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Such a disappointment that EQ Next was canceled a bit back

The Dude

Member
I was really gearing myself up for diving into that game as Everquest is still one of my all time favorite experiences. I was there from day one in March of 99 and I was absolutely swept away in one of the most game changing experiences ever. I played Ultima but Everquest was a totally different animal for me.

I am happy that the game continues on, I've been back here and there and while the core game has changed there is still a charm that lives in the soul of that game that is unlike any other, at least for me.

But yea, noticed Landmark was closing down and while I never did get to that... It reminded me that EQN isn't happening and I'm really saddened by that, I was really jacked up to play a brand new Everquest.
 

Femto.

Member
It saddens me how the genre as whole has been declining. Every time a studio tries to do something different, it never lives up to expectations, and most people go back to WoW. At least FFXIV is finding success, but it is the same old formula.

I used to play nothing but MMOs almost 10 years ago, but not even my favorite series (Guild Wars) could keep me engaged with the sequel after the first 1000 hours of just leveling alts and playing the World PvP.

Which is ironic given how a lot of games today in other genres are being treated a "service". I.E. Destiny, The Division, R6 Siege, fighting games, etc.
 

Levito

Banned
Was never into Everquest, but EQ Next sounded amazing. I wonder if the ambition of the project is part of the reason it died out. Not sure how we were supposed to keep endlessly digging up and excavate the world.
 
Don't worry, EverQuest 1 just released their new expansion for you to enjoy instead!

loadscreen_EoK.jpg
 

The Dude

Member
If I didn't enjoy other games so much I would happily still play Everquest. I love that game, I went back for a progression server and it was absolutely fantastic. The main game is still busy as ever and it'd still pumping expansions every year.

I would play but just to many modern game interests to really get anywhere, so happy it still trucks tho
 

wildfire

Banned
The reveal was very exciting and the team seemed to be really motivated. What went wrong exactly?


Sony abandoned them which forced them to rely more on their existing games to bank roll future projects like Next. Unfortunately (because I like Planetside) they've never really been that stellar at making profitable games and I would certainly rank them below Codemasters who have been coasting for over a decade now but earned more money with even less games.

So as Daybreak they tried muddling through but soon realized they couldn't afford doing both Landmark and Everquest Next. Heck they couldn't even afford some of their staff anymore so they laid off quite a few which reduced the manpower to really refine either project. So they canned Everquest Next under the pretense that their first alpha build wasn't fun.

Eventually their mediocrity caught up with them and even though they were essentially making a AAA version of Minecraft they couldn't copy it right at all (partly because they also wanted to use it as a means to restart Next in the future so they made questionable design decisions). As aresult Landmark also got cancelled.

Now they're subsisting off of H1Z1.
 

The Dude

Member
It still gets expansions? What developer looks after the game now?

Pretty cool.

They have gotten a new expansion every year now, hasn't stopped once. It's pretty remarkable tbh how this game has had that kind of activity since March of 1999 and still has guilds, raids etc... To this day.
 

The Dude

Member
The progression servers are a thing of beauty also, starting from the first original game and every few weeks/months opening up content one expansion at a time is just such a genius idea to somewhat get that original feel back.
 
The reveal was very exciting and the team seemed to be really motivated. What went wrong exactly?

Two reasons:

1. Overambitious design

2. Shortly after Kaz Hirai got promoted to CEO, control over Sony Online Entertainment was transferred from Sony Music Group to the PlayStation division. PlayStation division proceeded to slash SOE's budget due to them being a PC focused studio - For example, Planetside 2 was being developed on a budget that was HALF that of the original game's until SOE conceded to making a PS4 version (But by then the damage had been done by the Beta's poor 1st impressions). And that's among several other instances of corporate drama incurred by differences of opinion between SOE and PlayStation that hurt SOE. For example, some of Planetside 2's more aggressive Pay2Win game design (Since-removed or heavily altered ever since SOE became Daybreak) such as the Implants System were the result of orders from the PS division rather than SOE's choice.

