As a huge fan of the original Everquest, I have been looking forward to Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen for quite some time. I was thrilled at the start of this year when the development update livestreams started to release every two weeks. In these short articles, I will try to hit the various main points covered by the developers. This is our Patheon; Rise of the Fallen Developer Update coverage for Jan 30th, 2020.
The team for this development update included David “Roenick” Schlow – Senior Content Creator, Chris “Joppa” Perkins – Creative Director, Jason Weismann – Senior Programmer, and Benjamin “Machail” Dean – Producer along with a recorded video from Jared Pullen – Senior Concept Artist.
They began by talking about a location known as The Murk and reminded viewers that what we will be seeing over the coming week will very much be work in progress screenshots of what is called grey boxing, this is where developers will layout the geometry of a given area so that the various core systems can be implemented and tested. It was also noted that an NPC dynamic wander radius has now been implemented for select mobs providing players with a more random chance of encounters within a given zone.
Jared’s recorded video provided an update on the redesign of the living codex and how certain skills can be modified using ability points. The concept for this system is based around a hybrid between WoW’s talent trees and Everquest’s Alternate Advancement points. Players should feel like they are having tangible progression with each new level.
The developers also provided a laundry list of patch notes which included: client-side performance improvements with huge FPS gains, UI improvements, improved scrolling combat text, pathfinding improvements to chase and spellcasting systems, wander zones, NPC auto-attack synchronization fix, group health bug fix, spell aura fix, replacement of codex, tweaks to various class abilities, UI wizard improvements, faction matrix improvements, auras and auto-attack system improvements, damage calculations improvements, and damage randomization fix, improvements to The Old Wood area, improvements to The Murk area, and further grey boxing of various areas on the King’s Reach continent. In case I missed anything a Producer letter will be out hopefully within the next week also listing off the patch notes.
It was restated that the goal is to have the continent of King’s Reach feature complete for the start of Alpha and that they are currently making good progress towards achieving said goal. Unfortunately for those of us waiting there will be at least one more pre-alpha.
During the Q&A a few topics were covered the most interesting of which was that mobs will act similarly to how they did in EQ and not leash within a zone. The only way to stop a mob from chasing you will be to use an ability, die or zone into a new area.
One note of good news for fans is that the mech store for Pantheon has now reopened with mugs, shirts, and stickers currently available. As Pantheon is a crowdfunded game all proceeds from merchandise sales go towards development. If you would like to know more about Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen check out their website at pantheonmmo.com or the YouTube channel to see just how far the game has come from the initial announcement. See you in two weeks.
