Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen

Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen takes place on the high fantasy world of Terminus, a wildly diverse planet formed from fragments of many different realms that were forced together by massive planar collisions, each bringing their own unique civilizations and deities.

Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen places a heavy emphasis on the social aspects of MMORPGs, such as grouping up with other players to overcome challenging encounters, joining guilds, and earning a reputation in the community. Pantheon primarily has a PvE-centric design, although the developers have committed to having at least one PvP server at launch.[2] There are four class archetypes in Pantheon: Tank, Damage, Healer, and Support (Crowd Control). Each archetype is designed to excel at a specific role in a group setting. While most PvE encounters in the game are designed for grouping, there are encounters that can be completed by a solo player. Some of the character classes are better suited for this than others, and some encounters may be more difficult and require more creative tactics when soloing, as opposed to grouping.[3] There are also some raid encounters, each of which is designed for either 12, 24, or 40 players.[4]

All zones in Pantheon are open world. The zones are designed to be large enough to comfortably support multiple groups of players.[5] Pantheon does not include radar-style minimaps for each zone, and instead aims to reward players for exploring organically. While traveling throughout the world, players may encounter the Perception system, which is designed to encourage further exploration in certain areas and teach players more about their surroundings. There is also a robust Climbing system, which allows players to traverse almost any vertical terrain if their skill level is high enough.

Throughout the game world, players may encounter six extreme natural climates: Frigid, Scorching, Toxic, Anaerobic, Pressure, and Wind Shear. Furthermore, each climate has various tiers, which correspond to how punishing it is to the player. For example, a player may be able to survive being in a Tier 1 Frigid climate, but would experience some minor detrimental effects, such as a movement speed penalty. The higher tier a climate is, the more severe the detrimental effects would be.[6]

Character progression in Pantheon is designed to be gradual enough to make accomplishments feel more meaningful. One important aspect of character development is obtaining spells and abilities. Many of the more powerful and exotic spells and abilities are acquired from hard-to-find NPCs in various parts of the world. Players can upgrade their abilities through a system called The Living Codex.[7]

Pantheon uses a dual-targeting system, allowing players to simultaneously have an offensive and defensive target, with abilities automatically being applied to the appropriate target when activated.

On January 13, 2014, Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen was announced alongside a Kickstarter campaign. The funding goal was set at $800,000, but the campaign raised only $460,657 from 3,157 backers.[8] Because the funding goal was not reached, Visionary Realms did not receive any of the pledged money. Immediately after the campaign ended, Visionary Realms launched their own website to allow them to raise funds independently by selling pledge packages with various perks, such as early character name reservation, in-game cosmetic items, and access to testing phases.[9] Pledge packages are still available through the official Pantheon website.

On September 28, 2015, Visionary Realms announced that they had received seed funding from an angel investor.[10]

On March 11, 2016, Visionary Realms streamed live gameplay of Pantheon for the first time ever on their Twitch channel. Over 8,000 unique viewers tuned in throughout the 100+ minute broadcast.[11] The developers continue to periodically stream gameplay and development updates on Twitch.

On April 26, 2017, Visionary Realms announced that Series A funding is complete: "Series A funding allows the company to expand the team in almost every department and bring the game into a semi-private pre-alpha state where external testers and focus groups can begin sampling the game."[12]

On October 21, 2017, at TwitchCon 2017, Visionary Realms announced that Pre-Alpha testing would begin "in time for the holidays."[13] Pre-Alpha testing began on December 12, 2017. At PAX East 2018, Brad McQuaid claimed that Pantheon "should be in alpha by the end of the year." However, in August 2018, Visionary Realms walked back that claim, saying that their plans had changed in order to bring the game "closer to launch-quality in art and polish."[14]

On November 18, 2019, Brad McQuaid, the founder of Visionary Realms and original creator of Pantheon, died. The cause of death has not been made public.[15] On December 5, 2019, Visionary Realms in conjunction with the McQuaid family announced "The Pantheon Video Game Art & Design Scholarship In Memory of Brad 'Aradune' McQuaid" at Laguna College of Art & Design, along with a statement that they are "even more resolved to complete the vision he set out to create."[16]

On October 14, 2020, Visionary Realms announced that they had spent the previous several months performing a major refactor on the game's codebase "to move from hardcoded, inflexible implementations to more robust and scalable solutions... We took this time to develop the actual foundation and pipelines that we were going to need to ship the game. Systems got torn out and reconstructed into a much more efficient and flexible format... This is what was needed to move forward, to get the game built in a way that could be rapidly built upon with little wasted effort from development and to scale to the size of project that Pantheon is meant to be."[17]

On January 19, 2021, Visionary Realms announced that they received a seven-figure investment from a private party, which allows them to "begin preparations to support over 8,000 players already signed up for an alpha release of the game; and strengthen its back-end systems supporting the game client, accounts and front-end web platforms."[18]

• Cleric
• Dire Lord
• Druid
• Enchanter
• Monk
• Paladin
• Ranger
• Rogue
• Shaman
• Summoner
• Warrior
• Wizard
• Bard (probably at release)[19]
• Necromancer (probably not at release)

• Archai
• Dark Myr
• Dwarves
• Elves
• Gnomes
• Halflings
• Humans
• Ogres
• Skar

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