Still Not Ready To Talk Early Access Price, The Pantheon Team's Latest Q&A Instead Talks Wipes, Content Cadence, Death Penalty, And More

The Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen team is back with another Q&A video, this time focusing on the MMORPG's plan to jump into early access later this year. Now, some of these questions were addressed in the official FAQ the team at Visionary Realms posted shortly after their early access announcement, so I'll be skipping most of those in today's recap.

In the almost one hour long video below, Chris "Joppa" Perkins and Jamie "Savanja" Henry queue up questions submitted from the game's pledges and followers. I'l get it right out of the way because it is the time stamp I skipped directly to when I started the video.

No, pricing for early access is not something the team is ready to announce. Chat must have been throwing guesses after that because the team did circle back and say they were "investigating industry norms" and pricing wouldn't be "anything crazy." Pledges will not have to pay a subscription, though. We should also see some info on the "Buddy Codes" sometime today. I'll link to it when it's up. (UPDATE: Buddy Codes rolled out.)

Some of the other bigger announcements given in the Q&A include:

• Gnomes won't make it to early access
• There's no date for the "official" launch but the scope of the official launch hasn't changed
• The next season will include the Halnir Cave massive dungeon
• Early access level cap will be 40 (currently 35 for seasons, including the next season)
• The race/class matrix will apply to early access and there will be multiple starting areas depending on race
• Racial abilities and passives won't be available, but racial sight and starting stats will be
• Character customizations will be available in early access. Hair styles and skin colors are planned to be available, too. Not "all" customizations will be there, but options will be available
• Early access "should" include swimming on top of water, but no underwater content yet
• Necromancer moved up and will be in early access, but the Bard and Druid will not make early access
• Guild functions are a goal for early access as the team recognizes their importance to an MMO, but it's still in the air

On the topic of early access as s whole, the team had a bit of an interesting discussion on what that actually means. They, rightfully, point out that "early access" can mean different things for different projects and that it is up to the team to clearly communicate what "early access" means to them. "Early access is not a soft launch for us," says Joppa. Development will continue, wipes may happen (they are not scheduled, but can always happen as a result of a "fix" or something), and content will be added heading into launch.

While nothing the team says is incorrect here, in my opinion, I do think that the team treads ground here that they need to play carefully upon. Sure, early access can mean many things and people following Pantheon closely like I do may totally understand what the team's objectives are at any given point.

However, the gaming audience as a whole isn't like me, they just see a new MMO up on Steam (FYI: launcher and platforms for EA are still being decided), they see a price, and they decide to buy or not. When you charge for a product, you are open for criticism, sorry, that's just the way the market works.

When you charge for "pledges", that's a bit different. People know they are paying to be a part of development. When you move to early access and ask for cash, you may get a bit of leeway on the "not all features are here yet" front, but if you don't have at least a viable product with mass appeal to your target audience, you're setting yourself up for a slew of initial negative comments/reviews.

Not saying they can't do well here, just saying they need to be very careful and find a way to get their definition of "early access" out to the general public, not just your dedicated followers who will listen to a one hour Q&A.

Click play on the video below and check out all the other questions answered, including how the Dark Myr race made it to early access.