the having a perfectly valid opinion that Pantheon appears half baked for how long its been in development. I dont think that makes one a hater for expressing that opinion.
Certainly doesn't. This isn't a video excusing any missteps by any of rhe indie mmos. There's several ways to take it. It's a statement on the genre itself and why these mmos are the future for me because it's gotten so out of hand and so bloated. Recent mmo releases from big companies have been decidedly lacking imo from bless online to new world to lost ark to tl. They lack the basics. And the basics are all indie mmos can manage. And this video is about *all* indie mmos. Not just pantheon.
Yes yes yes yes yes! Spitting facts.
Yeah it bugs me when people were crapping on Pantheon's graphics.
Yeah and the cult-like trolls even tried to review bomb Pantheon. Fortunately, most people that checked it out legitimately, knowing that it's a development stage early access release, left positive reviews.
When people who play modern-style MMOs tell classic-style fans "Those graphics suck!", they always reply "Dude graphics dont matter, gameplay does." But now they're complaining about Pantheon graphics. Ya can't win with some people. I didn't follow Pantheon for 10 years so I'm not jaded; just hope enough people give it a chance.
Theirs alot of reviwers and streamers paid by big mmos to trash other games. Its really sad that big studios are so greedy they pay to try to destroy other games.
We know graphics can be toggled! EQ 1 and 2. This seems it should be a developer morale booster! ...if they make that tool. There is a way!
We Gamers also know that there is people willing to devote tons of hours to textures. For Free! Pay them, praise them, defy corperate ways of NDAs! Ive seen developer bounties and frankly they are mostly wimpy and poorly worded. Looking at EQ3 attempt 1... Narrow the goals and the community will come through for indie devs
I tried almost all of them, and frankly - it just isn't it. Basics is fine, but tedious is not. I would love to play a simpler PvE MMO, but all of them go for decisions that make little to no sense and are there just to make life harder because that's how it was back in 2002.
Why we have no map and atrocious inventory management in Pantheon? Because that's how it was in 2002! Except it's not 2002 anymore and some past things should stay in the past.
No maps is specifically so you feel more immersed in the world. However, there will be a static map, but no radar. So there will be zone maps in game
@@Redbeardflynn Yes yes, "immersion", that's why you can /loc your corpse ingame when you die and then use third party site map to find the place to run back to.
No, it's just idiotic stubbornness that tries to justify bad and outdated design and thinking.
This is the reason why Pantheon or these games will never take off and eventually will wither and die.
Dozens!
No such thing as passionate indie devs who cares
🤔 so...like stardew valley, larian, none of them care? Dang...
@@Redbeardflynn I don't think both are valid comparisons.
I have followed VR for years. If someone has sincerely listened to Joppa over the years, listened to his recent streams, and said he doesn't care, then that person's opinion is worthless to me.
@@Rare-s9y you just said an indie dev with passion doesn't exist.
@@RedbeardflynnBro you know what i mean.
SDV:
1 man project that started because he couldn't land a position with bad grades and no experience.
has external publisher
LARIAN:
has twice the developers than half the AAA MMOs in the market.
Tencent owns 30%
I like both of them and don't want to undersell their success,
But its more like extraordinary talent rather than particularly passion
that are only "indie" until opportunity comes knocking
Similar with albion taking the literal same approach with monetization
or CCP and GGG being sold to PA and Tencent respectively
👍✌
8:27 that is not pantheon. if they cared it wouldnt be 6 zones in 12 years
I've seen you around a few places, you really love to hate on Pantheon and don't seem to understand that MMOs are exponentially harder than just games, right?
You also don't seem to acknowledge that the devs have mostly owned their mistakes and have had to make unpopular compromises with themselves and their fans in order to make progress on the game.
Did they do EA perfect? No!
But what they had was better than Conan Exiles when it started (and didn't have an Early Access tag, was full price and took YEARS for Funcom to fix).
Core game play loop is good.
Classes don't feel like copy and paste of the others.
The foundations of trade skills are good (but need improvement).
Itemization improved tremendously between Alpha and Early access.
Quests are sorely lacking,
Some of the new mobs in EA feel like copy/paste, but it's better than nothing.
There's hundreds of issues I've encountered and yes, they are frustrating.
Do they have the hundreds of millions of dollars that it takes to bring an MMO to market? No. Barely a fraction of that budget with a tiny team.
What they've done is quite good with their budget and resources.
Just do everyone else a favor? Go play something else if all you can do is 😡any time you see Pantheon.
I'd like to see them succeed, even it EA lasts another 5 years I'm patient enough to get a game that's not going to micro-transaction my wallet to death.
and yes they have done a lot in the past couple months. out of necessity because the money stopped. if they did this amount of work for 12 years you would have seen a complete game. every studio had covid, deaths/illnesses on staff, coding problems, etc. what other excuses you got for your incomplete homework
Were adding years now? It's been 10 not 12 and with no budget. Throne and liberty took 12 years with ncsofts budget.
AI will fundamentally change the ability for indy game developers to make high quality games and in shorter time frames.
make slop* 🤢
Probably not
@@valgilson6504 ai slop is not what we want