I played EQ back in 2004, and gave my account away to a friend who was interested in playing and I was moving on to EQ 2. Just this last week I was looking at coming back, but I have this stroke of bad luck where whenever I come back to an mmo game it get's cancelled. For example, when I went back to Star Wars Galaxies and City of Heroes they were both cancelled and I did all of that work for nothing. So my question is, is Everquest in any danger of being cancelled? If not I'll start grinding my Necromancer this week!
No, no danger. Beta for new expansion is happening now. Sony only shut down SWG because they had to. Their license with Lucasarts expired. EQ is their own property, and as long as it generates some revenue, zero reason for them to stop supporting it. Makes for a good way to train employees to work on their new titles =P
Although presumably true, there are also game-related jobs -- like creating quests -- that do not directly depend on the engine. P.S. To address the original question, the fact that SOE is still releasing expansions suggests that they are unlikely to cancel EQ1 in the immediate future, but there are no guarantees. If the number of subscribers suddenly tanks for whatever reason, their plans may change.
Though I would add, shutting down the flagship of the franchise with the release of a new game in that franchise on the horizon would be... kind of stupid from a marketing standpoint. The gaming media would do horrible things with that. xD Generally speaking, I would say EQ1 and EQ2 are both fine.
I think EQ2 is in danger of taking a bigger hit than EQ1... considering the release of EQnext fairly soon. Much of the EQ2 population left original EQ for the bright new shiny version, so it stands to reason those same people might hop ship for the newest iteration. Meanwhile, the EQ1 community has been around the whole time... either sticking with it completely, or coming back after realizing other MMOs (including EQ2) are bland by comparison.
I would agree Everquest would not get cancelled, even in light of the recent SOE lay offs. I think at the worst, they would put the game in hibernation, releaseing expansions every 2 years. But as long as monthly memberships are greater than the cost of running the servers, EQ will be around. Although i think EQnext is a greater threat to EQ1 than 2. Those of us who play EQ1 do so because no other game has come close to making us feel the way EQ1 did. If EQnext is half of what they are saying it is, it could recreate that feeling and be called Evercrack again.
