Communities around the world are celebrating a season of giving and fellowship this month and in that spirit of giving, we present our latest newsletter. Game Producer Benjamin Dean updates the state of team, development and gives some key information about Pre-Alpha in the newest iteration of Under Wraps. Our Rogue’s Gallery returns in style with a look at the Spriggan, an ancient and important race that is deeply rooted in the history of Terminus. Next up, we sit down with several members of our Pre-Alpha test for a Q&A session that delves into the Pantheon testing experience to date. We end our monthly missive with our newest Community Spotlight with an enchanting player who is known by the moniker of Janus.
http://www.pantheonmmo.com/newsletter/2018_december_intro/
Kudos on the pine cone guy, made me laugh, but he looks good. Enjoyed the lore piece as well. Thought the Summoner pet looked good too.
I guess the big thing to clarify here might be whether things kind of got delayed a bit or not? Could be wrong, but thought the goal was to have Faerthale as the reference zone mostly complete by PA4, judging by this newletter and the fact you're taking the game underground for some TLC for awhile, that soft deadline appears not to be close to met. Things happen, I get it.
In the past the Pre-Alphas stages have seemingly been every 3-4 months. The fact you're stating that the next phase will be delayed makes it seem like we're talking summer of 2019 before Pre-Alpha 5 takes place? Is this kind of where we are at? Or am I reading the tea leaves wrong?
There's a nice mix of strategy, concern, and hope mixed in with your interview of pre-alpha testers basically assuring the rest of us that even though the game is developing very slowly, the progress is measureable and the underlying game is fun. That gives me hope. It gives me concern that you did this in the same newsletter the game is seemingly being delayed. I get the strategy though.
Anyway, appreciate the transparency and state of the game nature of the newsletter, even if it's not the news we were hoping for. Looking forward to seeing the official Druid and Summoner reveal at some point. I'm kind of assuming January's newletter will be a recap of 2018 and very light on new developments due to the holiday, so probably February until we get some meat to chew on again. Anyway, Happy Holidays VR, may 2019 see a boost in development.
Mathir said:Kudos on the pine cone guy, made me laugh, but he looks good. Enjoyed the lore piece as well. Thought the Summoner pet looked good too.
I guess the big thing to clarify here might be whether things kind of got delayed a bit or not? Could be wrong, but thought the goal was to have Faerthale as the reference zone mostly complete by PA4, judging by this newletter and the fact you're taking the game underground for some TLC for awhile, that soft deadline appears not to be close to met. Things happen, I get it.
In the past the Pre-Alphas stages have seemingly been every 3-4 months. The fact you're stating that the next phase will be delayed makes it seem like we're talking summer of 2019 before Pre-Alpha 5 takes place? Is this kind of where we are at? Or am I reading the tea leaves wrong?
There's a nice mix of strategy, concern, and hope mixed in with your interview of pre-alpha testers basically assuring the rest of us that even though the game is developing very slowly, the progress is measureable and the underlying game is fun. That gives me hope. It gives me concern that you did this in the same newsletter the game is seemingly being delayed. I get the strategy though.
Anyway, appreciate the transparency and state of the game nature of the newsletter, even if it's not the news we were hoping for. Looking forward to seeing the official Druid and Summoner reveal at some point. I'm kind of assuming January's newletter will be a recap of 2018 and very light on new developments due to the holiday, so probably February until we get some meat to chew on again. Anyway, Happy Holidays VR, may 2019 see a boost in development.
Hey Mathir!
Def looks like VR is severly behind schedule as this was a quote from their Aug newsletter:
PA4 will be available to our pre-alpha testers this fall.
And just how many PA phases are there before alpha? We can’t answer that just yet. The idea, though, is to use PA4 as a reference point, or a reference zone, as Joppa spoke about in June. This means that by PA4 most systems will be in place. The small remainder of systems will be added prior to alpha, but for all intents and purposes the core Pantheon experience will be available for PA4 and beyond. This means that in PA5 and onward more world building can be done. Systems will continue to be refined but will no longer need to be built. That accelerates things greatly so expect the later PA sessions to come a lot quicker and more regularly than the early Pre-Alphas.
Even talks about this zone being worked on even early as June ( and perhaps earlier ).
