The father of EverQuest pitches his next-generation online fantasy game world

Posted byby Dean Takahashi
February 3, 2014
Updated June 18, 2025
10 min

Brad McQuaid — the father of EverQuest, one of the most influential massively multiplayer role-playing games ever made — wants you to help build his next-generation online game, Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen.

With the tiny startup Visionary Realms, McQuaid has launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to raise funding for the hardcore massively multiplayer online game. The San Diego, Calif.-based company is aiming to produce fantasy game world where players can enjoy improved systems for group combat — an area that McQuaid has always found frustrating.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.