Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen has delivered its November producer’s letter today, and it begins on a sad note as Producer Ben Dean reminds fans that it’s now been one year since the genre and the game lost veteran game developer Brad McQuaid.
“Visionary Realms itself is a team Brad built,” Dean writes. “He brought us together with a common goal and passion. He always believed in the game, the team and the community. He would be incredibly proud to see us here, development and community, still working onward together to get to the goal. Thank you for the adventures, Aradune. We miss you.”
Dean goes on to spell out how VR is handling itself in the moment. The studio has apparently hired a new developer from the community, David “Nephele” Beach, who’ll be taking on the game’s crafting and economy. And of course, work continues on the “evaluation build” that the studio is hoping to shop around to “potential investment and business partners.”
“This Evaluation Build goes hand in hand with the overarching Project Faerthale mission of completing the game’s core systems. We are happy to report that the Evaluation Build met all its planned goals and our VIP pledges were able to test it last month. We are now addressing some of the bugs and issues that were reported in the pre-alpha sessions as we add more content and more polish. The target date for this pass is early January 2021. It is a critical stage as after this pass we will begin using the client to demonstrate Pantheon to the gaming business world in the new year. This is also exciting for our Alpha testers as all of this work is leading us ever closer to a target Alpha launch. The Eval Build will be the foundation on which the first Alpha client is built.”
Also worth noting: VR is promising to show gameplay on the December 3rd and January 7th dev streams, and the next pre-alpha test sessions will run on the weekend of December 5th; testers do need to pre-select their timeslot and will be focused on testing the Dire Lord, Shaman, Wizard and Rogue classes.
In this month's newsletter, Project Producer Ben Dean announces a new team member, upcoming development streams, the state of the game, and the next Pre-Alpha session dates. Read on for all the details.https://t.co/7JkKp8N4jr pic.twitter.com/r5XgDqfYpB
— Pantheon 💚 (@PantheonMMO) November 19, 2020