In December 2024, Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen successfully launched in Early Access on Steam. Since then, this old-school PvE MMORPG has faced increasing criticism. The new roadmap for 2025 has also met with little approval from the community.
What does the 2025 roadmap reveal? The roadmap freshly released by the developers at Visionary Realms (via pantheonmmo.com) presents a series of features and systems that are set to go live over the next few months. Among the innovations are previously announced PvP servers, which are supposed to have their own unique rules.
Further plans from the team include:
- Server consolidation and introduction of fresh-start servers
- New dungeons, raids, boss encounters (as well as a new encounter system)
- Implementation of additional points of interest for various regions of the game world
- Introduction of mounts and a taming system
- Improvements for server performance, user interface, loot, chat
- Quest functionalities, combat, and crafting will be expanded or improved
- An alternative ruleset for the servers
- Upgrades for player characters, including hairstyles, skin colors, and facial details
- Adjustments for equipment, new weapons
- Implementation of additional graphics and sound effects as well as music pieces
Major content updates are set to go live every six to eight weeks from now on. New zones are only planned for 2026. The roadmap does not mention any further classes.
The Early Access trailer for Pantheon:
“No gnomes, no bards. I’ll check back next year”
How does the community react to the roadmap? Parts of the community have already been unhappy about the aforementioned announcement of the new PvP servers, as some players feel that the developers should focus more on the current issues and essential content expansions.
While some of that is indeed included in the roadmap, a discussion on Reddit shows that the roadmap in its current form is still heavily criticized. The same goes for the state of Pantheon itself.
- Zansobar writes on Reddit: “No bard class, no class mastery, just a very small number of new locations. This doesn’t look good for a 2-year launch for 1.0. But now that content is released every 1.5 to 2 months instead of every two weeks, they might be able to hide the slow development better.”
- armymdic00 had hoped for more from Pantheon (via Reddit): “I wanted this game to be a success and replace EverQuest 2, but for me, it’s really too little. Honestly, I find Project Gorgon so much better.”
- Longbenhall explains the issue on Reddit: “It took 10 years to bring the most half-baked, mediocre early access MMO to market. Not to mention that every patch is rife with incompetence. As someone who has put more than 100 hours into the game, I am very sure that the game will die before it releases […].”
- MindTheGnome is not drawn to the roadmap (via Reddit): “No gnomes, no bards. I’ll check back next year, I think.”
On Steam, the harsh criticism is increasingly reflected in user reviews. The 434 ratings from the past 30 days are only 58 percent positive. Players like eatcatpoop criticize not only the various early access issues and missing content on Steam but also two further points:
- From about level 25, toxicity within the community is said to noticeably increase.
- Some players are reportedly benefiting from their relationships with game masters, who apparently help farm certain rare creatures or disrupt the gameplay of others.
All of this is especially sad because the MMORPG initially had a positive review rate of 80 percent at launch and managed to sell around 100,000 units – there should be enough money available for targeted improvements to the player experience: New PvE MMORPG launched “very positively” on Steam, has already generated nearly 4 million euros
