It's Official - End of EQNext

Looks exactly like eq1 I watched the twitch stream.nothing wrong with that as I never got to play eq1. So now I'll get a chance with updated graphics.

Currently playing Order of Chaos II on iPad Air 2 from the App Store fun as hell Mmo for an app.

SOE didn't design EQ1, Brad McQuaid and I believe it was Sigil games did. SOE just ruins them.

"You have insufficient privileges to reply here." despite being registered on the EQN forums.

Sigil games was Vanguard.

I know this is Wikipedia but this seems about what I remember.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daybreak_Game_Company

I think someone is far overestimating their power to control any game. You are not the market.

You are only an...opinion.

Honestly folks I think there are a lot of people assuming that the fate of EQNext is the fate of the franchise as a whole. I wish they posted this on every forum out there, so for those of you who missed it here it is.

https://www.daybreakgames.com/news/daybreak-president-community-letter-everquest-next-2016
This section here is specifically aimed at those who think the EQNext project being axed spells the end of the Everquest franchise:

"In final review, we had to face the fact that EverQuest Next would not meet the expectations we – and all of you – have for the worlds of Norrath.
The future of the EverQuest franchise as a whole is important to us here at Daybreak. EverQuest in all its forms is near and dear to our hearts. EverQuest and EverQuest II are going strong. Rest assured that our passion to grow the world of EverQuest remains undiminished."

I honestly do not know how they could be more clear than that.... they just need to put it where people can see it =p

Sigil was the company he started when he left SOE. DBG was SOE and before it was SOE it was called Verant Interactive. Smedley and Brad were in it together then.

lololololololololololoolol

hhahahahahahahahaha


Pantheon wins. Time to support the TRUE successor to EQ

You keep telling yourself that because you're living in fantasy land. No one wants to play games where combat is boring and slow as hell and you sit for 5 minutes between encounters. There is a reason EQ has changed and evolved into what it is today.

While the world looks nice, on an indie budget the assets and most of all character models and animations along with armour and weapon meshes are going to be meager.

On top of that they're building it on Unity. Unity is a fine platform for many games, but is completely untested as a massively multiplayer platform.

I wish them the best of luck. I think they have the odds stacked against them and listened to too many bitter vet posts on various forums. If it ever releases I think a lot of people are in for a big surprise and not in the "oh cool" way, more like the "oh... I see" way.

What does that even say? Nothing. It says "Don't worry folks, we're going to do updates to our existing games and we'll do something with EQ in the future, someday. Have confidence."

They couldn't do anything with what they had. My confidence is at an all time low. There is nothing specific and no reason to think they're going to do anything with it in the future. A mobile game maybe? I would love to be wrong about this, but like I said my confidence and trust are at an all time low.

This is about where I am at too, and I don't think we are alone in this..

Management is a death sentence in gaming it's actually really hard. Anyone who's even attempted to schedule, plan, update, set goals, estimate deadlines, production scale/value and time as well as manage any form of marketing knows it's a nightmare. You are right though Brad is a man with visions but not the ability to manage. The one thing I will give Smokejumper credit for is the man had passion. I got to speak to him personally once and the level of commitment he gave to the projects he managed was pretty inspiring even if unlike Brad his vision may have been a bit short-sighted or extremely too ambitious (see EQN itself). I don't like how SJ handled EQ2 since the changeover in Sentinels Fate but I will respect his commitment.

SOE has 17+ years of development in EQ1: Brad built a concept and then Smedley marketed it. SOE has been there since it was Verant. While Brad was one of the original visionaries for the concept without Smedley it would have went no where and you cannot really discount all these years of SOE development of EQ1 since Brad left.

I posted the complete letter on the first page of this thread. That is what people are reacting too. I am sure they read the part about DBG's professed commitment to EQ1/EQ2, but that doesn't mean that they can't still have concerns about it.

Annd... from his interview
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/...s-on-the-Cancellation-and-Future-of-MMOs.html

"MMORPG: New ideas in the pipeline? New MMOs? Give us some teasers.
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."

Which is, pretty specifically saying that most/all current development is for game consoles and zombies.

My gaming console IS my computer. I don't even have a cell phone. Yes, I'm behind the times and I like it that way.

Cancelled because it wasn't fun? and they think Landmark is fun, wow....

Chicken Little, the sky is not falling. If EQ1 has survived all these years, have faith that EQ2 will hang on as well. Remember that the forum population is not representative of the player population. Most players never even come to the forums in the first place.

They were trying to build EQNext on DBG's proprietary Forgelight game engine (the one used for Planetside, Free Realms, H1Z1, etc). "It wasn't fun" doesn't tell me squat about what kinds of problems they were encountering. The game engine for a MMO is not a simple thing, and there's a reason that the ones used by successful MMOs are proprietary.

For an EverQuest successor, the game engine needs to do the same stuff the current engine handles: physics engine, networking, sound, scripting, AI, etc. The EQ successor engine needs to make use of threading and optimize multi-core operation, while handling most of the graphics with the massive GPUs resident on modern game video cards. It would be nice if it seamlessly accepted output from the art and animation teams' tools (and was built in a way to allow skeleton modifications in the future if needed). The perfect MMO game engine should allow your creative people to storyboard a quest, then easily build it in a visual interface. It should be as easy as using Dungeon Maker or Landmark to design content.

The fact that H1Z1 seems to be running correctly on Forgelight gives me hope. I kinda wonder if the biggest problem might have been simply trying to leverage existing art and story resources. I believe the franchise will go forward, even if they've stubbed their toe at the moment.

This could be just an excuse to 'start over' with design because they painted themselves in a corner, and later this year or next a new announcement will happen.

Sometimes when it's going the wrong direction, you wipe it away and start new.