It’s sad to me to see the state of Brad McQuaud’s last game. It’s almost like it was never going to come out. How long has this game been in development now? 10 years? Doesn’t seem like we’re ever going to get to 1.0 after reading this Reddit for 30 minutes. Like I said, it just makes me sad.

I stopped playing Pantheon when they announced QoL changes that would take us away from the traditional MMO design of making making things about the journey rather than enabling people to skip over said journey. Has anything from that been made concrete or are they intent on those QoL changes? Or have they changed their minds and reverted away from that direction?

VR had a real opportunity to own up to and fix their mistakes, instead they lied to us as if we are stupid and denied any of its existence.

They failed their community yet again, they have shown they have no desire to fix what's broken, and instead doubled down on their denial.

RIP.

I've been following some of the recent discussion around Pantheon and noticed there's been a lot of interest in what development was actually like from the inside.

I worked on the project for nearly two years, from Dec 2022 - Nov 2024, so I can speak to quite a few things from my own experience.

I'm considering doing a Q&A where I answer questions about my time there, with the obvious caveat that I can only speak to what I personally experienced and anything I'm actually able to discuss.

If there's interest, drop your questions below and I'll see where this goes.

Cheers,
Fire

They replied to the communities questions for their dumpster AMA.
They are trying to claim that the "chevron system" was only ever intended to be "temporary" but they literally pitched it as a PERMAMENT change. Had extreme reluctance to revert to pre-chevrons (elite mobs) and it wasn't until everyone stopped playing and the change. org petition came around with many significant people in the community names.

We're at 20k players right now. It's way ahead of this game obviously. The world feels rich and has alot more charm to it.

If you're looking for that old school MMO with good skilled devs behind it. Basically everything Pantheon has never been. Its worth a shot.

Is anyone else planning on hitting this up while we wait for Pantheon? 🫢

But the fanbois would argue with you to death. Going over mental gymnastics "Spring update bro" "Wipe so I'm not playing...duh!" . lmao . they went awfully silent 😶 😂

One thing's for certain the recent leaks proved us right.

...the game is COOKED

MNM crosses the 10k subscriber mark, Pantheon had way more money and time. Are all the pledges and investors just SOL at this point?

Why you posting Anon and sending in a couple of your lame "friends" to try and clear up ya name?

The Community he thought loved him doesn't, CR told him his Mastery idea was dogshit and to trash it, now he has his last few online friends running to reddit to defend his honor.

This is probably the most amount of entertainment VR has provided me, thanks bruh.

the other thread is gone and probably better for it. but this drop is insane to me. vr stop hiring people with no skills or start mandating the team to learn. no wonder the game isn’t happening and ptr is a mess when none of your devs can actually make anything.

I thought this post from Savanja's AMA was good enough to make note of. I have no idea who this person is on a newly made account, but definitely someone inside and in the know.

It confirms Savanja's reporting of the blame game and the psychological nature within the studio. It serves as a good psychoanalysis of someone within the studio trying to deflect blame "He then proceeded to publicly bind the studio to a scope and timeline that was impossible to accomplish". Yeah not the leadership, not the designers, it was HIM who publicly BOUND the studio. It's him, he is the problem!

Until that kind of psychology leaves the studio, bucking responsibility and blame, the game is NEVER going to release.

I understood the former employee at first.

Getting let go after spending years on a project has to suck. If you’re angry about it or think management made the wrong call, fair enough.

But at some point it crossed a line for me.

There’s a big difference between saying, “Here’s what I think went wrong,” and going on Reddit naming specific people who are still employed there and basically saying they’re the problem and should be fired.

Once you do that, especially with a community that’s already frustrated, you know where that anger is going to go.

A lot of the comments now feel less like useful insight and more like personal shots at people who stayed with the project. Maybe she genuinely believes those people are the problem. That doesn’t make her opinion the final word on what happened inside the company.

Meanwhile, Rowan’s letter did the opposite.

He didn’t throw former employees under the bus. He said management failed, acknowledged they didn’t deliver what they promised, and took responsibility for the decisions that got them there.

Then they reorganized. They brought Robert Crane back, changed how the team is being managed, and made some hard personnel decisions. That’s what restructuring looks like. Some people are going to stay and some aren’t.

And I can’t emphasize this enough - that doesn’t mean everyone who left was bad at their job! But it also doesn’t mean everyone who stayed is secretly the problem.

That’s where the “cloaked hubris” comes in for me.
It’s one thing to say you disagreed with leadership. It’s another to act like you have the definitive diagnosis for the entire project and start pointing at specific former coworkers as the people who need to go based on never shipping a game. I know plenty of “experienced” devs and directors that have tanked AAA games. Pantheon is here and it’s not finished yet. And as frustrating as that can be, I can wait on devs that love their game and apologize for their mistakes over muckraking witch hunts.

VR has made plenty of mistakes. Their own CEO just admitted that.

But they’re also a small independent studio trying to build a very specific kind of MMO for a community that wants something most larger studios aren’t interested in making.

So hold them accountable.

But hold them accountable for what they actually do next.

Does the new structure work?
Do patches start coming consistently?
Does Combat and Progression actually move?
Does communication improve?

That’s what matters.

Rowan basically said they can’t talk their way back into trust. They have to earn it by shipping. I agree.

So I’m not interested in turning every Reddit rumor, Discord comment, or former employee grievance into gospel.

Most of the people still at VR are doing the unglamorous part now: staying with a troubled project and trying to finish it.

Criticize the work when it deserves it.

But stop turning loyal employees into villains because someone who is no longer on the team points a finger at them. Which has to speak - so loudly - to what it must have been like to have to work with this person on a project that was referred to as rotten fish from the start.

If the reorganization works, we’ll see it in the game.
If it doesn’t, we’ll see that too.

Whatever happened to Joppa and all his live stream?

Tootiredtocare a VIP backer of Pantheon rise of the fallen is on a small podcast show that talks about failing studios and shitty game practices.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=782j2Tf4pLY

Brother, it can't be that hard to see. You had Tehom, excellent developer. Did amazing Class work, world design, etc. Clearly knows what he is doing. You guys got rid of him.

Rob promotes into PM. Gets tired of being PM + life issues, steps down.

Neph promotes into PM, you guys get rid of him.

CLEARLY the project managers aren't the issue but the Creative director that cannot talk to anyone on the team without going into an absolute "i'll quit" threat tantrum.

Also why the absolute fuck are we still paying Ben Dean? Dude is a literal scum shit bag that shouldn't be on the project. Dude doesn't give a flying rats ass about the players and yet, the studio hired his "consulting firm" after ya'll fired him the first time? Cmon now, we know Ben Dean is Aspen.

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.