Sony Online Entertainment Becomes Daybreak Game Company

I keep looking around for my book which has "DON'T PANIC" emblazoned in large, red letters on the cover, but I can't seem to locate it.

Oh, well. At least I have my towel.

As long as the current devs are kept, new ones and additional resources can be brought in to help expand, and this doesn't include some massive overhaul that changes EQ, the game we've all loved, into something entirely different ('expand' not 'change', keep the reboots to EQN please) I don't care who owns it or what you call it. You could call it the Happy Pony Company for all I care.

In fact...

Oh oh.

Any need to worry about Kronos I have should I use them or ???

I am giving EQ 1 year. I don't see it surviving with venture capitalists manning the controls. Not sure about EQ2. Hopefully the community sticks together though, and once its shut down we can move over to private/emulated servers. Norrath won't die.

It makes some money, and they presumably own the servers, so worst case, they can do what they did with EQ Mac and just let it sit stagnant without expansions. While Sony shut down EQ Mac, this other company doesn't seem to have any reason to do that.

Any possibility of digging up Vanguard: Saga of Heroes? Maybe sell it to those Paragon people?

I wonder if this means anything for the long lost EQOA...

I must admit I never expected reading something like this. What I fear the most is that this new company doesn't seem to have any strong attachment to Everquest, unlike SOE who has been developing it for years... Thus it's more likely to get shut down if benefits aren't good enough.

I believe this won't be the case because letting EQ die would hurt EQNext's image... Which seems to be their biggest hope from the franchise. There is very little chance we get any real information or details about the game's future, only time will tell (though any placebo words from a GM would be greatly welcome)

This was an upper management issue. I suspect most of the GMs got the news this morning like the rest of us. Ashlanne walking into the pit and saying "hey guys, guess what?!"

I am hoping this means there will be more improvements to the EQ servers? Maybe fix the lag issues? I mean, can you at least upgrade from the gerbils, and maybe go to guinea pigs?

EQ1 with new graphics engine oh to dream the dream

http://www.columbusnova.com/about.html#

http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=336227&ticker=ORYX

http://www.forbes.com/profile/andrew-intrater/

http://www.cifc.com/about-cifc/board-of-directors/andrew-intrater Columbus Nova is the U.S.-based affiliate of the Renova Group of companies, one of the largest Russian strategic investors in the metallurgical, oil, machine engineering, mining, chemical, construction, housing & utilities and financial sectors.

http://people.equilar.com/bio/andrew-intrater-cifc/salary/169081#.VM_N8i6ZFdg

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/857073/000119312511093291/dex991.htm

http://www.cntp.com/

Worrisome.

just going to say here: I have a bunch of station cash, I'd use it on subscriptions to games I stopped playing if I could. I don't like microtransactions and bought the SC ages ago when there were other things to spend it on.

Same thing happened with City of Heroes. NC Soft bought them. The game was making profits, and they just...shut it down. No sequel or anything of the sort.

At least EQ has EQ Next to look forward to. EQ1? Gone in less than 2 years...possibly half that time.

And, I would point out...when City of Heroes was bought by NC Soft, there were people putting down the ones panicking. Ask them how they feel now.

My question...will All Access continue? If not...I'm gone anyway.

News article on the aquisition

http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/02/sony-sells-sony-online-entertainment/#wCTdny:oET

Yeah any announcement saying things wont change with the sale doesn't really mean much.. Its what you say when you takeover a company until you decide what you want to do with its assets.. .keep them, sell them close them out etc.....

I would love to think this will be good for EQ but I am not sure about that... I guess this is a situation of "Hope for the BEST but expect the WORST" *sighs*

Unfortunately any word from game devs or GMs wont mean much because they will be fed the same lines we get. Or if they are told anything different they won't be allowed to speak about it.

This is really bad news for further development of original EQ.

Best case they keep the servers running as long as they throw off cash.

Worst case, shutdown and merges(if lucky) of servers until all servers gone.

I would not get your hopes up on more content.

Source: countless acquisitions, name me one "cash cow" asset that gets significant improvements.

I will be very surprised if there is a full EQ development team left by next year. My condolences guys and by guys I mean players and GMs and developers.

All of us are in for some hurt.

I think whether this is good or bad will depend on Daybreak and not Columbus Nova... Columbus Nova owns or is invested in data virtualization, data mining, medical research software, custom polo shirts, contract labor finding... I don't see them managing the "SOE" portfolio, Daybreak will be the ones to decide if and when EQ is not profitable.

I believe of the SOE games, EQ has too many players for it to be cut this early. EQ Next has to launch and launch successfully before shutting off the income stream from EQ becomes viable. Even if we're not profitable, we're a big pool of players to advertise to and are among those who have spent the time in-game to be driving and providing the quality direction for Landmark to be consistent and very thought out.