Thinking about grabbing it during the summer sale.

I'm not a child and I'm not on whatever the fuck Japan is so I'm not uncomfortably obsessed with children

Now... I'm gonna try to create this post while letting only very, very little of my TITANIC rant about the death of immersion in MMORPGs leak out.

I hadn't heard of this game until today, I saw it on Steam, saw that it was an MMORPG, saw that it actually had really good reviews, and that peaked my interest. I'm an old school WoW player, by which I mean I played Vanilla WoW when it was current (though I started playing in 2005/2006 when I was not yet an adult), but I am unlike quite a lot of other WoW players in that what I miss the most about the early round of MMORPGs is that the key ingredient of those games, of the whole genre, was that they were meant to be a much more immersive kind of video game.

These days you can't even say the word around most MMO players without them mocking you for it.

So then I see this game Pantheon, and it's obviously inspired by early MMOs, but it seems like most of the focus is on its tactical, social combat system. Don't get me wrong, that's a good thing of course, but an MMORPG should be radiating personality, it should be inviting to lose yourself in the depths of its setting. Meanwhile, this game seems seriously lacking in any kind of distinct atmosphere; almost the models, monsters, buildings, environments I saw look stiff, bland, and entirely lacking their own character. The list of playable races:

is almost entirely stale as fuck cookie cutter fantasy shit (I'm so goddamn tired of "human, human with pointy ears, short human, even shorter human") and so these things are a pretty big turn off for me.

Basically I'm trying to find out if anyone here plays it, likes it, and could sell me on it, because if it actually is good, it would be nice to have something good to play. Especially while being in need of distraction right now.

I am making a game that's at least inspired by the Survival genre, and I would like more experience to go on. So far I have played:

• Project Zomboid (this game would benefit immensely from playable side-games you can discover while exploring, like floppies with DOOM and shit like that)
• The Isle (this game would benefit from having things to do in it, don't get me started)
• Valheim (I guess I should play more of this...)
• Abiotic Factor (This game is neat but got repetitive before I even finished exploring, but I should also return to this)
• The Planet Crafter (Kinda fun but really unpolished, I feel like a lot of devs are lazy about cleaning up the presentation of their game)
• Subnautica+Below Zero (Masterpiece, if pretty buggy towards the end... also lacks some polish)
• The Long Dark (Super unforgiving, but I guess that's an okay design choice)
• Raft (Pretty fun, enjoyed playing it with my partner)
• RimWold (Does this count? Also pretty neat)
• Also Minecraft because of course
• I forgot Space Haven which was good but needs big updates, planning to check it out again when the current test build goes to public Beta

I am also aware of Don't Starve and that people like it a lot but, idk man, for whatever reason I just don't like the aesthetic.

What are some other good ones?

I would like to play more of this sick ass game. I have heard there are really good mods, but I don't know what they are.