Soon-Shiong’s NantWorks Invests in Daybreak Game Company

Pretty sure WoW transitioned from PVP Arena to PVE Mythic races in their esports, think it's been much more popular too

54 man Raids are probably way too big to do a real race though, probably lol, it would be unique I guess though

Oooohh... didn’t know about that...

That would not be so hard to implement... but hard to follow, especially with the current UI... but EQ as a spectator sport? They might make the teams small, 3 or 6, to make single actions count more...

Hmm, I haven't been keeping up to date on WOW, but it seems they are going for smaller raid sizes than 40-mans now, and some googling revealed that "mythic" is a difficulty setting? so WOW are basically doing raid-progression races on a smaller scale(20-man?) already? Is it considered an actual E-sport now? or is it just the normal friendly competitions between guilds?

Making EQ1 raidguild-competitions "official" on a "quarm"-style E-sport server with some fancy vanquisher-achievements on top might work, But as Ibliz pointed out, it probably would look too messy as a spectator sport...

/old-man rant:
Personally, Im not too fond of the whole E-sport concept, back in my day we played games for fun...

WoW has 5-player dungeons (relatively linear instances with like 3-6 bosses) with various difficulties. They used to have "Normal," "Heroic," and "Mythic" dungeons, each with increasing difficulty. Now they have something called the "Mythic+" system, which basically infinitely scales the dungeon difficulty. A Mythic 2 is harder than a Mythic 1, a Mythic 3 is harder than a Mythic 2, etc. These dungeons also have what are called "affixes" at certain Mythic levels, and these affixes vary by week. Those change the dungeons mechanically - they might affect aggro, incentivize balancing trash, etc. They've recently started doing Mythic+ Invitationals, where teams do speed runs through these dungeons at very high levels. Those have been really popular and, while I don't play WoW much, I enjoy watching them.

There's also the traditional Mythic Raid progression race, which I think is 20-man at this point (it might be 25, I forget). Some top guilds do stream that and I think that's pretty popular to follow too, but once the actual progression race is over I'm not sure they've had much success with having guilds do speed runs or w/e. 5 player teams seem more conducive to that format.

I'm not too familiar with the WoW stuff, but I think I'd enjoy seeing that type of content in EQ.

It would also be cool if EQ had leaderboards for mission completion times and such.

https://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/h1z1-mobile-z1-port-1202931950/

So games like “H1Z1” and “EverQuest” will both be getting mobile iterations, though there isn’t much information on what the portable versions of both games might entail just yet.

As near as I can tell, that author completely made up that claim about EQ. There is no reason to believe that anything will change regarding EQ until DBG announces something. EQ (as we know it) going to mobile is very unlikely, because it isn't a mobile-friendly game experience. And that's without even discussing the archaic code and technical blockers. If a mobile version is in the works, I doubt it will be anything like the game we play today. By nature of mobile gaming, it would have to be a very dumbed-down version of the complex game we love.

Pipe dreams and jumping to conclusions is all I see here. Let's wait until (if) we hear from a reliable source.

They did list EQ as one of the mobile games in their own press release

https://www.daybreakgames.com/press/daybreak-games-nantworks-joint-venture

It will not be EQ the PC game on Mobile, it will be a knock off likely of something else with an EQ skin over it

Like how PUBG was basically a newer copy of h1z1

Thank you for linking the official post...it is difficult to find. Almost as if they are hiding it...like they hid their other owners. What are they so afraid of, anyhow?

Yes, I could absolutely see them slapping the EQ brand on some completely unrelated game. But I'm not sure that would be good news for us. Time will tell - I'll hope for the best, but history would warn against putting too much faith in EQ's owners, whoever they are today.

Hiding it ? Put out press release, made press release available on fb, yeap hidden for all eyes in plain sight.

Lol - OK, maybe they weren't hiding it. But it wasn't on DBG's "News" page (I do see the announcement now on the main page, if you scroll down a ways). And I can't find anything about it here in EQ-land, other than this post. You get your news from Facebook?

But still - I'd like to retract what I said about their intent to hide it. After all, it's not like there were any precedent for it. https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/regarding-daybreak’s-ownership.248981/

Here is the press release.

I find this particular quote interesting from NantG's head of game engine development.

As if trying to mislead folks into thinking they had a singular game engine that ran both games? Yeah, I don't see any reason to trust anything from corporations any more. Skeezy.

I think the mobile EQ app is going to be a mobile friendly genre, like racing, or multiplayer combat arena. It will be connected to EQ so you can get rewards in the main game like illusions or something. That's just my guess. I don't think they'll be trying to cram 6-7 hotbars on a mobile phone.

If I could work on trade skills on my phone, I would be happy.

It advances the franchise for the first time in two years. That in and of itself is a good thing.

Mythic raids used to be restricted to 25 players (you could do them with fewer, but some of the DPS and mechanics checks were pretty tight, even with 25, toward the end of Warlords of Draenor). When they added Mythic raids to the flex raiding mechanic and enabled cross-server Mythic raids, they removed that restriction. Players can now flex raids of any difficulty up to 30 players. At least, all of that is true as far as I know.

No, at launch Mythic is fixed at 20 players.

From the press releases I got that they want to do something different than just putting the IP on a more or less standard mobile game... that is a more complex thing to grasp.


Also it looks like substantial capital was injected into the two top titles, and that they want to use these platforms as basis for mobile mmo...?

I wonder if they will take elements from the codebase developed for Next and Landmark then and get value out of those assets as well?

No matter what, it is a gigantic show of faith from a very skilled businessman, and it also tells me that EQ is a lot more succesful than some people on these boards express.

Poor Pantheon-owners... quite a succesful turnaround after they where “be-left”. They sure have to make it big with Pantheon now, and they have not had the best track record with making games that actually work... *hag cackle* I sure hope the Pantheon-owner will not have sucess with splitting the EQ community agan.

Dear sir,

I completely disagree with you on this.

I sincerely believe that the changes DBG has done are very very good business management, and that the earlier generations of management where less so.

I believe that DBG have worked on continually increasing focus, getting rid of tech debt, getting rid of what was not core to the business, prioritized building new content the right way, and have gotten rid of some very rotten apples in the team.

The guys behind Next and Landmark almost killed the franchise with their almost criminal approach to execution, and they had been polluting the game for a decade, with poor design and development philosophies not oriented towards value. I believe that these sins where allowed only because Everquest was so groundbreaking, and it was assumed that the original main figures would be able in some magic manner to continue to create value for the Franchise, and that the decline was market driven, not because of poor leadership and design. The continuous attempts to split the main asset of Everquest, namely its community, is what I see as the biggest sin.


It was only when it became clear for management that there was indeed no Next, only wasted millions, that they finally got rid of them' bad apples, and a focused triage over the next three years has left the game in a better state than it has ever been.

And the community is itself seeing better days, from where it was three years ago. I detect a cautious optimism and a strong faith in the continuation of the game, IMO, enabled by the improvements in how the game is executed, but driven especially by the constructive spirit of the community. I believe we have the best MMO-community of all the MMOs (that I have heard of, maybe some asian MMOs that I don't know are better), and I think that this is the reason that The Greatest Game Ever Made has a really good chance of continuing to operate and evolve for decades to come. We are able to stick together, even when we disagree and rant and goof around and get sick of lag, etc etc. I think that is because Everquest is an idea, something greater that its parts, a piece of living culture that is very unique.

oh well, I babblerant...