Plenty of games have survived Point No.1 during their development, but no game can survive Point No.1 combined with a new management that's running the developer into the ground for not being with the new corporate initiative.

SOE being spun-off into Daybreak saved them from a dark fate, no joke. Unfortunately, by that point, Everquest 2 was beyond repair and had to be given the blindfold and cigarette to focus on the projects that had survived the PlayStation division's wrath, like PlanetSide 2 and H1Z1.
 
It had a awesome reveal no doubt. But after that it was a slow descent into madness and uncertainty and then finally closure.


Sony was bleeding money so they solid SOE.
 

wildfire

Banned
It saddens me how the genre as whole has been declining.

The genre will make a resurgence again. The reasons Everquest and Ultima blew up in popularity (changing costs in paying for online networking) as well as WoW (they had like 5 but I'll point out in this case superior game design and improvements in low end PC technology) are becoming evident again.

Personally I'm surprised there's more than Sea of Thieves in development that looks promising and right now my attention is fixed on the Dark of Camelot successor Camelot Unchained.

It has received some healthy backing from crowdfunding and as a result they are more communicative about their development process and their ideas and execution so far leaves more confident they'll make a solid if not great Realm vs Realm game.
 

The Dude

Member
I do think a modern Everquest could work, just new modern graphics and combat system , a great business model and the continuation of the incredible Norrath.

What sucks is MMOs used to be in my repitore and now they're just shit for the most part, I think a game like Everquest could put them back on the map if done right and SoE was involved
 

TheYanger

Member
Been playing on the EQ prog server (phinigel) the past few days, I REALLY miss this game, and next looked so great. The Daybreak buyout has gutted that company, so little talent left and clearly zero budget to do anything. It's going to take the IP or company being bought by someone else for anything to happen, sadly.
 

The Dude

Member
Been playing on the EQ prog server (phinigel) the past few days, I REALLY miss this game, and next looked so great. The Daybreak buyout has gutted that company, so little talent left and clearly zero budget to do anything. It's going to take the IP or company being bought by someone else for anything to happen, sadly.

I'd just think seeing a brand last this long would be motivation enough
 

Grisby

Member
It looked neat and I liked that one mage girls art design. Led me to believe the world would be just as colorful.
 

NeOak

Member
Two reasons:

1. Overambitious design

2. Shortly after Kaz Hirai got promoted to CEO, control over Sony Online Entertainment was transferred from Sony Music Group to the PlayStation division. PlayStation division proceeded to slash SOE's budget due to them being a PC focused studio - For example, Planetside 2 was being developed on a budget that was HALF that of the original game's until SOE conceded to making a PS4 version (But by then the damage had been done by the Beta's poor 1st impressions). And that's among several other instances of corporate drama incurred by differences of opinion between SOE and PlayStation that hurt SOE. For example, some of Planetside 2's more aggressive Pay2Win game design (Since-removed or heavily altered ever since SOE became Daybreak) such as the Implants System were the result of orders from the PS division rather than SOE's choice.

Plenty of games have survived Point No.1 during their development, but no game can survive Point No.1 combined with a new management that's running the developer into the ground for not being with the new corporate initiative.

SOE being spun-off into Daybreak saved them from a dark fate, no joke. Unfortunately, by that point, Everquest 2 was beyond repair and had to be given the blindfold and cigarette to focus on the projects that had survived the PlayStation division's wrath, like PlanetSide 2 and H1Z1.

But Everquest 2 exists. EQN was something different.
 
Sony abandoned them which forced them to rely more on their existing games to bank roll future projects like Next. Unfortunately (because I like Planetside) they've never really been that stellar at making profitable games and I would certainly rank them below Codemasters who have been coasting for over a decade now but earned more money with even less games.

So as Daybreak they tried muddling through but soon realized they couldn't afford doing both Landmark and Everquest Next. Heck they couldn't even afford some of their staff anymore so they laid off quite a few which reduced the manpower to really refine either project. So they canned Everquest Next under the pretense that their first alpha build wasn't fun.

