Sony Online Entertainment Becomes Daybreak Game Company

So, with this there are three obvious concerns for the future:

Guides:
What Guides bring are an intangible benefit to Everquest and EQ2. Will the new controller of the purse strings find them as a benefit or merely something that costs them money while bringing zero profit?

Player Studio:
While I'm sure this brings money to PlanetSide 2, I'm not sure it exactly does with EQ1 and EQ2 items, or at least not enough for the new guys to care. They may just find it a hassle not worth the investment. However, they may be looking at hats in Valve games and salivating at the potential.

EQ1 & EQ2:
And of course just how profitable are EQ1 and EQ2? City of Heroes was still profitable when NCSoft canceled it finding it more profitable to write off for tax purposes. This is a new company and I doubt they find brand loyalty to be worth much and in fact may find EQ1 and EQ2 as a barrier to EQNext's success. Why keep games running that take away search hits from your new game?

Overall, I find this to be extremely bad news. As long as Smedley is retained he'll fight for these things I'm sure, but I doubt they hold onto him for long.

Lets see:
Topless on horses, expert at martial arts, and pretty good at feign death (say when russian troops enter the ukraine (for vacation reasons ofc)) - I say he is a monk.

I have been playing EQ since 2001. Had my one of my granddaughters in my arms while i was playing right after she was born.
I have made real friends that I have gone to there homes in other states and visited. They have become like family. I have had friends that have died in thee past 14 years. They are probably turning over in there graves over all this mess.
My question here, are they going to raise the cost of our Membership. That is also an alternative that Daybreak has. I'm on a fixed income and have 6 accounts. Since I'm home a lot this is the only entertainment my wife and I have.
Well I guess we will see what happens.

Time will tell if the sky is truly falling.

YAY!!

All I can say is one word ... YAY!!!

/em does the /banana dance

wow such positives from the Everquest community, with those attitudes I can see why you folks have been so successful irl. let this play out you might be pleasantly surprised step back settle down and it will be ok

Hi, welcome to the EverQuest forums. Where we like to post on the line.

I'm curious if Sony will retain a stake in Daybreak after the spinoff (this is usually the case in corporate spinoffs.) If they do, it will show Sony does care about SOE/Daybreak being successful on Xbox and general multiplatform companies, and will lead to a much smoother transition if Sony has a stake in the new company.

If they don't, it will show Sony just wanted SOE off their books and sold off in a private equity deal for the company to be stripped for parts in a year or 2.

\

Been in the same position as you which is why this is so scary. The Corporate way of doing this is invariably cold and calculating.

Actually I think SOE just needed the cash and like many companies in trouble decided to concentrate on their core business. Of course it is also not unusual for a company to sell off a division then recreate that division at some point.

Everquest is a virtual game. There are pretty much no assets to sell off for parts short of selling the whole game to another company. That could be good or bad.

My biggest fear is anyone who is going forward with Everquest is going to want to convert it to a more hearty pay for play model via microtransactions. The upside is if they did that and increased the revenue stream we might see EQ long for a longer period of time.

Now is there any chance we can get Viktor Vekselberg hooked on Everquest? Maybe if Fabergé eggs started dropping off mobs..... it could work....

Lol taking shots at your fellow players RLs? Sad. It's natural for people to react as they have to news like this. People are venting right now at the uncertain future. Maybe a bit of compassion would serve you better then disdain. Just a thought.

Along with the forums moving will they be moving all of the game servers? How much down time will we be looking at if so? Has the company made any statements about eq development and stability? A lot of my friends are worried the lights will be turned off in a few months. Maybe they should come down here and talk with us with out some generic attention fluffing statements. On the bright side... Less down time when sony gets hacked for pissing people off. Hopefully this company has the right support for our account securities

The asset at this point is your 10,000 (or however many) paying subscribers. The current firm and any future buyer isn't interested in the hardware, software, the staff, or your fancy new sword. They care about one thing and that is "How much MONEY does it MAKE?"

Exactly. The fear is that the answer derived from the question "how much money does it make?" is "more money leaving on auto-pilot rather than developing".

Let's hope that's not how the calculation goes.

They care about one thing and that is "How much MONEY does it MAKE?"

lol if thats true they would need to pay more attention to the game community. TDS sales were cut short due to ROF EXP nerf, will this new owner change that, a give a reason for peeps sitting till the next expansion Nov to buy TDS this Spring?

Acquisitions like these aren't good. When companies get bought out or merged with another, the new head will want to trim the fat and tone things up. Initially it would be sold as a good thing, some employees might even get a raise out of a move like these. But if you've been through big company mergers & purchases before like I have, you know things usually don't turn out well.

I'm by far not suggesting Daybreak will fail as a gaming company, but I'm saying the company will not stay as the kind of PC MMO gaming company that we have come to know. The key words here are "multi-platform" and "Xbox One". They've announced their intentions without really saying it out loud. They want to turn games into multi-platform. What this really means is the era of cheapened PC games have come to SOE...er Daybreak, and we should be expecting console ports to these games.

If you're an avid gamer and have seen what console ports have done to great PC games, you'll know why "multi-platform" is a bad word. Consoles are where the money makers are these days outside of select handful of quality MMO's. When a company gets bought out and specifically announces they want to port games onto multi-platform and Xbox, it means they're ready to water PC games down to make them workable on console in order to make more profit.

The added resources that Smed talked about? That's where added resources will go to...to port games onto multi-platforms. The added resources are guaranteed to not be going to age old PC games like Everquest. What this means to EQ1 in the short term? Likely nothing at all. This game isn't going to get ported or see more resources, they're going to newer games like EQN, Landmark, and H1Z1.

Note that this is an investment firm buying SOE out. I'd feel better if this was a bigger gaming company/publisher buying SOE out.

True that. And that disproves the fear that the game would be shut down and its assets sold off. The game and its players IS the asset.
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And to the point of multi-platform. They arent going from pc to console. They are changing from playstation-only to all consoles.

If you know what that means, it means a change of focus to console ports for greater profit. Up until now, the number of SOE MMO's put on consoles, even just Playstation, have been extremely limited. Consoles are where money is to an investment firm. Console ports are bad for PC games.