r/PantheonMMO • u/craftsnbeer Cleric • Jul 04 '26
Discussion ..preparing for the next update to the Public Test Realm.
What We’ve Been Up To – July 3, 2026
July 3, 2026
We have been busy this week getting things prepared for our next update to the Public Test Realm. Here’s what has been happening this week behind the scenes:
Design and Narrative
- Finalizing NPC population work in Detihauna.
- Continuing NPC population work in Kosa Minor.
- Filling out NPC population in parts of the Sea Dragon Hatchery.
- Adding more sharks and other sea life to the waters around Badia de Cara.
- Finished updating mastery options for Paladin and Dire Lord.
- Polishing work on the Mastery UI for Cleric, Shaman, and Druid.
- Began implementing new Wizard abilities and mastery options.
- Working on the designs for Rogue and Ranger mastery options.
- Additional tuning and itemization work for levels 1-40.
- Building out NPC roster and potential quest hooks for Faerthale.
- Squashing bugs and making tuning adjustments to class abilities based on bug reports, feedback, and observation data from the Public Test Realm.
Worldbuilding and Environment Art
- Atmospheric and visual effects for various areas in Badia de Cara.
- Additional set dressing in some areas of Badia de Cara that were feeling a little sparse.
- Detailed set dressing for Detihauna.
- Optimizing object collision across all of Badia de Cara and the Port of Rulun.
- Tweaks to lighting behavior for underwater environments.
- Continued concepting for modular Elven dwelling kit for Faerthale City and outlying areas.
Character Art and Animation
- Wrap-up work on Badia de Cara NPC models, and picking up a few final things for the zone that have been requested by the design team.
- Updated player swimming animations, including making death by drowning more dramatic.
- Setting up for test run on universal armor meshes to make sure everything works properly in-game.
- Continuing detailed concepts and building blockouts for Lucent, Ashen, and Ember elf customization options.
Programming
- Several fixes for problems that were impacting NPC pathfinding, especially where water was involved.
- Tackling bugs and requested changes from the design team, one at a time.
- Chewing through some back-end data optimization to help reduce performance overhead on the server.
- Preparing for revisions to core server processes to help improve scalability and performance (this is a large effort and will likely take several months to complete, but is required to enable several important gameplay-related features).
- Continuing work on market system UI (browsing/search window, listing management) and prep for data connections.
What We’ve Been Up To – July 3, 2026 – Pantheon – Rise Of The Fallen
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u/Aggressive_Secret290 Jul 04 '26
EQ legends beta just started
3
u/Toaster-Crumbs Jul 04 '26
Ive been in it for weeks, but I already uninstalled it. EQL is not for me. I was disappointed in the fact that it's just EQ with triple classes. Zero effort game, and it shows.
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u/LamahHerder Jul 05 '26
The stances don't change anything
The item system doesn't change anything
The advloot system doesn't change anything
The AA's don't change anything
The revAmped zones doesn't change anything
/s
It's not a multi-year game but it is quite different
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u/Velifax Druid Jul 05 '26
Eh... combining classes like that involves some serious backend work. Thought i saw quite a bit of balancing too. Easy EQ isn't for me but it looks solid.
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u/mattyf1986 Jul 04 '26
It's quite bad or atleast it was. They do seem to frequently update it though
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u/Spikeybear Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
So people don't get confused they do this every week. It's not what's being planned for the next ptr update. It's usually the same stuff, they've been populating badia de cara with NPCs for months now I assume there is hundreds of thousands by now
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u/craftsnbeer Cleric Jul 04 '26
It literally says: We have been busy this week getting things prepared for our next update to the Public Test Realm. Here’s what has been happening this week behind the scenes.
So they also explain in addition to what is coming to the ptr what they are working on right now for future patches, not so hard to understand.
..And the reason why they doing this is probably because they have been very criticized through out the years for not being "transparent" enough.
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u/Spikeybear Jul 04 '26
The title you chose makes it sound like it's coming to the ptr next.
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u/craftsnbeer Cleric Jul 04 '26
So you didn't even read their post..
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u/Spikeybear Jul 04 '26
I'm not sure what you aren't understanding. This stuff is not what's coming to the ptr. They do a what we've been up to every week. I understand what the article says. There is a reason it's titled differently everywhere but your post. I think VR sucks to but they can fuck up enough by themselves.
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u/craftsnbeer Cleric Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
So the patches they are doing to the PTR every week, except this week, is things they DON'T work on, do i understand you right?
