Almost three years after its announcement, development has stopped on the next iteration of the long-lived MMO franchise.
Daybreak Studios’ president Russ Shanks announced the news on the game’s official site:
I’m writing today to let you know that, after much review and consideration, Daybreak is discontinuing development of EverQuest Next.
For the past 20 years EverQuest has been a labour of love. What started as a deep passion of ours, as game creators, grew into a much larger passion shared by you, millions of players and Daybreakers alike. Watching EverQuest‘s ability to entertain and bring people together has inspired and humbled us. It’s shaped our culture and has emboldened us to take aggressive risks with our game ideas and products. When we decided to create the next chapter in the EverQuest journey, we didn’t aim low. We set out to make something revolutionary.
For those familiar with the internals of game development, you know that cancellations are a reality we must face from time to time. Inherent to the creative process are dreaming big, pushing hard and being brutally honest with where you land. In the case of EverQuest Next, we accomplished incredible feats that astonished industry insiders. Unfortunately, as we put together the pieces, we found that it wasn’t fun. We know you have high standards when it comes to Norrath and we do too. In final review, we had to face the fact that EverQuest Nextwould 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.
Comments
14 responses to “EverQuest Next Has Been Cancelled”
Was this the one that was meant to have destructible terrain and all that? If so, what a pity – I would have checked it out for sure.
Yeah destructible terrain, intelligent NPCs and monsters that would react to the player long term actions… all in an open world.
This one looked like it might revolutionise the MMOS genre. However after SOE ditched them, the writing was on the wall for EQN. Sad to see this one bite the dust. So much promise.
Not really surprised by this in the least, after the mess that was Landmark and dropping by Sony
But Landmark is still coming out!!! the horror!
The original Everquest taught us that it didn’t matter if a game was fun as long as it was addictive.
I don’t think I’ve ever dealt with a game as grindy as EQ. Not only was there the AA treadmill (spending hours to save points for incremental upgrades) but the last few expansions (while I was still playing it) would basically increase the level cap and give you a slightly upgraded version of many of the spells you already had.
Furthermore, the game’s original design around the “holy trinity” (warrior, cleric, enchanter) meant that those three classes were pretty much useless outside of a group, while others (druids, necromancers) were basically more effective solo and a third set (wizards, mages) were only useful in a group but not in high demand…
A lot of this was because after a certain point in the game (around level 60) the monsters with a level high enough to give experience could take down most classes in a matter of seconds.
Anyway. Reminds me of why I never went back to that game. Or rather, I did go back, but when I saw the FTP version stripped my old character’s ~1500 AA I gave up on it, AA being pretty much essential in the late game.
Sigh. Its ike when you pet is lost, you cry for news but when it final comes, they thing left to say is “well at least we know”. Well done Daybreak what a mighty fine purchase you have now, you let go some of the best talent in MMO’s and then you sentence your future cash cow “to a slow miserable death”.
Shame. However, I think I got my fix of destructible terrain in Trove. MMO’s to me are overdone. Whilst changing small features, the core gameplay is generally the same, and the hype dies down a couple of months after launch as everyone realizes it’s much of the same.
well thats the point most people want a new exciting mmo but are always dissapointed because there the same….well if they were not the same they wouldn’t be an MMO.
I have yet to find an MMO with what i want in it yet so as overdone as they are there is still a ton of shit they can do to make a better MMO.
MMO’s are my favourite genre so it’s sad to see them die down :/
Plus everyone has to try and plan their very survival around the 9-12 month lulls in-between WoW’s expansion launches. (Woe to all other MMOs when Legion launches. Another six million players will suddenly disappear from all other MMOs for 1-3 months until the new content is exhausted and all that’s left to do is raid.)
In those lulls you get a second job. I did marriage ceremonies for random people/groups with voice chat… Am i a licensed preist? No I am not.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
disliking daybreak more and more
oh well there is black desert and its awesome
This means Jeremy Soule is free to work on other titles now right?
About as much of a shock as Ricky Martin coming out of the closet, we all knew, it was only a matter of time before it became official.