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I recently bought Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen, and in many ways, it represents my ideal MMO experience. Everything about the gameplay hits the right notes: no mounts, requiring you to walk everywhere and risk running into other players organically, no instanced content, so dungeons and overworld encounters feel alive, and you can see other groups working through the same content. Teleportation is limited, so travel has weight, and everything matters: mana and HP management, cooldowns, tank aggro, enemy abilities, careful pulls, inventory, potions, and gear. Grouping for a dungeon feels significant, and runs can last hours, making every success meaningful.

The problem is that the game looks… frankly terrible. The gear designs are uninspiring, and the online population is painfully low, which makes the world feel even emptier than it already is.

I love the old-school MMO systems it embraces, and it makes me wish that a company like Blizzard or Square Enix would create a modern MMO built around these principles, but with polished graphics, a robust population, and the production values that could bring this type of experience to a wider audience. I think a lot of players would flock to a game that combined the meaningful systems of Pantheon with modern visuals and accessibility.

Are there any high-population MMOs that capture the kind of gameplay I just described?