I am starting this series with what I consider to be the foundation of Pantheon, content is king. Content is the heart of any game but especially for an MMO. Content needs to be engaging, durable, and refreshed from time to time. By making this their first rule, the Pantheon team has shown that they want to have a long term plan for the players’ characters to grow in the world. It also, I believe, shows a commitment to future expansions.
Without content, no one will want to play, but the substance needs to be such that we, the players, will want to keep coming back to it. I remember my early days of Everquest. The internet was still growing up, but I dialed in and played every day. The zones, lore, quests, and raids all were engaging enough to make me want to be in Norrath.
The content needs to be durable: By that I mean it needs to resist binge playing organically. In playing World of Warcraft and Star Wars the Old Republic, I have had two different experiences with the types and the flow of content. WoW has a steady flow of new things, but some of it comes at a cost. SWTOR’s new content has been somewhat bland. Pantheon can learn from both games and improve upon it.
Let’s address the positives each game brought to durability. Both games have released many expansions for their vanilla game. For the purposes of this article, an expansion includes new content containing most of the following: level increase, new small and large group content, new races, new classes, and new lands to explore. Both games have maintained a rough average of two years between updates, which, on the surface, seem to be on par with each other.
There is, however, a gap in what was actually provided by each game. SWTOR’s lack of new classes and failure to replicate the depth of the initial class stories has, in my opinion, been its downfall. It is not enough just to provide content. The content needs to be truly fresh and dynamic.
One problematic area for World of Warcraft is the artificial advancement constraints a.k.a. grinds. WoW is infamous for faction or other types of time sinks that artificially prevent their players from pushing through the content. Every game builds in some artificial constraints but to keep them from becoming a literal grind, players should be offered a variety of activities toward progression.
Ideally, Visionary Realms needs to stay within this two year cycle of expansions as this is what MMO players have come to expect. Introducing new races and classes will give long-time players new things to try as well as expand the options for new players. Their gameplay needs new features added regularly to engage the players in more challenging ways. As a player, I like to be kept in the loop on emerging content as much as possible. Transparency helps players to know that new things are around the corner.
By putting “content is king” as the keystone tenet, the Pantheon team is acknowledging that they understand the need to keep content fresh and durable. Next week I’ll discuss the next two tenets covering class identity and soloing.
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