How to stop players from leaving to Pantheon.

I think you are confused, this is isn't Star Citizen. But yes the game probably won't launch for about two years given it is in early development and uses a small staff.

It has already been in "development" for over 4 years if you go by the Kickstarter campaign or their own website which has the first news entry as 9/23/15 stating that development has been going on for a year. With so much time already in place on the game and it hasn't even reached an alpha stage yet I am unsure how you can say that it looks like it will ever launch.

Not to mention the game was already supposed to have launched by now according to their originalplans.

Not to nitpick your rant but you are off by a year on your calculations given the data you provide in your post. 9/23/2014 (one year prior to the post date you cite) to today is more than 3 years not over 4 years).

But more generally, the development team at Visionary Realms is a small one, not a vast one like Star Citizen. The development is advancing as evidenced by their numerous gameplay videos. And I have no doubt the game will ultimately launch, in about two years, the only question is will it be true to the original vision of a hard core, group oriented, social, old school EQ type game or not?

If Pantheon goes into late alpha or beta, you start worrying about that. But if it does launch, then people will try it out, just like they tried Vanguard and many other games that have come out over the years.

The Kickstater happened in January 2018 which is over 4 years ago today.

The problem is, at this point, I don't think anyone would believe DBG is capable of making Everquest 3. And if they were, it certainly wouldn't be a true sequel in the spirit of early Everquest that Pantheon is at least attempting to be. The journey through EQNext made that pretty clear. And if they did somehow pull it off, it'd be something like 2022 before we'd see it released probably.

It doesn't matter what DBG announces; the only way they'd possibly stop some players from at least trying Pantheon would be to actually release EQ3 before Pantheon arrives. Even then, I'd bet most of us would try both.

IMO, it's not so much that they aren't capable, I think it's more the problem that TPTB would want a game that is aimed at the masses and not so much a niche that a smaller game studio could look to fill.

This is an important point that many people seem to forget. The difference between what is an independent studio (as much as VR can be called that) and a "legitimate" game development company (with a parent company/heavily invested 3rd party) is that DBG is FIRSTLY interested in making as much money as possible. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, their second priority would be to provide a quality product, but their first will always be what goes into the bank. We could likely say that VR's perspective is exactly the same, however, they have the benefit of having a much smaller overhead and capital investment -- they can afford to be niche, in other words, and still make good enough profits to spread the wealth around and make their investors happy.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing, it's simply a reality of the world and the business.

Daybreak made Planetside 2, an MMOFPS. They actually diluted it with a lot of casualizations to make it aimed at the masses and it still didn't reach mainstream success.

But I think we also need to determine what makes a game niche and what makes it aimed at the masses? I think the very first thing that's done to "aim a game at the masses" is the decisions of how much of the game should be soloable and how broadly or narrowly capable any individual class is, or in other words how reliant they are on other classes. Don't most new games have an every caster can heal thing going on to one extent or another, for example?

Then we have to look at how quickly the exp bar moves, how complicated are some of the mechanics like gear and inventory, etc. Don't new games even tell you exactly where to go for a quest, right down to a mark on your map/minimap that moves if the quest NPC moves?

CD Projekt Red announced CyberPunk 2077 in 2012 and it's still in development.
Star Citizen
Pantheon
When any of these come out...this game of <insert perpetually increasing number> million hitpoint snakes, spiders, and bats is history for me. There is nothing to this game that makes me want to spend the any of the krono sitting dormant on my silver accounts.

Considering you have to have an active account to post on this forum, it's pretty obvious you have used a krono, or paid money, to play this game.

I don't know if needing an active account to post is true, but did you miss the "sliver accounts"? Those are grandfarthered accounts that will remain silver. None of my accounts have been gold since the second or third month ragefire was live.

There's a lot on hours in the week! I'll play both.

DBG announced that a while back (over a year ago?) but I don't think they ever actually implemented it.

It can't be stopped. Many are anticipating the game (for good reason) and even those who are weary or against playing it (for good reason) will end up giving in once all their friends/guildies do. I believe nearly each and every one of us is waiting for that "new EQ," the REAL one (not EQ2 or Vanguard). I think it's going to be better than EQ2 or VG, but I also think over-hyping is going to cause some disappointment. I haven't been following the game religiously, but some of the stuff I've seen does have me excited. It's pretty obvious this isn't going to be the failure that VG was.

its pretty obvious to me that brad will buy more drugs and forget to launch the game.

Totally agree. It's really up to the makers of Pantheon how well they retain players. The vast majority of EQ players are going to give it a try, why wouldn't they? No amount of rewards is going to prevent them from doing that. Whether they stay with Pantheon and/or abandon EQ depends on whether Pantheon lives up to what's been promised.

What is their launch model? Do they even have one? Will you have to purchase the game and then sub monthly? Or initial purchase and no monthly sub? Or no initial purchase and a monthly sub?

Honestly I don't really care. I have zero interest in Pantheon. I know one person playing it now, no idea what he paid to get in. He was a huge Vanguard guy, so that makes sense. I played VG a bit right before it shut down. It was ok, some concepts were neat.

My understanding is that Pantheon is basically going back to the difficult things that EQ had in the beginning. And while I enjoyed those things when I was in my early 20's, and single, that ship has long since sailed. In the end the real question will be: Is Pantheon too niche? Or just niche enough?

I assume you're referring to the extent to which the game allows content to be soloed, how fast exp gain is, whether classes are limited in abilities (e.g. do all casters get to heal or just priests)?

As long as everyone's on even footing I don't necessarily see those as "difficult" things; it's whether the game is designed to require teamwork or not. But let's be real, organizing teamwork can be a difficulty too. When a game is new and mysterious, it's worth it. When the game is on its billionth TLP rehash generation, it's not.

Many have tried to kill Everquest over the past two decades, and none have succeeded.

There is only 2 ways that Everquest will ever be killed for good.

1. The company running Everquest shuts it down.
2. The company running Everquest takes the Everquest engine (server and client), and makes a NEW MMORPG using it with a new theme, lore, and graphics.

The reason Everquest still exists to this very day with as much hype as it has is because there has never been a true Everquest clone.

Even SoE chose not to make an Everquest clone.

SWG was not EQ in space, and EQ2 is anything but an EQ clone.

EQ2 was designed to be "different" so as to pull new players to it rather than pull players from EQ1. That worked out sooooooooo good for them didn't it

Point is, there is no EQ clone.

If you want to play a game like EQ, you have 1 choice. EQ. That's it. Nothing else.

If you want a WoW clone, there are hundreds.

If you want a "enter MMORPG name here that came after WoW" clone, there are hundreds.