Eventually their mediocrity caught up with them and even though they were essentially making a AAA version of Minecraft they couldn't copy it right at all (partly because they also wanted to use it as a means to restart Next in the future so they made questionable design decisions). As aresult Landmark also got cancelled.

Now they're subsisting off of H1Z1.

And H1Z1 has also been functionally abandoned, only King of the Kill gets support, the survival mode is completely unplayable. It's a shame. But they aren't long for the world as a dev, IMO.
 

Kouriozan

Member
Reminds me I bought Landmark at 99€ to support Next and Landmark's server is shutting down really soon.
Biggest purchase remorse ever.
 
Same, I am also totally down for monthly subs. All my best mmo experiences were all paid subbed games where the content was just excellent

Look at Minecraft and all the survival games that make a shitload of money.

People like playing with other people, get the social aspect right with a quality framework of a game around that and there is absolutely a market for a game with a server that can hold more than the 60 some odd most survival games do.

It just feels like nobody wants to invest the money to try anymore, since instancing and survival games feed that same itch effectively (not for me) and cost less to maintain and expand.
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
Wow Landmark shutting down already? I never really got into it even though I bought in at like $100 to be a founder and get in the EQ Next betas early. Oh well to that dream...
 

Anno

Member
Here's hoping that Pantheon ends up being the game it wants to be. I can only play through so many more EQ1 progression servers ;-; That or please sell the IP to someone who gives a damn.
 

mnannola

Member
EqNext really seemed to try and fix everything wrong with the current MMO market.

Unfortunately the team just couldn't seem to get it together. Years went by and they had very little to show. I think to make the game they were aiming for they needed a much bigger budget than they were given.

I'm genuinely sad that we are never getting EQNext. It could have been something special. The last great MMORPG hope.
 

gogojira

Member
EQ2 Wire lifted a bunch of quotes from FoH on the subject which paint an ugly picture of management. I heard the same thing from two people that worked on the project.

http://eq2wire.com/2017/01/05/closing-the-book-on-everquest-next-and-landmark/

For reference, ponytail is Dave Georgeson:

"Landmark began as nothing more than the tools to make EQN. Then ponytail got a wild hair up his ass to make it a game, which ultimately killed EQN. Developmentally, Landmark and EQN were the same on the engineering side for a long time because they had obstacles to overcome which applied to both. Ponytail is the main reason EQN never happened because he refused to let go of Landmark as a game and wasted years of resources in trying to brute force it into being. The designers on EQN wrote hundreds and hundreds of design docs, often rewriting them as goals changed because they had no actual tools to make the game yet."
 

Anno

Member
Dude that game looks great, thanks for the mention

I mean it literally is Everquest in a different world with things shifted around the smallest amount possible. The shaman wears leather/chain armor and a shield, has a variety of buff/debuff spells along with powerful DoTs and heals and summons an ethereal wolf as a companion.

Iconic Ability: Baleful Lethargy - The Shaman calls upon a powerful curse, forcing a waking dream state upon their adversary. While cursed in this manner, the target's melee attack speed is severely decreased and they may become more susceptible to physical attacks.

The return of "group looking for slower" - which I'm totally down for.
 
You can't, or shouldn't, release an MMO with the classic auto attack ruleset imo, even if the auto attack formula is under disguise because you have to keep tapping the attack key.

There needs to be significant engineering improvements to the way these games are handling their networking to incorporate more dynamic and extravagant gameplay more akin to single player games (though for obvious reasons not exact in comparison).

Even with Ever Quest Next targeting the builder style of games that's now popular with all these early access developers, I still couldn't be interested in another game with the classic MMO limitations to gameplay.

It's hard to imagine EQN being successful.
 

The Dude

Member
Yea I just miss when MMOs had slower times. Groups lookin for healer, group lookin for puller, tank, cc, I mean all the new mmos just seem so cookie cutter and so simplistic which is why they're not even options.

