I think it was 2016, read Keno Monsters "magic of Eq" and it was posted on these forums, its a great write up about EQ, lots of passion. Led me to this game and been here since!
Early 2016. I honestly can't remember how I first noticed VR and Pantheon, but I have tried probably every MMORPG since EQ released, but then lost my interest (around PoP), but each one has gone further and further from what I loved about the genre: Challenge and Community. I played one after another, each needing less and less to even form a group, much less be part of a community and each being more of a rollercoaster playthrough than a thoughtful challenge with meaningful effort, risk and reward.
So, I've been on the look out for Pantheon for a long time. When I heard of Brad's involvement and saw the tenets, it was overjoyed and it was a no-brainer to want to support the project and be involved, I eventually moved to a PA-worthy pledge and so so so eagerly await PA5!
I think the most impressive thing was the clear intention to make something for a niche audience and not to make another bland crowd-pleaser. The team understood the same dismay I was having with the gaming industry as a whole (and other industries, to be honest - they all tend to want to expand and diversify until they have nothing special left).
P.S. @VR, every time I hear from the team in streams, roundtables, newsletters, etc., I am more and more sure of you. You can't please all of the people all of the time and they can be hyper-critical, especially when passionate, but if you guys stick to The Vision, you will make something great.
I pledged pretty much as soon as i could i think in 2017 but i have been following the inital development since it started, on kickstarter.
I was afraid to pledge right away being as the kickstarter campagin was canceled, then moved to the website kick off plan with pledges.
Once i heard a new MMO by Brad was being developed i msg'ed him on twitter asking about the game and will it be like the EQ experience we had then. So it was basically just being started the idea.
I believe it was December 2019. I'm kind of a newbie here :)
I was having some great memeories of playing MMO's when I was younger, had some free time on my hands and started looking to see if there was anything good out there. I had been disappointed in everything else I had tried over the last 15 years or so. I was hooked soon as I found Pantheon and read about the goals, etc. Still super excited but it's difficult to wait patiently!
Sept 2016, was in a TLP server on EQ, and in my guild a lot of people were mentioning Pantheon, and I was asking about what it was about and they said it was a MMORPG, and Brad Mcquaid was part of the team, and after a bunch of different discussions I pledged in and been on this roller coaster since, and happy to be here, and I wish the best of luck to everyone on the team.
Feb 2018. Heard about it from an EQOA FaceBook group I'm in. Similar to comments above, I've been playing MMOs of all sorts since EQOA shut down and nothing has quite itched the scratch that EQOA provided. With Pantheon seeming to be just what I was looking for, I jumped on the support band wagon and have been following it ever since. Keep up the good work!
Fall of 2017. I'd heard about the game as far back as 2015 but I was really skeptical and kept my distance. I forget why exactly, but sometime in mid-2017, I decided to come take a look at things and read a lot of posts here on these forums that I generally agreed with. That convinced me to pledge.
Kilsin said:Community Debate - When did you become a Pantheon community member and why? #MMORPG #CommunityMatters
By 'community member' are you referring to this set of forums at pantheonmmo.com or the previous forums at pantheonrotf.com. If the former, then I joined Feb 15, 2014 but for the latter it was a bit earlier, around June or July 2013.
As for why I joined? Well, the initial conversations about Pantheon that Brad was having on Discord and the forums really got me interested. He was proposing quite a few new mechanics and approaches to a game that I thought had some interesting potential:
1. Caravans, where you could pay an NPC to 'hitch' your character to his trade caravan that was going from, say, Thronefast to Wild's End. You'd log out and when you logged in the next day you'd be at Wild's End.
2. Pack Animals, where you could buy a horse or mule and it could carry a bunch of backpacks, operating as mobile secure storage. You could either park it at outposts or NPC camps, for a fee, or tie it up to a tree near a dungeon. NPCs would not attack it and PCs couldn't access it. But it allowed you to stay out in the wild for days/weeks on end before you needed to go back to town.
3. Pro-active world. The idea was that we, the players, were the intruders in Terminus and the original inhabitants were actively trying to drive us away. One example was that a city like Thronefast would be under near constant attack by hostile forces and players would need to band together at times to stop massive attacks otherwise all the inhabitants in Thronefast would be killed and replaced with these hostile NPCs. We'd have to then retake the city and allow the friendly NPCs to respawn. Somewhat similar to what happens if you lose the 10th Coldain Ring War in EQ1.
4. Group centric. Grouping was going to be the only way to get XP. Soloing was not even considered as a viable method. VR was not going to develop content tailored specifically to soloing, but that if players could figure out a way to apply what spells/abilities they did have and managed to kill something solo then good for them.
5. Class Ambassadors. One very early approach was that VR would have members of the community act as class ambassadors, reaching out to other players who want to play that class, gathering questions and concerns and passing that on to VR. Those ambassadors would then give VRs feedback back to the players. Each ambassador would have admin rights to their class portion of the forums.
