pantheon has been abandoned entirely except for the stray people who walk it's deserted streets by accident, wondering wtf could have happened to so utterly and completely destroy the thriving .. barely surviving town that pantheon used to be in the good ole days.

Yeah - pantheon is quite done - but for some good reasons. 

Pros of pantheon

• Its a tournament of sorts that allows players to pick 1 side and try to get the most points for your team
• There's a dedicated web page for tracking the stats.  Its a nice way to show some recognition to players that are getting alot of wins for their side
• You are stuck with whatever characters are on light or dark for the duration of the epoch (tournament) - this could be a con, i suppose
• Its possible for Stardock to tweak the allowable demigods by side (so they could balance things out as they saw fit)

Cons of pantheon

• It balances teams based on the side they are on (light or dark).  This tended to lead to some big mismatches where you'd have a newer team on one side and a very experienced team on another side.  In short, there was no real balancing that would ensure a decent game.
• the system allowed for people to ruin the games for others very easily.  There's a little dialog box showing who is connecting to the game.  If people saw folks they didn't want to play with or against, they'd just drop.  This would often leave the game in limbo or result in the player on the team that had someone drop quitting immediately once the game finished loading - which wasted everyone's time.
• At one point, the pantheon had AI in it. 

1. The AI would grant experience for the ladder - so people could just whoop up on the AI to move up the ladder quickly
2. The AI isn't exactly good.  If you ended up in a match vs 2 human opponents and you were paired with an AI, you very likely lost

And I've just gone a rant... sorry bout that. 

Anyway, I think Stardock's sale and the tournament is bringing in some new folks to the game.