I miss when you not just played a class, you lived it and had to be good at it..
 

TheYanger

Member
You can't, or shouldn't, release an MMO with the classic auto attack ruleset imo, even if the auto attack formula is under disguise because you have to keep tapping the attack key.

There needs to be significant engineering improvements to the way these games are handling their networking to incorporate more dynamic and extravagant gameplay more akin to single player games (though for obvious reasons not exact in comparison).

Even with Ever Quest Next targeting the builder style of games that's now popular with all these early access developers, I still couldn't be interested in another game with the classic MMO limitations to gameplay.

It's hard to imagine EQN being successful.

EQN wasn't that though.

and I completely disagree, playing EQ again this past week has reminded me of all the things I like about it. It's simply a game that is designed around social networking and the gameplay is much more management sim than it is 'action' - and there's nothing wrong with that. There is still a lot of skill to learn, evidenced by how much effort we put into writing guides back in the day (I was one of the founders of Monkly-Business, one of the biggest class sites in EQ's heyday), for a class that was essentially "Mash flying kick on cooldown" and chat in party chat the other 10 seconds ofthe time. There can be plenty of nuance without requiring me to mash out a fighting game combo or something. EverQuest to me is just as defined by the relaxing moments of the game as it is the hectic moments.

I already have a hundred modern MMOs if I want 'action' combat. EverQuest for all of the roleplaying that nobody ever did, actually still feels like a world if they just dial back a bit of the convenience from later expansions (and the prog server or fan servers are really the only way to do it, MODERN eq is just a frankenstein of 18 years of system bloat).
 

The Dude

Member
EQN wasn't that though.

and I completely disagree, playing EQ again this past week has reminded me of all the things I like about it. It's simply a game that is designed around social networking and the gameplay is much more management sim than it is 'action' - and there's nothing wrong with that. There is still a lot of skill to learn, evidenced by how much effort we put into writing guides back in the day (I was one of the founders of Monkly-Business, one of the biggest class sites in EQ's heyday), for a class that was essentially "Mash flying kick on cooldown" and chat in party chat the other 10 seconds ofthe time. There can be plenty of nuance without requiring me to mash out a fighting game combo or something. EverQuest to me is just as defined by the relaxing moments of the game as it is the hectic moments.

Great post, totally agree
 
For me the most dissapointing part of it all is that we FINALLY had a game sitting down trying to rethink the conventions of AI. The whole storybricks thing looked awesome. Smedley's KS game which's name escapes me atm was salvaging some design concept of the EQNext AI but unfortunately they shut down too and with it my hopes of emergent AI.
 

Creaking

He touched the black heart of a mod
EQN looked amazing. Not a big MMO guy, but what they showed and had planned addressed most of my issues with the genre. It's cancellation really stung, and I'm still holding out hope (probably in denial) that something might eventually rise up in its place.
 

Anno

Member
EQN wasn't that though.

and I completely disagree, playing EQ again this past week has reminded me of all the things I like about it. It's simply a game that is designed around social networking and the gameplay is much more management sim than it is 'action' - and there's nothing wrong with that. There is still a lot of skill to learn, evidenced by how much effort we put into writing guides back in the day (I was one of the founders of Monkly-Business, one of the biggest class sites in EQ's heyday), for a class that was essentially "Mash flying kick on cooldown" and chat in party chat the other 10 seconds ofthe time. There can be plenty of nuance without requiring me to mash out a fighting game combo or something. EverQuest to me is just as defined by the relaxing moments of the game as it is the hectic moments.

Indeed. Half the fun of playing monk was getting to chat so much, especially when your group wiped and you just feigned in a corner and ate a sandwhich while everyone else ran back to Old Seb or some other far flung dungeon. I miss that so many games now basically make it impossible to just take things slow and chat with people.
 

QisTopTier

XisBannedTier
Yeah this cut deep, they had a really impressive sounding concept they were slowly fleshing out to see it get ripped away sucked so so much.

Patheon is my new hope :)
 
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