Partying like it's 1999 in Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen
“You have a steam gift.” The notification in my inbox was not necessarily a surprise, but it was still welcomed. In December, I had started playing Final Fantasy XI again with my younger brother, a game we’ve played off and on - mostly off - over the last twenty years. During our most recent foray, though, he disappeared to play some other game. I had balked at the idea of continuing to playalone in Vanadiel, when the notification hit. He had gifted me a copy of Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen, which entered Early Access on Steam last December. As someone who cut his teeth on early aughts MMOs like EverQuest Online Adventures and FFXI, Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen has me revisiting a bygone era of party-based MMOs.
For those unaware, EverQuest is a 3D fantasy MMO released for Windows in 1999. Yes, you read that right. Back then, we weren't swimming in seemingly endless options for online gameplay experiences, so EverQuest was massively successful for the time. Players would first build a character from a dozen or so races, pick a class, and decide upon a starter city before being dropped off into a living world filled with monsters, NPCs, and…other players. You simply could not get very far, physically or level-wise, without partying up with a group of strangers to face the dangers ahead, evoking the sort of party dynamics inherent in Dungeons and Dragons, an early source of inspiration.
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