If a new EQ is being worked on, they can plan on absolutely zero crowd funding after the EQNext fiasco. Good luck with that!
If you want a new MMORPG, sign up for Runescape Mobile (July 17). 'Ashes of Creation' is making some progress but feels a far way off. 'Pantheon MMO' is just stagnant.
Ashes sounds less and less like my cup of tea. That's okay. I'm fine with staying with Everquest and taking random strolls on EQ2 progression servers, but it would be nice if Pantheon ever launches.
As sad as it is to say it Pantheon is dead in the water and anyone who feels otherwise is just kidding themselves. I hoped it would launch but it's so far behind schedule that very few people will still be interested if it ever does manage to launch.
I don't think we need another EverQuest MMO at all - a bang up to date revamped EQ with a modern engine, modern graphics, and the same great team just expanded so it can deliver us bigger and better expansions than what we have had for the past decade or more is going to do so much more for the franchise than an unproven, risky & expensive bet on a new MMO within the EQ universe for the time being, EQ2 taught the team an important lesson, EQ NEXT was just too ambitious & bit off more than it could chew. An "EverQuest Classic" or "EQOA" Mobile game would probably do well but I would not want any of the current team involved, and it would be a completely different game to the current live game and remain un-connected to it apart from the IP. Other MMO games I'm keeping an eye on: Ashes of Creation: "interesting" but not sure the formula is attractive enough. Pantheon Rise of the Fallen: I do have faith in but I knew from the get go that was always going to be a slow boat as it did not have a big studio behind it. It's looking good so far though and hasn't been a victim of feature creep, all the features in the game are within the scope of the original design. Jagex, the developers behind Runescape are working on a new MMO though it will be a few years before we hear any details. And the ex-WoW devs in various new studios (AKA BLizzard 2.0) will probably have an MMO or two in the works at some point. i.e Moonshot Studios & Secret Door (Mike Morhaime's Dreamhaven) / Lightforge / Frost Giant Studios - there's even a tabletop gaming company called Warchief Gaming (Chris Metzen) There's also an announced League of Legends MMO in development by Riot set in Runeterra (involving ex WoW lead systems designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street). Amazon's "New World" does not interest me, that has had train wreck written all over it since the beginning, the major problem being that it's Amazon making it and they have an absolutely terrible track record with basically very single one of their prior games being an unmitigated failure. Mostly I follow the news on this title out of morbid curiosity. John Smedley is at Amazon and has been busy being in charge of development on some unannounced project (that is not New World), he might not have many fans but he at least knows how to oversee building an online game so maybe there is a chance Amazon will one day make something that isn't terrible. And Camelot Unchained seems to have spent the past few years in "Engine building" mode but have steadily been also building their RvRvR game, I pretty much gave up on this one seeing daylight but it does still seems to be moving forward. I was a big fan of Dark Age of Camelot then Warhammer Age of Reckoning and the biggest problem WAR had was the engine & 2 faction RvR rather than the 3 faction RvRvR of DAoC so maybe they get it right this time.
Releasing a new MMO is the fastest way to kill your company these days. Here is a list of successful MMO's that have released since WoW: <sound of crickets> (Yes, I'm sure there are one or two, feel free to list them if they actually exist and you've heard of them.) EQ, EVE Online, DAoC, and WoW were the last to do it with any success. Galaxies died SWTOR might still exist on life support Warhammer died Wildstar died Age of Conan died when it actually launched and then slowly made some kind of comeback, still on life support AFAIK The Secret World died, resurrected itself, and might be dead again. Actually I guess we have to count Final Fantasy XXIV? Is that the MMO? Wasn't XXI an MMO that failed and then they made XXIV? This is fun, list more or correct me or whatever.
I think a lot of people seriously underestimate how big a gamble, developing a new MMO truly is. You can either copy a well-tried concept and add slightly better graphics(and a good looking imitation will rarely end up as a long-term succes). Or you can try something completely new with unproved ideas, and hope it turns out "fun". "Fun" is not exact science and there are no proven methods to find it(afaik), so calling it a gamble is probably correct. If you already have a longterm succes, then the best investment is to stick with it and finetune what you already have. imho.
A lot of people are just playing whatever MMO they play until it's done... with the idea to NEVER touch another one again because of how much damn time it sucks out of your life. I'm certainly in that category. I love EverQuest, but I'm never playing another game like EQ.
I don't think its a joke. I blame the hundreds of millions they chose to spend making and developing EQ2 over the last 10 + years as the reason EQ1 is in the state its in. Something WOW did right reinvest into your current products instead they just split the playerbase hurting both games. Imagine if EQ had all that money put back into its development and what the game would look like today.
I started in EQ in Oct. 1999 (The Nameless was a new server at the time, and I happened to get in shortly after it launched.). I continued to play, with about a 1 year break until The Serpent's Spine in 2006. That is when I switched to EQ2 as most of my guild had moved there. I continued for about 5 years, took a break from MMOs, and then came back here in 2017, shortly after EoK came out. There was a lot about EQ2 that I like better than EQ, and I don't mean the graphics and look (though I do think that is better as well, with technology being the main difference). I also think that the game just functions much better in all kinds of ways, as it was designed with a lot more forethought, especially tradeskills. Like many things in EQ, tradeskills are incredibly haphazard, with no consistency. (It seems like they decided to completely change how tradeskills are going to work every couple of years. How to get the materials, how to improve your skills, how good the end results will be compared to drops, everything changes.) But that actually supports your point. Perhaps it would have been better if they had invested that time and effort into revamping the original game instead of making something new that would divide the player base.
Maybe I was a bit dramatic with that. I'd have to go do some research to see which of those MMO's that died still have companies in existence after the fact. I'd be surprised if many of them were still around, unless their MMO was a small slice of their portfolio. So maybe not kill the company unless that is the only thing that company existed to try and do.
XI fail? Hardly. It was a great success and still has 16 active servers. XIV was Final Fantasy's second mmo and has more players than WoW. Although I'm a huge Final Fantasy fan I've never actually played either game, but I assure you both were wildly successful, and XIV is going strong.