Daybreak Games Cancels EverQuest Next - Update

[ffronw]

Daybreak Games Cancels EverQuest Next - Update

Update (3:30 PM EST): In response to our inquiry about Landmark, we received the following statement from a Daybreak Games representative:

"In a statement to the community earlier today, Daybreak Games confirmed that development of EverQuest Next has been discontinued. If you haven't already, please read company president Russell Shanks' comments on how and why this decision was made [https://www.daybreakgames.com/news/daybreak-president-community-letter-everquest-next-2016].

Landmark will be launching this spring. Executive Producer Holly Longdale posted a letter about Landmark on the forums that has additional details [https://forums.daybreakgames.com/landmark/index.php?threads/landmark-launching-spring-2016.56141/]."

So we can still expect to see Landmark as planned. That's a little bit of good news for fans of the franchise.

Original Post: Almost three years after its announcement, EverQuest Next has been cancelled by the Daybreak Game Company.

//cdn.themis-media.com/media/global/images/library/deriv/1295/1295659.jpgThe announcement came today in a post on the company's official site [https://www.daybreakgames.com/news/daybreak-president-community-letter-everquest-next-2016]. Daybreak Games president Russ Shanks made the cancellation official, and said that the main reason for it was that the developers "found that it wasn't fun." The game had been touted by Daybreak as the next evolution in the MMO genre and the EverQuest franchise.

EQ Next also spawned Landmark, a voxel-based world building tool that let players claim land, build structures, and even promised that some of the most impressive structures would appear in EQ Next. There's no word on the future of Landmark in this announcement, but we have reached out to Daybreak to find out what is happening on that front.

At any rate, the list of upcoming entries in the MMO genre just lost a highly recognizable title. You can't even look back at what might have been, as the official game site has already been taken offline.

You can read the full statement from Daybreak below.

To Our Daybreak Community,

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 labor 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 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.

Yours truly,

Russell Shanks
President, Daybreak Games

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[chozo_hybrid]

Damn. That's rough, but if it isn't engaging, I guess they were right to can it, I can only imagine how that must feel for them after working on it for years.

I hope there's some assets that they can use from this game in another one, would be a shame to waste all of it.

 

[Czann]

They ran out of money.

That's not fun I agree.

 

[Fappy]

Damn. That's rough, but if it isn't engaging, I guess they were right to can it, I can only imagine how that must feel for them after working on it for years.

I hope there's some assets that they can use from this game in another one, would be a shame to waste all of it.

Yeah, I actually kind of liked the art direction.

I imagine this kind of thing will continue to happen until someone else revolutionizes MMO's and brings on the next wave of copycats. Until then, it's going to be 5-10 year old games fighting over a niche market in a sea of cancelled titles.

 

[dragongit]

Well... shit. Another one bites the dust.

Let's be honest though... project seemed a bit ambitious to begin with. Still a shame, maybe it could have been fun. The world will never know now.

 

[Jacked Assassin]

I had lost hope for this game being released as soon as they were no longer owned by Sony.
Oh well, back to ESO.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

I know this is a bit too shallow, but I was completely turned off by this game because of its Art Style, I found it way too Cartoony for Everquest. I mean I played a bit of EQ 1 and 2 and I found the more Realistic Graphics and look is more appropriate then some cartoony looking "stylized" rout that many MMOs tend to go towards.

It just does not look right for Everquest it'd be like they made Elder Scrolls a Cartoony Cel Shaded.

 

[MCerberus]

It's about time we face the facts that we're never going to see another traditional MMO on the scale of the big ones. For one, they're already cannibalizing playerbases from each other. We've seen every attempt at making another big traditional MMO trip on themselves and go F2P.

What we're going to have are, well for one lobby games. WoT, MOBAs, and you can argue that the large amount of persistence has lead pretty much every multiplayer shooter into an area where it wouldn't be out of place at massively.com (RIP). Then we're going to see refinements and polishes of some ideas that have been around "what if we made a zombie apocalypse MMO" has created and then killed an entire subgenre through incestuous cloning in the blink of an eye. We're seeing MMO shooters almost flourish after being seen as the fever dream of a madman. We'll have to see where if this space exploration trend leads somewhere fun.

MMOs are dead. Long live MMOs

 

[ffronw]

At least Landmark - the one everyone got to play already and spent money on - is still coming out.

 

[Jacked Assassin]

At least Landmark - the one everyone got to play already and spent money on - is still coming out.

Now Landmark just needs to come to PS4....

 

[The Enquirer]

Not to sound dismissive but Daybreak, at least with DC Universe Online, treats their player base pretty poorly. Company wide their customer service is notoriously bad as they dropped a lot of people from that front when they transitioned from SOE to Daybreak. Maybe they spruced that up in the last few months or so, I can't say for certain. The way they monetized the game was borderline archaic and they were really falling behind the curve of other MMO's. It really doesn't shock me that this company has difficulty innovating and receiving positive results.

Hopefully though, they actually learned something from this and can apply it to other games.

 

[Xeorm]

kinda not surprised. Their initial idea seemed really ambitious and didn't excite me much at all. But, it was far enough out there that I thought it might still be good. Expensive trial on their part though.

 

[weirdee]

Frankly, splitting the playerbase was in of itself never the greatest idea anyway.

 

[ron1n]

Was dead-in-the-water the moment SoE was bought out. Think it will only be a matter of time before the studio folds as well.

 

[Kahani]

The game had been touted by Daybreak as the next evolution in the MMO genre

Can't argue with that. Extinction is a fundamental part of evolution.

 

[Macavei Raul]

If you want to watch,i made a video about this bad news

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2HHomt76O8