The lead dev and community lead for Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen held an Early Access edition of its ongoing Q&A series to discuss questions about the upcoming EA stage. It goes more into detail about the intentions of development during this stage of the long-awaited MMORPG.
The key takeaway is that Pantheon has a lot to work on still, from guilds to more varying content, including higher-level dungeons with less NPC tailing. Therefore, Early Access is absolutely not considered to be a “soft launch” of the game, and instead a chance for players to be a key part of the development process (again), with more obvious transparency about progress than before.
A lot of previously-shown content won’t be available at launch, such as the Gnome race, the Bard and Druid classes, and more new areas. However, the Necromancer has been bumped up and will be available. There’ll also be more upgrades, fixes and adjustments for just about everything, from animations to hotbars and many aspects of gameplay, including pet behavior and certain classes, just to name a few of what they called out. Plus, underwater content is forthcoming, but swimming will be available, and housing is in the works, but isn’t a priority for EA.
Prior to this Q&A, an “Early Access Fact Sheet” unveiled basic information about Early Access already, including playable races, classes, areas and more. It also talked about the lack of server hopping, and notes that there’ll be a wipe for all characters, though higher-tier pledgers get earlier entry into EA so they can get back ahead.
Prices and monetization for the Early Access stage are still under discussion, but the fact sheet already made it clear that pledgers will be given access to a copy of the EA version. However, certain perks for pledges will disappear with EA (presumably some of the higher-stakes, higher-cost/production stuff).
As usual, it’s a lengthy talk with a lot of details and almost brutally honest chats, so if you’re curious about anything, it’s worth a look. There are even timestamps in the description!