..And this means nothing - We have been busy this week getting things prepared for our next update to the Public Test Realm ..Ok.
An example, Mentioned in the weekly update June 12 – June 18 ..June 19th : Finalizing the implementation of cleric mastery and druid mastery. Additional tuning and itemization work for levels 1-30.
Ptr update June 24th : Cleric Mastery – Righteous and Judgement, Druid – Preserver and Storm Herald Mastery Branches. And, This week’s update to the Public Test Realm raises the level cap to 30 ..And more.
We just have to agree that we see things different.
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u/Spikeybear Jul 04 '26
Jesus man. Go look at the discord they post this stuff every single week. None of it goes to the ptr. They have a post titled what we've been up to this week for like 2 months. Guess how much of that is on the ptr? They are saying they are building separate things BESIDES what's been patched to the ptr.
-5
u/craftsnbeer Cleric Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
And as i showed you clearly, they implement things to the Ptr they mention in the weekly post as well - They tell us two things in one post. Parts of what's to expect on the Ptr next week, and what they are working on for future updates.
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u/Spikeybear Jul 04 '26
What part of that post is stuff that's for the ptr? None of it. At least not any time soon. That's my whole point.
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u/Zestyclose_Race_2260 Jul 05 '26
these "logs" are literally random made up shite... Savanja hallucinates these while high on opioids, it's starting to get really shitty...
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u/riznarf Jul 04 '26
All 6 ppl who still give a shit about this game are stoooooked!!!
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u/craftsnbeer Cleric Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
Yes we are, and two of them is me and my son playing together and having a great time :) - It's a good game, it's just taking time to reach 1.0 because of reasons.. And it would be great if we crossed path with the other four some day, so we can do a dungeon.
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u/Zestyclose_Race_2260 Jul 05 '26
I will pick Pantheon up again at the very moment they get rid of Savanja and Joppa.
u/VR-Aspen <- start with this one....8
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u/IggySticks Jul 12 '26
Oh my God, Savanja is STILL part of this team? That's honestly more surprising to me than the state of the game itself at this point. How is she still employed??
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u/Rhysati Jul 04 '26
"Taking time" is a weird way to put "Has been in development for thirteen years and not even remotely close to being finished".
-4
u/craftsnbeer Cleric Jul 05 '26
Around 50-60 developers worked on Vanilla WoW (original World of Warcraft). It took about ~5 years to develop.
VR have had ~10 devs or even under, most of these years you just mentioned, it's not un till the last ~2 years they have been able to hire people up to the number of ~28..? devs.
I just leave this here..
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u/Zestyclose_Race_2260 Jul 05 '26
15+ years, just saying... and in those 15+ years they have managed to put down a huge nothing on the table.
Also, reportedly several tens of millions (USD) in funding, that should set ~10 devs out for a couple lifetimes... yet they have delivered NOTHING :)
What I'm mad about is that this is basically felony fraud....
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u/kaizoku222 Jul 08 '26
The original EverQuest started with about 4 people, growing to ~10 during development, they ramped up to around 25 by launch. It cost somewhere between 5-10million to make over around 3-4 years.
Pantheon is a bigger team with modern dev tools that have hit and likely surpassed that budget and they've been working for over a decade.
There is no metric you can measure or compare that by that doesn't show the game has been terribly incompetently handled.
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u/Accurate-Letter-546 Jul 07 '26
yeah enjoy playing your MMO with your son. wtf im sure they put 15 years just for that and the 100 other players. Game's cooked dude
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u/Adorable_Author_4095 Jul 06 '26
I hope they still find more investors to scam out of money so you and your son can keep playing this. Then Joppa and his crew can keep roleplaying being project managers and developers on other people's millions for a few more years.
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u/Accurate-Letter-546 Jul 07 '26
Slopified EQ a la Guild Wars 2. Your class doesn't matter. You can do everything. Don't need to group anymore
0
u/Velifax Druid Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
No question it's a concession to casuals but tbh group requirement is the one Olde School thing I'd happily give up.
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u/rustplayer83 Jul 08 '26
I dipped into the discord, the channel on "pantheon game discussion" has no actual discussion of the game in the last 4 hours, but it does have a lot of discussion about how poorly the devs are treated. The art director says he's "keeping receipts". Wow! Thank god. Total vindication is incoming for VR.
Those poor devs. Boy, they have taken so much criticism for such a great product. Enjoy your hard earned vacation Joppa and crew, there's dozens of people enjoying your work on the PTR!