In May’s Producer’s letter, Ben Dean shares the team’s progress, gives some key insights into PA5 and spills the beans with some of our latest patch notes.
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/newsletter/2020_may_intro/
Flapp said:Let me save you time and do a TL;DR PA5 soon ® ™6 years later and we are still working on the perpetually gray boxed UI. Done. 2026 can't get here fast enough! (IF the UI doesn't hold us back til 2029)
Let me save you time and do a TL;DR
"I'm bored and impatient and just want to complain"
I am excited all over again for Pantheon..progress progress progress. Keep on truckin' VR this latest newsletter reveals how hard you have been working behind the scenes. Ignore the impatience and the mini tantrums on this thread..lol. And PA 5 is looming according to your letter YAY! I'll be there with bells on...*hugs* to the team...been here since Feb 2014...they say patience is a virtue..well...not sure I am all that virtuous..but I sure am patient. Love the emails on naming npcs and points of interest..thank you very much. :)
Cana
LeeLoo said:So, how many "pre-alpha" phases are there? 10?
You know Ive tested almost every mmorg out there since DAOC and this is getting a tad bit looney. Oh PA5 WOOT /rollseyes
Shh.. The radicals that plague these forums will attack you if you give honest feedback like that. I agree that we have too many PA's and from my understanding from what I read PA5 is going to have more than one session. So in other words we are going to have PA5, PA6, PA7 and maybe more.
Pre-Alpha is for testing basic game systems and underlying infrastructure. You can criticize them for many things, and you probably mean their lengthy development history, but this game absolutely should be in Pre-Alpha right now and probably for the remainder of this year at least. They are just now getting ability nodes into the game. Only the Dire Lord has even been implemented to this point. They completely rebuilt the Perception system as well. None of that has ever even been tested yet. All rushing Alpha will do is spread bad word of mouth and the game will probably stay down most of the test due to the fact the basic underlying systems hadn't been tested yet. For all intents and purposes, it's almost like they rebooted the game again just a couple years ago, they certainly massively redesigned it.
We all hate the truth. There ain't nothing else out there, nor is there anything coming any time soon. These guys can tortoise this as long as that remains the case. What they can never ever do is rush a not ready product, either to Alpha or launch. When you're the only show in town, the only thing that will keep people from showing up is bad word of mouth. Reality is we will play this whenever it comes out and if its any good, we'll keep on playing it. They need to do however many pre-alpha sessions they need to make sure it's good. Especially if they plan on letting in public streamers for Alpha. All that does is put a lot of extra pressure that the Alpha is polished and engaging. In the old days, nobody expected anything to work in an Alpha test. Pre-Alpha is the new Alpha, and Alpha is the new Beta, while Beta is the new launch week stress test, and Launch is expected to be perfect with no crashes or downtime. If that's true, and it is, than this game's development is farther along than the term "Pre-Alpha" suggests.
In not less than a few weeks they will say when PA5 will start. Not less than means what it says - so maybe in a month or two they will give a date. And that date may be well in the future of when they announce it. And this is the first part of PA 5 which may be a limited number of hours on one or two days testing one thing - not actually playing the game even in its PA state.
I say this not in frustration over the timing but to urge the PA testers not to get too excited too quickly. That road leads to disappointment and despair. Keep your hopes realistic.
My own reaction to the newsletter is that while I have no hope for hitting alpha this year (cries quietly when no one is looking) it did a good job of making Pantheon actually feel like a real game not a well marketed piece of vaporware.
Positive : I got now the Newsletter in my e-mail box again. So no more rummaging in boards and no more being supposed to watch some boring streams that I don't want to spend hours on. And there is text, not some mumbling in english that I wouldn't hear and understand well anyway.
Negative : There will be a PA5 in a few months. And then probably the necessary PA6 followed by the paramount PA7 etc. So that makes beta in 2021 . Or 2022 . Or ... Not even mentionning release .