Keep in mind before Alpha starts VR has mentioned they wanted all of Kingsreach continent complete before opening the Alpha floodgates. At this pace dont expect Alpha in 2019 even.
-Jaz
Great to hear that more people have been added to the team. Hopefully that will allow VR to better achieve it's milestones. By what I have read I'm assuming the next phase of testing will be a PA5 some time in the summer since "we won’t have another client out for our testers for some time"? Not complaining - just trying to understand the what is being said.
A mix of good and bad news.
Good - people are being hired (not something VR would do if they were about out of money) and things seem to be improving by leaps and bounds.
Bad - prealpha looks like it may go further into 2019 than almost any of us thought - it seems that major changes from PA4 are being rolled out in a new PA not in alpha. This means we may not even see alpha until the second half of the year (wails in frustration).
Obviously the good news outweighs the bad news.
My number one priority in a newsletter is seeing where the game stands. Thanks for sharing what you can the newsletters have gotten a lot more informative.
@Jazhara, I wouldn't say to not expect Alpha in 2019. The article only said:
"This massive milestone means that after Pre-Alpha 4 wraps up, we won’t have another client out for our testers for some time. We will keep all of our community up-to-date on the state of Pantheon and Faerthale, but expect a delay before the world opens to play again. We are quite confident you’ll agree it will have been worth the wait."
I don't take this to mean that there will be more PA waves or that Alpha won't be in 2019. It doesn't really clarify anything; I also personally wouldn't think of Alpha as "floodgates" since it will also be a controlled test environment. I would call Beta floodgates since this will likely have high volume stress testing.
edit: @Dortea, I did not see where it said that PA phases were going through all of 2019. Did I miss something?
edit2: Alpha testing is also a "testing phase".
Darch said:@Jazhara, I wouldn't say to not expect Alpha in 2019. The article only said:
"This massive milestone means that after Pre-Alpha 4 wraps up, we won’t have another client out for our testers for some time. We will keep all of our community up-to-date on the state of Pantheon and Faerthale, but expect a delay before the world opens to play again. We are quite confident you’ll agree it will have been worth the wait."
I don't take this to mean that there will be more PA waves or that Alpha won't be in 2019. It doesn't really clarify anything; I also personally wouldn't think of Alpha as "floodgates" since it will also be a controlled test environment. I would call Beta floodgates since this will likely have high volume stress testing.
Alpha will literally bring in thousands of new players and it will be a huge step for the game. Yes, it will be controlled testing, but I still personally don't think it's entirely unreasonable to call that "the floodgates," but I also don't think it's unreasonable AT ALL to expect that at some point in 2019, until they say otherwise. It's really important to not just assume the worst here. "Some time" is totally up to interpretation. Remember the fact that several new team members are coming on means that the company is healthy and the momentum will definitely pick up. More devs = more progress.
I really liked the PA fedback.
Three things that jumped out at me- pleasantly.
1. Out Of Character chat (( ooc: yay! ))
2. Aggro through the floor/proximity aggro (It's a feature! this is what made camp spots camp spots, especially in sebs! If I can see them, they can see me!)
3. Rogue pets (with great power comes great responsibility, if a charmed pet can break charm a summoned elemental can go rogue. I came too late in EQ to experience that "bug" but I heard stories it was something mages had to be careful of back in the day)
How long has pre-alpha testing been happening and is there any ideas at all of when Alpha will begin? :)
This is awesome!
As a pet class player, I think The Summoner should have a Droling as an Epic pet. :)
(The phrase, “Catch a Seedling, raise a Droling” was born of this dynamic, and describes an opportunity that may hold unforeseen difficulty or unplanned benefit.)
Yes, Please????
edit: @Dortea, I did not see where it said that PA phases were going through all of 2019. Did I miss somethi
I hope not.
Alpha was originally estimated to be this year (officially - by VR). They then pushed it back into next year.
Many of us expected it to be in the first quarter though not all of us and VR never said that it would be.
The only point I was making was that it now looks questionable whether alpha will even be in the first half of the year. I am expecting one more PA phase but the newsletter made clear that this would not be all that soon or all that short a phase. Thus alpha even in the second half of 2019 seems far from a certainty.
I certainly wasn't complaining - a much better product to test is a big plus. On the other hand if alpha winds up a year or more later than the last official prediction that isn't what I was hoping for.
