"What the heck is a Dire Lord?" I asked myself, staring at Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen's character creation screen. This was my first inkling that I was about to start playing an MMO that would rarely tell me anything I needed to know. From the absence of practical information about classes and races, to the lack of any in-game map, Pantheon is aggressively against any sort of hand-holding, which makes for an excruciating new player experience.
Amongst the veteran MMO crowd, though, Pantheon's been making waves. Understandably, too. EverQuest legend Brad McQuaid was developer Visionary Realms' chief creative officer until his death in 2019, and the promise of an extremely social MMO that maintains a lot of the friction that modern games have done away with sounds compelling. But it's been a decade since its announcement, and it's only now in early access, where it will be for at least two years, and it still doesn't feel close to prime time.