That is why I joined when I did and gave amount of money I did. So far only #4 remains.
2016. I never played the original EQ myself. I was put off at the idea of paying monthly for a game at the time, not that I would've had the time to invest since I was in the army. However a friend of mine who played EQ when he was 12 always suffers from Mindgasms when talking about it, so when I saw Pantheon I signed up.
Ever Quest hooked me like no other game or really anything in life. When I moved on to other MMO’s it took me a while to realize they lacked what EQ had. I would try just about every MMO it seemed and each time find myself unable to be drawn in. When Vanguard was first announced I subscribed to a magazine to get beta access. Everything I saw and read about the game excited me. If it was not released before it was ready, I truly believe the game would have been a great success. Even with all its problems it hooked me. It might not have been like EQ but it was by far the closest.
So, in 2014 when I heard Brad, the one common denominator to my two favorite games was making a new one with Kickstarter funding I instantly pledged more than I could really afford at the time. When kickstarted failed I waited a little while longer before pledging on the site. But I never stopped following the progress of the team. I will forever be thankful for the team that stuck with it and the early donors that made Pantheon survive to this point.
I can't remember where I first heard about the Kickstarter. There were only a couple days left in it, and I was so dang broke that I couldn't muster up any money to pledge. But I kept searching online for news about Panth and eventually registered on the Pantheonrotf site forums on Apr 1 2014.
I never played EQ (Please don't tell anyone!) but I LOVED Vanguard (when it worked) and absolutely had to be part of Brad's next game. I'm still here and still feel the same way.
I became a member in 2015. I missed the Kickstarter but heard about it and felt driven to lurk and join. Really there was this intrinsic sense of going back (as much as possible) to the old ways. I've played a lot of MMOs since EQ, and some rather enthusiastically, but they have all been mostly bereft of what EQ brought to the table of MMOs. I would really like to get back to that.
April of 2018 my buddy told me about a new game being developed in the spirit of Everquest, I was vacationing in Hawaii and after hitting the beach every day would come back to my bnb and watch hours and hours of the streams already on youtube of gameplay and reading all the lore on the forums.
What a great time and memory that was , getting absolutely so nostalgic and excited about a TRUE MMO to play again as it has honestly been since 1999-2000 that I have allowed my time to go towards a game and my body is ready and willling to devote a big chunk of my life to this game, as my memories and nostalgia of the original Everquest still make me happy to this day and inbue me with a true sense of well-being.
Something prolly wrong with me.
LADY SYRONAI BE PRAISED
October 25, 2015.
My success with Kickstarters is pretty much the same as my success picking stocks. So I stayed away from the Kickstarter campaign. Then I saw an interview with Brad and went "Oh yeah! That game." I checked it out, saw that it seemed to have had new life, a second chance. So I signed up. Almost 4.5 years ago. Long time - but not as long as others.
I started following the game in 2017, then bought an Alpha pledge after the Brad's annoucement at one of the 'cons that Alpha would be Q4 2018. What had drawn me into the game was how it looked and felt (and sounded) like EverQuest. It's glorious new beginning was upon us and I wanted to be a part of it. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like that is going to be the case now. RIP.
Kilsin said:Community Debate - When did you become a Pantheon community member and why? #MMORPG #CommunityMatters
I don't remember when I first heard of Pantheon, I think it was a bit before the Kickstarter. Have been following the developments since then :)
EDIT: Just checked my profile info here! Joined: February 28, 2014. Wow, it's really been a long time already!
I found the game back 2-3 years ago, came to the conclusion "this will take to long to make, if they ever manage it" and forgot all about it.. Then I refound it again what 2-3 month ago, now it looks to me like this game is going to happen, and it looks like the most awesome game i have been waiting for ever since i stopped EQ basicly, well, maby since they made WoW to easy and everything els became to accessable aswell..
So I'm here because this seems like a game that will give me a hard time, but also will reward me when I manage to break it down.
As soon as you did the kickstarter. Everything in the write up was EXACTLY what myself and others have wanted for years and could never find. To be honest, to this day I have a healthy dose of skepticism. I sincerely hope you pull it off, but I've seen so many MMO's either cave to the pressure of appealing to the lowest common denominator, or good games getting rushed out the door, to just too many WoW clones to count, that I just never thought I'd see another game like EQ. I felt it was an anomoly unfortunately. Unable to be replicated because it's not what publishers and venture capitilists want. They want to be the next WoW and they see this audience as too 'niche'.
If for no other reason I feel that Pantheon has to succeed to prove to the industry that this 'niche' isn't as niche as they might think and that there is money to be made in NOT making WoW clones...
So I've quietly held my breath since 2014 and hoped that you are one day able to deliver.