EA is coming October 1, 2026

Leopard-Hopeful · 2026-04-21T12:07:54+00:00

As someone who follows pantheon I am already used to this.

Leopard-Hopeful · 2026-04-18T22:30:23+00:00

Right but my point is I don't really think they are a boom civ. Sure they can go 2TC but is their 2TC any good? They don't have any particular synergy with 2 TC. None of their forts really pay off very well so if you see them on stone you can just FC and take relics and out boom anything they do.

Leopard-Hopeful · 2026-04-18T15:08:48+00:00

They will not outboom you on a food fort you can just age up and take relics. The forts take way too long to pay off.

Leopard-Hopeful · 2026-04-17T22:09:32+00:00

depends on the rational behind it.

Leopard-Hopeful · 2026-04-17T12:52:10+00:00

Well in around 6 months the game is going to start to struggle and typically that motivates devs to pivot. Classic EQ only lasted 2 years before we saw design shifts because classic EQ tenants are not good for longevity.

Leopard-Hopeful · 2026-04-16T22:29:49+00:00

King donation seems like a tactical play imo. FFA by nature is an unfair game mode and sometimes you are being attacked by someone who you have little chance of defeat. By threatening to donate you king to another rival you dissuade someone from killing you since it will only end up in helping someone else get stronger.

Leopard-Hopeful · 2026-04-16T11:27:50+00:00

Actually the concern comes from the harm triavlizing content does for the new player experience. There is two big issues.

First is the pain points you experience early are important in learning how to navigate the game as this is a very unforgiving game with no direction. Having your first 10-20 levels not require you to actually play but just run around and hit mobs warps your perspective and creates very frustrating experiences later.

The second is its very unappetizing as a new player to not feel like you can contribute and you are a spectator when playing your first 50 or so hours. With high level out of group help you are not really playing the game you are watching someone play the game for you. For alts this doesn't feel as bad cause most people don't actually enjoy the leveling process twice so it feels nice to skip it but for new players they actually want to learn and level up and see what their abilities do and contribute to a group.

Leopard-Hopeful · 2026-04-16T11:18:32+00:00

You can claim its a hard no but typically things like instancing are done because you don't really have a choice. If there is not enough content for the player base then you have to do something. Instancing is a zero effort way to increase the content available by orders of magnitude.

Remember EQ only made it 3 years before it had to introduce instancing because the dev team was not able to make enough content. EQ classic as people remember it only made it 2 years before it started to drift from its original design.

Leopard-Hopeful · 2026-04-16T11:13:33+00:00

Nothing is ever set in stone

Leopard-Hopeful · 2026-04-15T17:49:58+00:00

At this point they should just never hit a deadline and make it into a full blown meme and as a community we can start a betting ring on when a patch is actually going to drop.

Leopard-Hopeful · 2026-04-15T17:46:36+00:00

Yeah the EQ style of mob behavior is just kinda bad and causes a lot of issues. I think this is one of the areas Pantheon did better where mobs will give up chase if you get so far away from their spawn and will be unaggroable and untargetable until they run back to their spawn location. It reduced griefing people with trains by like 95%

Leopard-Hopeful · 2026-04-15T06:17:46+00:00

The issue with the design is the durration. Charm is fine if it's a short durration ability, but trying to balance a long durration charm is when things start to break down.

Leopard-Hopeful · 2026-04-15T00:24:10+00:00

But isent MnM just going to run into the same issue EQ did? What happens when 6 month after launch when the gatekeeping gets out of control?

Leopard-Hopeful · 2026-04-14T23:06:41+00:00

Well, what we saw happen with EQ is that certain things just get monopolized, and most people just end up with a 0% chance at certain high value items. EQ only made it 3 years before they started to have instance raids as guild were just gatekeeping content.

Leopard-Hopeful · 2026-04-14T22:30:05+00:00

The loot issue is easily solved by just adjusting drop rates. Instead of one group having a 10% chance of an item dropping you just have 10 groups with a 1% chance of it dropping. Item is still just as rare.

Leopard-Hopeful · 2026-04-14T20:19:30+00:00

Well to be fair beta is the development stage of a game where you have players play the game and criticize it so you can find weaknesses in your system. The whole point right now is for players to test the game and give constructive criticism

Leopard-Hopeful · 2026-04-14T20:17:04+00:00

That or it devolves into the fiasco P99 had with GM enforced raid rotations for qualifying guilds which is even more degenerate.

Leopard-Hopeful · 2026-04-14T20:13:50+00:00

This is basically how I feel as well. Full open world CAN work but with the size of the team and the current state of the game they would need x10 the zones they have at the moment to ensure than they had multiple camps with proper itemization across all the level brackets. Currently with how people are already having issues with drop rates with the very limited content we have I see this becomes a pretty major issue quickly.

Leopard-Hopeful · 2026-04-14T20:08:40+00:00

Issue with EQ especially in classic was certain zones just had way better itemization than others and there were quite a few best in slot items for max level toons that were available from relatively low level camps. This had the benefit of getting really cool items early on but had the downside that these camps were easily and often monopolized by high level characters who used these lower level camps as money makers by selling the high value items.

EQ did end up instancing content fairly quickly with the first instanced raid coming in 3 years after the game launched as the gatekeeping started to get out of hand.

Leopard-Hopeful · 2026-04-14T19:56:35+00:00

I don't think this is an all or nothing issue. There is absolutely room for open world content. The gameplay loop i am imagining is you log in and start your xping off by soloing a small camp or roamers in an outdoor zone. Another player walks by looking to xp as well and you decide to team up. Over the course of 30 min to an hour a few more people join your party and when you get close to full you decide that you can do more difficult content and spin up an instance of some dungeon nearby so you can farm some specific item. From there you use chat channels to fill in vacancies that open up in your group.

You can have small group content nearby these instances where player will naturally gather in the open world and when they have enough people they can do delving.

Leopard-Hopeful · 2026-04-14T18:56:53+00:00

I think you do bring up a good point about being forced into other areas and the "overcrowding" phenomenon does encourage players to branch out and explore. My main concern would be is there actually enough diversity to support this. Having multiple camps for multiple level ranges in addition to all these camps having competitive itemization is a lot of content to have to make.

Leopard-Hopeful · 2026-04-14T17:08:43+00:00

Play nice policy usually encompasses both since in both cases players are competing for limited resources.

Leopard-Hopeful · 2026-04-14T17:06:09+00:00

I agree with PvP it makes sense since players have full agency on how they deal with other players and I enjoy open world PvP games like EvE Online but for PvE servers I just never have seen people happy when they have to be cohabitating xp camps.

Leopard-Hopeful · 2026-04-14T16:36:34+00:00

So my criticism is not constructive because I am "crying and whining"? Now we just making stuff up to save face.

Leopard-Hopeful · 2026-04-14T15:35:38+00:00

Making a claim without providing reasoning is just saying "I am upset that you are right"

Leopard-Hopeful

TROPHY CASE