I'm not aware of any MMO project of this size being done by such a small team, so it's fairly hard to gauge exactly when things might get to milestones. Since all past 'soft' target dates have been missed it's now anyones guess. You could make an argument that they knew all along their actual time-frames for development, but obviously could not tell people "pledge now and wait 5-7 years".
Now they seem to be moving into concentrated content creation which is extremely time intensive. Fleshing out a continent, many zones and dungeons with hundreds and hundreds of NPC's, well enough to satisfy hundreds (thousands?) of players is no small undertaking.
If they rush and just copy, paste, re-skin it starts to become cheesy. If you take your time, designing and building carefully with lore, and lore appropriate content it is a large, long undertaking. Or maybe they re-skin and get content done quick and later on do another pass updating the content with better lore appropriate design.
I was guessing alpha maybe by July 2019 possibly, now I can see that slipping to end of 2019.
Of course everything is based on bodies. If they get some kind of money infusion and get more people to throw at it who knows. July might be doable.
anxietyninja said:How long has pre-alpha testing been happening and is there any ideas at all of when Alpha will begin? :)
Pre-Alpha started a year ago. The timing of the PA phases were similar to that of annual quarters. Because of this, some of us "assumed" that there would be similar phases of Alpha testing but there was never really an official date announced.
zewtastic said:I'm not aware of any MMO project of this size being done by such a small team, so it's fairly hard to gauge exactly when things might get to milestones. Since all past 'soft' target dates have been missed it's now anyones guess. You could make an argument that they knew all along their actual time-frames for development, but obviously could not tell people "pledge now and wait 5-7 years".
How big is the VR team now? I read that DAoC was built in 18 months by a team of 25 people. That's not a big team by any standards I'm familiar with.
Still, though I'm impatient to get into the world of Terminus I don't want VR to rush things. I'd much rather play a finished game than one that is "good enough" and they'll "fix it with patches". That didn't play out so well for Vangard. If it takes extra time to get PRotF right then so be it.
Akilae said:zewtastic said:I'm not aware of any MMO project of this size being done by such a small team, so it's fairly hard to gauge exactly when things might get to milestones. Since all past 'soft' target dates have been missed it's now anyones guess. You could make an argument that they knew all along their actual time-frames for development, but obviously could not tell people "pledge now and wait 5-7 years".
How big is the VR team now? I read that DAoC was built in 18 months by a team of 25 people. That's not a big team by any standards I'm familiar with.
Still, though I'm impatient to get into the world of Terminus I don't want VR to rush things. I'd much rather play a finished game than one that is "good enough" and they'll "fix it with patches". That didn't play out so well for Vangard. If it takes extra time to get PRotF right then so be it.
DaoC. One of the few MMOs I never played. Well I played it for a couple hours I think, but preferred EQ1.
Here is what wikipedia says:
The decision to develop Dark Age of Camelot was made in late 1999, with it originally being conceived of as a graphical MUD.[7] Mythic Entertainment president Mark Jacobs proposed the idea of using Arthurian legend since it was on the public domain and thus the company would be free of any licensing issues.[7] Total development costs excluding equipment leases was about $2.5 million[8] and took 18 months with a team of 25 full-time developers.[7] 3DS Max and Character Studio were used to create all models and animations within the game.[7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Age_of_Camelot
DaoC Success:
When DAOC first launched in October 2001, Mythic sold 51,000 copies of the game within the first 4 days,[9] outperforming their initial expectation of 30,000.[39] In the United States, Dark Age of Camelot sold 300,000 copies and earned $10.4 million by August 2006, after its release in October 2001. It was the country's 63rd best-selling computer game between January 2000 and August 2006. Combined sales of all Dark Age of Camelot games released between January 2000 and August 2006 had reached 780,000 units in the United States by the latter date.[40]
All that said, I seriously doubt the scale and simplicity of DaoC in 1999 can be compared with what VR is creating with PRotF. Graphics and modeling alone are more complex and detailed. That's why I mentioned copy/paste, re-skinning vs. creating new models and art.
I guess it comes down to how fleshed out they decide to make their first continent. Alpha could start early but be spartan and empty, or start later and be heavily populated. Right now it's anyones guess.
