Goblin Squad Member
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https://goblinworks.com/blog/lisas-community-address/
may be gaps in the url.
rom the beginning of the three year journey to create Pathfinder Online, the one constant has been the support of our community and for this I thank you. We have had ups and downs including heated debates on design, implementation and overall gameplay. We have literally battled together (or against each other) and I know you enjoy playing the game as much as I do. I also know that the community comes together during tough times, and it is probably no surprise that we are currently in a tough spot right now. There are a number of things that have occurred in the past two weeks that you need to be brought up to date on.
As we have been on this journey to create Pathfinder Online with you for over three years now, we have striven to be as transparent as possible with you. We just shared the following message with the community during our weekly Keepside Chat. In full transparency, here is a quick run down of the state of our game:
EE10.2 is on ZOG for final testing and should roll out to live on Thursday or Friday morning.
EE11 is targeted for the end of September
Ryan Dancey has had to resign from the company for personal reasons (Lisa Stevens will be acting CEO)
Finances are tight at Goblinworks, which has resulted in the layoff of the majority of Goblinworks staff
CTO Mark Kalmes, Art Director Mike Hines, and Designer Bob Settles continue to push the game forward (your monthly subscriptions are what keep these three employed and the server up)
Goblinworks is in talks with multiple game publishers to take the game on and bring it to Open Enrollment
I know that is a lot to take in, so I will share what details we can below:
I could tell back when this was pre-kickstarter that is was not working to work out. I backed the demo video to give Ryan the benefit of the doubt, but I was afraid it was going to be basically this: http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2nzuy?Game-Expectations#1
eg, Wow Combat, Eve progression, etc.
The demo video confirmed they were going in the WoW gameplay direction and I *apparently correctly* assumed that would be a massive failure and stopped paying attention for several years.
My recommendation to Paizo would be to cut losses and shutter the studio. Then license your IP out to some decent developers to make single player/co-operative Pathfinder CRPG games. I'd love to play a Pillars of Eternity/Balder's Gate type of game using pathfinder rule-sets and lore.
An MMO based on Pathfinder would have to step way out of the box to work. Implement turn based combat, tons of MUSH/social type functionality, it would have to be *not* copying existing MMO's in any significant respect. That could be done on the cheap, but I don't see how the abomination that exists right now has any value at all.
Why would anyone want to buy it?