It's Official - End of EQNext

Except in the interview with DBG's president, most of his talk was about xbox and H1Z1.....

Er, EQ1 is 17 years old now, and EQ2 is 12 1/2 years old. I'm sorry but....no new money is going to be invested in either of them. I'm just praying at this point that our little 15-person dev team doesn't get sacked and EQ1 and EQ2 sold off to some third-world-country P2W publisher to be run in zombie mode.

Have we even heard a peep from Daybreak about a solid, long-term future for either game? Heck, they probably have no idea what will happen this year themselves. I doubt Columbus Nova is going to give them much advanced notice of any changes that might occur, either. There's a live stream coming up March 15th. Let's hope it's more than false bravado, P.R. speak and question dodging.

That recent Russel Shanks interview is the dodgiest thing yet:

MMORPG: Do you think the genre of MMO, MMORPG, MMOG, or whatever you want to call it is just in a different place these days? There are a handful making a lot of money, and plenty of smaller niche titles carving out their own fanbase. But where you do you see the genre headed, as a company and as a fan?

RS: I believe the magic of MMORPGs and MMOs in general has not been diminished. In fact, games like Destiny incorporate many of the compelling elements of classic MMOs, which expose them to a new generation of gamers.

RS: Right now, we are focused on launching Landmark, advancing H1Z1: Just Survive, bringing DC Universe Online to Xbox One players, and launching H1Z1: King of the Kill on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. We are going to wait on discussing anything else.

I blame this on the Hard Core raiders all the did was take take take, they are the parallel to the 2%

During Landmarks Alpha to Beta transition they offered refunds for people who beloved they were paying for EQN and delivered on those refunds. Those with Trailblazer or Founder packs still haven them because they held on to them knowing they were for Landmark only. I will be going back to Landmark since I was in Alpha and Closed Beta but it was too jarring a transition to Open Beta for me so I will be checking it out when it launches. Keep in mind that EQN tackled about six extremely hard tasks for it's development:
- Using a newly developed and still under development Game Engine (Voxel Farm)
- Emergent and Dynamic World Building controlled by non-set actions of the Players. (A constantly changing world)
- Full Destruction and Building of said game world (high data management)
- Necessity and Desire based AI that would psuedo change based on player actions (Emergent AI).
- Simplistic and vastly customizable combat systems with classes built by players by their own actions (Classless Combat)

I can't think of another but EQN was tackling multiple potential new fronts for MMO Gaming. Some of which hold much promise but unfortunately are very expensive to push through and develop. Such things maybe should be done with a new IP and not one as old as Everquest. There is demand for a new Everquest however it's still the demand for a traditional style MMO. I feel a hybrid of Action Combat and Server-Tick Combat is required similar to how endgame in Final Fantasy XIV is right now.

Daybreaks main focus has been and will be H1Z1 for quite some time since it's making them the most money followed by Planetside 2 which is suffering from stale Meta and poor combat. PS2 should have been large-scale combat on multiple fronts per faction instead we got shoved into tiny-choke skirmishes and to me PS2 feels like the old "Onslaught" gametype from Unreal Tournament.

Thanks Equilbirum, Fatality, NPU, Revelations, Second Dawn, Dissolution, HoN for destroying a franchise due to your selfishness or wanting RAID CONTENT that only 2% of the game populaiton would ever see. Thanks to you so many people lives will be ruined, i hope that extra fabled loot was worth the death of a franchise ..


Again thank the hardcore 5 day a week raiders that were in bed with the devs for the down fall of the Everquest Franchise.

Perhaps, but I don't own any gaming consoles and my interest and planetside and zombies is roughly nil... mostly it was a comment that those who hope the death of EQN will mean more resources for EQ (1,2, or 3) are likely to be disappointed.

Yep I understand. EQ1 and 2 are likely to keep their current teams as long as the games are making the relatively same money. It's the point that mostly only the "Leads" are still working on it. They are doing a terrific job but if there is one thing I will say... Player Studio has pretty much taken over for any In-House assets which I'm fine with but I may be a bit bias in that fact. I hope for proper treatment of IP's especially ones I love such as EverQuest and the child in me still prays for a proper revitalization of Spyro. I refuse to accept that Skylanders was the end of that series but it likely was given how bad "The Legend of Spyro" series was received back on PS2.

I was never a fan of the direction they were taking EQN but I'm nervous about the future of the EQ franchise.

They need something or EQ2 will gradually wither and die. It could be a new EQ MMO, or a major makeover of EQ or EQ2 to bring them up to current standards, but it needs to be something. Yea, they say the franchise is healthy, but I'm not convinced. They have to keep doing server mergers to keep a reasonable population on them, the expansions are getting smaller and smaller. I thought they did a good job with what is in ToT -- but it's still rather small.

I think the EQ franchise still has potential. Perhaps the best thing that could happen from our point of view would be for it to be sold to someone who can do it justice..

As a parallel I look at the Star Wars movies (not referring to spinoffs, games, etc.). After the three original hits the prequels were very mediocre. It didn't look to me like we'd be seeing any more movies. Then the franchise was sold to Disney which invested a huge amount of money in it, made a blockbuster, and plans many more movies. Looks to me like a potential rebirth of Star Wars.

Maybe, if the EQ franchise is sold to someone willing to invest in it, it can also have a rebirth.

DBG should make a Legends of Norrath 2. Blizzard is making a killing with Hearthstone. I read that it's a billion dollar business for them. Lot of money to be made there, too bad DBG has no clue what they are doing.

I thought Everquest was mainly Brad McQuaid, Daybreak had nothing to do with Everquest, or am I wrong?

Pantheon will be the next best thing, when it gets released.

We all know it's Brad and Pantheon will be the best of the best when it's released.

Daybreak is the same company as SoE was.. they just changed their name when Sony sold them to Columbus Nova.

It's not vaporware anymore. Evidently they got a legit investor to pony up the cash. After this last week's gameplay Twitch stream, "coincidentally" scheduled for the same time EQN was being officially killed, Brad is the golden boy again.

I'd love to see Pantheon come to full fruition. I really would, but the sour taste of Vanguard has never been quite washed out of my mouth and I'm not sure I'll ever trust that guy again.

I don't know all the problems of Vanguard. I know that Brad had money problems and had to take a backer that forced him to release before Brad felt it was ready. It was "publish or die" sort of thing. Have a RL friend who loved it, despite its problems but returned to his first love of EQ when I was able to play with him and his accounts. IF Brad gets enough money to publish his game correctly, and does it right, if I can, I will give it a shot. I can afford ONE game payment a month right now and for now its allaccess. I hated the direction WoW was going with its lore and becoming (IMO) an online game and losing the MMORP aspect. EQ and EQ2 is still fun for me, enough to justify spending money each month. I could always got F2P here and pay for WoW but Blizzard has enough people paying them money. DBG does not. And so DBG gets $14 a month from me. As long as I get my moneys worth of fun, they will get my money. When I stop paying, I will likely stop playing.

Basically brad horrible mismanaged the development. Entirely. The backer that forced him to ship was Smedley bailing him out after Microsoft dumped him. The guy has a vision for what makes a good MMO that is exactly the same as mine. He wants to make the game I want to play. But the dude can't manage a gaming company to save his life.

I"m a bit confused. Is Landmark even a game? I thought it was just an interface to make stuff that may eventually be imported into EQNext.

It sounds like minecraft with good graphics. I've never played minecraft though so can't be sure

The last time I played it felt a bit like a hybrid between FreeRealms (especially the combat which at the time was based on what weapon you had equipped) and Minecraft with it's harvesting of materials to build things with.
There certainly is a market for that sort of thing.