Pantheon - Chris Perkins Interview

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MMORPG interviewed Creative Director Chris Perkins about Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen:

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Interview: Talking Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen's Early Access Launch With Creative Director Chris Perkins

Earlier this month, Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen launched into Early Access. The release is momentous: having been in development for ten years with a few restarts and tragedies along the way, Pantheon finally launching in some way is a good thing, regardless of your views on early access.

Yet, the road doesn't end here. Pantheon is still very much in active development, with more work to be done before they can call the MMO ready for its 1.0 full release. With classes yet to be added, zones, and crucially important gameplay systems still to come, Pantheon feels like it's just getting started.

From the jump, Pantheon hearkens back to the classic era of MMORPGs, something our reviewer thinks Visionary Realms has really nailed in how Rise of the Fallen plays even in this early stage. Speaking with MMORPG.com after the first weekend of Early Access, creative director Chris "Joppa" Perkins tells us that the team is actually trying to do more than just feel like classic EverQuest, rather they are trying to thread the needle between EverQuest and vanilla World of Warcraft, as if there was a third game in the mix back in the day.

"I think we are on track to really nailing what we're trying to nail," Perkins explained when asked about the style of MMO Pantheon is trying to achieve. He continued, "And to the casual observer, that might sound like a clone or direct throwback to EverQuest pacing and mechanics and things like that. But the reality is, we're actually trying to walk this line inbetween these two major categories, which would be classic EverQuest, which I would define as the original trilogy, and classic World of Warcraft as it launched initially, or very similar to the current Classic experience.

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