Happy November to all our Pantheon fans and readers, and welcome to another Producer’s Letter.
Before we begin, we’d like to take a moment to remember Brad “Aradune” McQuaid who sadly passed away last November. Brad not only built worlds but he built teams and communities. He received hundreds of emails of great adventures in his past games and relationships forged that would never have come about without the worlds he spearheaded. Visionary Realms itself is a team Brad built. He brought us together with a common goal and passion. He always believed in the game, the team and the community. He would be incredibly proud to see us here, development and community, still working onward together to get to the goal. Thank you for the adventures, Aradune. We miss you.
New Team Member
In the development cycle of any great MMO game comes a great responsibility to implement a great crafting system. Crafting can play a huge part in some players’ enjoyment of the game. It needs real attention to detail by someone who can navigate the seas of balance in gameplay, economy and raw fun. We made some strides with Pantheon in earlier stages of development and it soon will be time to get crafting into the game, so it needs to have someone who can dig their teeth into it.
For these reasons we could think of no one better qualified than our newest team member, David Beach. Otherwise known in the community as Nephele, David is in an elite league of passionate gamers for crafting advocacy. He has been a community leader and has demonstrated a keen eye for detail, nuances and, simply put, what makes crafting fun. Please join us in welcoming Nephele on board!
Upcoming Developer Streams
Partly due to the holiday season coming up, we will be changing our dev stream dates. We will continue to stream every month, usually the first or second Thursday of the month instead of the last Thursday of every month. The next two stream dates are Thursday, December 3rd at 6pm PST and Thursday, January 7 at 6pm PST on twitch.tv/visionaryrealms.
The next stream, December 3, Senior Concept Artist Jared Pullen will be on air to show us some of his work in progress. This will include some new creatures soon to roam the lands and dungeons of Terminus and some speed paints. Later in the stream we will jump in game to take a look at Pantheon gameplay. Join us on December 3 at 6pm PST or check out our YouTube Channel for the full VoD if you can’t make it to the live broadcast.
Continuing in 2021 we plan to keep these streams near the beginning of each month.
State of the Game
Last month we discussed our current focus of completing an Evaluation Build that demonstrates most of the key features of Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen that we can show to interested parties, including potential investment and business partners. This Evaluation Build goes hand in hand with the overarching Project Faerthale mission of completing the game’s core systems. We are happy to report that the Evaluation Build met all its planned goals and our VIP pledges were able to test it last month.
We are now addressing some of the bugs and issues that were reported in the pre-alpha sessions as we add more content and more polish. The target date for this pass is early January 2021. It is a critical stage as after this pass we will begin using the client to demonstrate Pantheon to the gaming business world in the new year. This is also exciting for our Alpha testers as all of this work is leading us ever closer to a target Alpha launch. The Eval Build will be the foundation on which the first Alpha client is built.
We will share more of what you can expect to see over these next two months in our streams and Producer’s Letters.
The Success of October 21-22 Pre-Alpha Sessions
A huge thank you goes out to our Pre-Alpha testers. In our last session we focused on NPC navigation and combat and our testers answered the call! We received very well thought-out and articulate reports of some issues that were happening in game. Several of these reports have been addressed now including:
– Rooted NPCs will now attack the nearest player with the highest threat
– Most roots now respect per-tick and incoming damage breaking chances
– Fixed NPC aggro issues when target dies
These testing sessions are of huge value to us and allow us to identify issues that we may not have been able to identify ourselves, or in a timely manner. So once again, thanks PA testers!
If you’d like to get in on pre-alpha testing to uncover and report bugs and offer feedback on the early builds of Pantheon, head on over to our Pledge Page and check out the VIP pledge packages that offer Pre-Alpha testing.
Next Pre-Alpha Session
And that leads us to our next PA session announcement. Mark your calendars, the dates are:
Saturday, December 5 and Sunday, December 6. There are 3 sessions each day. Testers will be defaulted to their previously selected realms and time slots of 9am – 12pm, 2pm – 5pm or 7pm – 10pm PST. If you are a tester and have not previously selected your time slot, please contact Customer Support and submit your request.
This session’s focus will be on getting your feedback on class gameplay. The Dire Lord, Shaman, Wizard and Rogue will be available for feedback.
Thank you from all of us at Visionary Realms for your continued support and encouragement. We are very happy and lucky to have such a devoted and wonderful community on this journey with us. See you in the Twitch channel on December 3!
Ben Dean
Project Producer
Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen